John Howard

I was a young teacher at Grand Island Central Catholic back in 1983.

One day, a month before school started, our principal Hugh Brandon called me to his office.

John and Cathy Howard - our wedding day - August 4th, 1984.

"Would you look at this?" he flipped through an application on his desk and feigned surprise.  "Here's a young fellow called John Howard who's applied for the history job.  Let's see," Hugh studied the application carefully. "He's 29-years-old, single, and, oh!"  He looked up innocently.  "He's 6 feet 8."  His eyes twinkled.  "Should I hire him?"

He was messing with me, pure and simple.  I was a 28-year-old single female. And I was 6 feet 1 inch tall.

"I don't care if he's a serial killer," I said.  "Hire him."

Fortunately, John Howard was not a serial killer.  He was, however, insane.

Mr. Howard drove up the circle drive at Central Catholic that first day of school in a tiny blue Volkswagen Rabbit which appeared to have been constructed by engineers around his body. One long arm hung lazily out the tiny window with knuckles that nearly grazed the street.

John Howard was a school sensation, and not only because of his looming stature.  He taught the Industrial Revolution wearing a giant fake nose and glasses.  He pulled rubber chickens out of his desk.  And one morning, late for class, he tried to scare his students by explosively leaping through the door.  But when you're 6 feet 8, you shouldn't leap explosively through anything.  Slamming his head against the door jamb, he nearly knocked himself out.

But I liked him.  And by the time we were married a year later with the entire school in attendance, I loved him.

We've been married a long time now, and every day he makes me laugh.  Except for the days I have stomach flu, a migraine headache, or I'm so mad I could scratch his eyes out.  His wildly bizarre humor, though, took some getting used to the first year we were married.

I had just been ready to nod off one night when he startled me out of sleep.  "What do you think about couple swapping?" he asked out of the blue.

I snorted.  "Oh, I'm all for it."

He sat up.  "So that's sarcasm?  You don't approve?"

I laughed and ignored him, turning over to sleep.

"I see," he said abruptly, jumping out of bed.

He walked briskly to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and punched a few numbers.

"Roger?" I heard him address the name of a man I completely detested.  "Yeah, I guess it's off.  Break the news to Ardelle."

He's just as insane with the kids at school.

"Women are the root of all the world's problems!" he bellows at the girls in his American History class.

"Did I ever tell you I hate children?" he roars at the eighth graders.

I remember walking into his classroom to see him standing over poor little Amy Nguyen who giggled helplessly in her desk.

"Can't you be just a little afraid?" he screamed at her.

"Oh Mr. Howard," she smiled coyly at him.  "I could never be afraid of you."

Graduates return to us after a couple of years.  "Mr. Howard," they tell me earnestly, time and time again, "is the best teacher I ever had. He really prepared me for college."

I wait politely for them to tell me that diagramming sentences in my English class changed their lives.

They never do.

John's forged special bonds with his cross country and track runners through the years.  In the school's ancient very-used Handi-Van, one of Central Catholic's archaic modes of transportation purchased second hand from Goodwill, he drives his athletes out to the country to run on pasture roads.

One fall afternoon, disgusted that they had run poorly and lost their focus, he lined them all up across a dirt road before firing up the Handi-Van.

"I'm sorry it's come to this," he shouted out the window, gunning the engine.  "But I have to run you over."

One girl laughed so hard, she collapsed helplessly on the dirt road.

The kids are scared to death of him when they first enter middle school as sixth graders, but by the time they graduate, they know him well.  His very loud bark, they understand, is much worse than his bite.

A couple of years ago, Alli Masat, one of John's runners, was visibly upset in my English class.  I asked her to stay after the bell and made her tell me what the trouble was.  Her much loved grandmother, she cried shakily, had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

"I have to tell Mr. Howard!" she hiccuped.  I assured her that if she needed to miss track practice, I would tell him for her.  "It's not that," she shook her head.  "It's just that - well - he's like my dad!" she sobbed.

He's been a great dad to our own two boys, Kenny and Tommy.  They, better than anyone, understand his humor.  They also understand he's always there.  He cooked huge meals for those two gargantuan boys before every football and basketball game, counseled them with his good, gentle wisdom, and spent plenty of time yelling at them when they didn't always toe the line.

And he's been just as good to me.  I remember how he spent three nights on a tiny, pull-out bed in a hospital room in Omaha with me after my double mastectomy.  His familiar snore was such a comfort.  When the nurse removed my bandages for the first time to examine my chest, he leaned over to look and said, "Looks good, Cath."

How can you not love a man like that?

We don't always understand each other.  It annoys me that he's so blunt with door to door salesmen.  He, in turn, is irritated by my inability to have short conversations with anyone on the bike path.

I think he should be more concerned about the after life, and he thinks I should try to give up my obsession for control.

Worst of all, no matter how much I've begged or pleaded, he refuses to let me have a dog.

"It would be cruel.  We're not here all day to take care of it," he reminds me with logical good sense.

"That's fine," I say mutinously.  "I'll get my dog the minute you pass away."

What we do understand, however, is that we can't finagle this life without each other.

         John and Cathy on vacation with our boys at Hermosa Beach, California, summer 2014.

"Don't you know," he's said to me many, many times, "that I'd do anything for you?"

He would, too.

And that's a good thing to remember - especially today - the day of our 30th anniversary.

This past week, he reminded me that he's lived just as long with me as without me.  And I've lived a little longer with him than without.  He's 60, and I'm 59.  For this last year of my 50's, I will introduce myself as a trophy wife.  It's not bad either.  I've had the poor slob eating out of my hand for 30 years now.

He's given me two nice, funny, tall boys, a happy home, and the steady confidence of knowing that as long as he's around, I'll always be okay.  Turns out he's given me every single thing I ever wanted or hoped for in this life.  And more.

Everything except a dog.