DATE: Sunday, July 13, 1997                 TAG: 9707110021

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS

                                            LENGTH:   86 lines

REMEMBERING HENRY HOWELL ``KEEPING THE BIG BOYS HONEST'' IS WHAT HE LOVED BEST

I was in the back seat of the small plane with my stomach hovering near my larynx.

Henry Howell was in the front seat, playing navigator for his political supporter and volunteer campaign pilot, Curly Byler of Virginia Beach.

We were somewhere over the Southside, headed from the coalfields to Hampton Roads on a day in 1977 when a ferocious weather front was uprooting trees, blowing out windows and tossing small aircraft about like free-form roller coasters.

Twenty years later, I can still hear Howell's reedy voice and uncontained exuberance, crying out above my moans and misery: ``Fly on, Curly. Virginia needs me.''

Last week, as the three-time gubernatorial candidate moved on to the great thrill ride in the sky, many of those who followed his remarkable political career were in touch, trading stories and chuckles and memories, both bitter and sweet.

For those too young or too new to Virginia to remember, there never was and probably never will again be a state politician quite like Howell. Some say that with thanksgiving. I say it with respect.

Put aside the voice that could grate like fingernails on a chalkboard, the passion that could degenerate into rancor (describing the amiable Radford Republican John Dalton, Howell's 1977 opponent for governor, as ``meaner than a junkyard dog'' comes to mind), and the fact that even Howell's hated ``Big Boys'' had their good points.

What was most laudable about Howell was his courage and steadfastness in standing against the established order in a state that, he correctly said, had long breathed ``the chloroform of conformity.''

He was not right in every particular. But he was right about the importance of racial, political, and economic inclusion - which made him right about the pivotal issue of his day. Besides which, he was largely without pretense. And he could make people laugh.

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato, who knew Howell well, recalls this moment.

During Howell's 1969 campaign, in which he unveiled his trademark ``Keep the Big Boys Honest'' slogan, a reporter chided Howell about the hypocrisy of his driving an imposing and expensive sedan.

Without hesitating, Howell shot back: ``I'm working undercover to check up on the Big Boys. A man has to have a big car to keep up with 'em.''

``He thought so fast, and he could laugh at himself,'' said Sabato.

Paul Goldman, who helped run Howell's 1977 Democratic primary race, recalled a little-known incident from that campaign. Eventually Howell, the dark horse, was nominated, upsetting front-runner Andrew P. Miller.

``We, of course, had no money. We were broke, couldn't pay the staff in March and April,'' said Goldman.

Then arrived a $25,000 check from Richmond businessman Sydney Lewis, who had bankrolled Howell's 1973 campaign. Everyone was elated, until Howell realized that Lewis had also given $10,000 to Miller.

``He only thinks I'm two-and-a-half times better than Andrew Miller?'' Goldman recalls Howell fuming. Howell decided to give the money back, and he instructed Goldman to poll the staff on their willingness to forgo a pay check.

When the staff balked, Howell summoned them to his office, where he gave a passionate speech, describing how he was a fighter for principle and Miller was not. One by one, the staff switched.

Only later, after meeting with Lewis, did Howell decide to keep the funds.

The extremes of emotion stirred by Howell were conveyed by columnist Guy Friddell and Old Dominion University historian Jim Sweeney. Friddell remembers that Howell was scarcely out the door of the Virginia Diner in Wakefield on a campaign swing before someone was collecting his literature and dumping it in the garbage.

But Sweeney recalls being asked by an elderly woman for a Howell poster as he worked the polls at Blessed Sacrament School on Colley Avenue in 1977. The woman told him that she intended to hang Howell's picture in her home, alongside those of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy.

One of my enduring memories of Howell is riding in his campaign van, dubbed ``The Howell Cannonball,'' on the way to the Newport News shipyard early one morning in 1977. Dawn was just breaking, but Howell turned up the volume on his loudspeaker and began admonishing anyone within range to ``Vote for Henry.''

The moment struck me then and does now as a metaphor for his political career.

Most of the houses Howell was passing were still dark. If people heard him at all, it was probably with vague irritation at being awakened. But that sober reality did not diminish the thrill, the uninhibited joy of doing what he believed in and loved best. MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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