It’s the end of an era.
Two of our co-workers, the best ambassadors this community newspaper could ever have, announced their retirement in early July.
Many of you know who I’m talking about before I even mention their names. That’s how well you know them – and they know you.
The Leader will never quite be the same without Ted and Nancy Howell, our go-to, can-do photography team. Day in and day out, year in and year out, they epitomized genuine, humble, dedicated, community-minded service.
Both in their 80s, and with inevitable health issues weighing them down, Ted and Nancy – you can never think of them individually, only as an inseparable duo – reluctantly decided the time had come to put away the cameras and notebooks and enjoy a full and well-deserved retirement.
“There comes a time when a man has to decide, it’s the right time to step away and be graceful about it,” Ted said. “I didn’t want to, but it was time for us to step back. If my health, my knees and legs were OK, we’d be doing all right. I know Nancy has loved this so much. She really didn’t want to quit. We just finally agreed to go ahead and retire.”
Nancy talked like someone coming home from a long, memorable vacation.
“We just had a really good time, both of us,” she said. “It was a real treat in every sense of the word.”
Their story starts with graduation from De Soto High School, Ted in 1956 and Nancy the next year. Later in 1957 they got married. After service in the Navy (1958-1960), Ted came home and the young couple welcomed two sons, Teddy in 1960 and Robbie in 1964. Ted got hired “on the spot” as an electrician at McDonnell Douglas and stayed there 30 years.
The Howells began their Leader career in 2002 as maybe the third or fourth act in their adult lives. It would not have been possible except for a major lifestyle change a few years earlier, when Robbie, born with serious mental and physical disabilities, was accepted at the Pony Bird Home in Mapaville, a residence that has served the severely disabled since 1977.
Ted and Nancy spent the first 34 years of Robbie’s life in a perpetual caregiving state, sharing responsibility 24/7 for their younger son. When Pony Bird came along, new vistas opened for them.
“It was wonderful in many ways, mostly because we hadn’t had time to be together,” Nancy said. “Either he had to be home or I had to be home. When we were able to be out together like that after 34 years, it was almost like a brand-new marriage situation.”
Their Leader days began not as employees but as the subjects of a feature story. Ted had taken up photography as a retirement pastime and restored an old photo for Betty Olson, the longtime librarian at the De Soto Public Library. (Olson died Sept. 18).
“Unbeknownst to me, she called the paper and said, ‘You ought to see what this guy’s doing over here.’ Next thing I know Laura Marlow and Sheree Faries Fite showed up on my doorstep and said, ‘Can we do an interview?’ They did the story and it was really nice.
“A couple months later (then-managing editor) Peggy Bess called me and said, ‘Would you be interested in making some photos for the Leader?’ And my thought was, ‘OK, if you like us and we like you and we’re having fun, we’ll do it.’ ”
Nancy had some say about it, too.
“When the paper offer came along for Ted, he said, ‘Well, you don’t have anything to do, so why don’t you come with me?’ And I thought, I’ve dusted everything at least once, so why not?”
For the next 18 years, Ted toting the camera and Nancy the notebook, they photographed almost anything that moved in Jefferson County: parades, civic festivals, fundraisers, local government, graduations and homecoming celebrations.
And lots of sports. Nancy liked them all; Ted’s favorites were football and baseball.
“I miss the Friday night lights, I won’t lie to you,” Ted said.
There were memorable moments. While shooting a wrestling tournament at De Soto High in 2008, Ted slipped on a snowy flight of steps and broke an ankle badly enough to require surgery.
About a year later, Ted and Nancy experienced an apex of sorts in our profession, photographing President Barack Obama on his visit to Fox High School.
“That was really special in a way, to say you photographed the president of the United States,” Ted said. “What impressed me most about that was the way that everything was controlled and manipulated, from the Secret Service and the press corps. That was pretty interesting.”
So were assignments to shoot Jill Biden (wife of current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden) at Jefferson College and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, not to mention the TV and movie celebrities at the annual Frank Wilcox Film Festival in De Soto.
But a different type of group mattered the most to the Howells.
“The most fun things that I liked doing were Halloween for kids, Christmas for kids, Easter egg hunts for kids, all these things revolving around the children,” Ted said. “They were work, but they were a lot of fun.”
Work, indeed. We all marveled at Ted’s willingness to contort himself in every way possible, in and out, high and low, for the best possible shot. He trooped the sidelines in a heavy parka at frigid football playoff games; he’d sweat through his white dress shirt shooting Legion baseball in 100-degree heat – with Nancy keeping score in the stands, of course.
The Missouri Press Association noticed, too, with Ted and Nancy receiving numerous photojournalism awards in its annual Better Newspaper Contest.
Now their life centers in part on church; they attend multiple services or meetings each week at the De Soto Church of Christ, where they’ve been members since 1967. Ted, always the illustrator, has taken up painting local-history tableaus (strictly oil on canvas) while Nancy does volunteer work when not enjoying Hallmark Channel movies.
“(Ted’s) the hobby guy, I’m just the homemaker,” she said. “He’s my hobby.”
Health and happiness to two of the best. We wouldn’t picture it any other way.
