December 24, 2003
AS OPPOSED TO THE REST OF US TIN MEN:
John Howland -- Public-Spirited Vermonter (John P. Gregg, 12/24/03, Valley News)
They lit the Christmas candles at St. Francis of Assisi Church yesterday morning, and a festive wreath hung on the wall behind the altar.For a funeral Mass.
More than 100 people were in the church, celebrating the life of John Hudson Howland, a native Vermonter who encouraged families to play in the snow on Mount Ascutney, put the down-and-out to work in the machine shops of Windsor and spoke his mind in Montpelier.
Howland, who died Friday evening at age 88 in his West Windsor home, is survived by his wife of 62 years, five children, two siblings, a dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a multitude of memories of how he helped Windsor County.
“We celebrate this full life, full not only in the number of years, but in his achievements,” the Rev. Paul Belhumeur said in his homily.
The son of a municipal court judge in a family with roots that run 200 years deep in Windsor County, Howland worked his way through boarding school and Harvard College, fought in the Pacific as a Navy officer in World War II, and was active in a number of fields, ranging from real estate development to insurance to manufacturing.
He also represented Windsor County in the state Senate from 1975 to 1985 and served on a number of state and civic boards, including service as chairman of the District 9 Environmental Commission.
And as a civic-minded businessman -- one who famously spoke out against the nuclear power industry -- he demonstrated how an establishment Republican could also be a man with heart and soul.
The local paper, which manages to be both an excellent regional daily and a notorious left-wing rag, has been running long obituaries of more interesting citizens on the front page for awhile now. It's a lovely tribute to the deceased and a nice opportunity for readers to see how outstanding individuals help keep the community knit together. The one cited here actually appears above the fold today, Christmas Eve day. That gratuitous shot at Republicans is a perfect example of how liberal bias inevitably creeps off of the editorial page and contaminates the rest of a paper. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 24, 2003 12:57 PM
The last comment is pretty rich too, considering the economic disaster for Vermont consumers that resulted from the "heart and soul" crowd getting their way on nuclear power.
Posted by: Mike M. at December 24, 2003 1:37 PMThat last line is the Leftist version of the bigot's cliche that "some of my best friends are black /Jewish". The person making it is oblivious to how condescending and hollow and phony they are being in their attempt to be magnanimous.
And don't you know that if you set up a 2x2 matrix of Republican vs. Democrat and "man of heart and soul" vs. "mean heartless bastard", a few Republicans do manage to avoid the latter category, while on the Democrat side that cell is always empty?
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at December 24, 2003 6:09 PMAs a non-partisan freethinker who delivered the Valley News door-to-door in the late 1950's ... before the flatlander invasion ... I am amused by the paper's casual slap at Republicans. My, how things have changed in the homeland!
Of course, the good news is that their half-baked preconceptions will inevitably cause them to underestimate their opponents.
Posted by: Tonto at December 24, 2003 6:31 PMMy favorite example of that sort of unconscious slap was from a Chicago Maroon article in the mid-eighties. In the course of tracing the University's history, the article contained a passage something like the following: Despite his conversion to Catholicism, university president Robert Maynard Hutchins was able to build a world class institution of higher learning.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 24, 2003 10:18 PMOur local newspaper [a Knight-Ridder]- in a one-newspaper town - has a long-standing left-wing tilt. It hates Republicans, and despises conservative Republicans.
It has lost so much circulation from cancelling subscribers, that it has resorted to weekly mailing by via snail mail an all-advertising thingy to residents of the town.
Sort of like the Taliban; the local K-R staffers would rather be ideologically pure than survive.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at December 25, 2003 10:11 AM