Alums Write
We urge all Howe alums to write your recollections of Howe, just a short anecdote or a longer essay about what your Howe experience meant to you. We all are getting older. If we don’t write our memories down, they will be lost. Please take a few minutes to write out some Howe memories; send them to FSeibold@HMSAlumni.org to help us keep the legacy alive.
Charlie Snauffer ’72 Tells About The Annual Inspection
With April [2024] only a couple of weeks away, it puts me in mind of our yearly G.I. inspection. This was an annual inspection of the School to see if we retained our [ROTC] Honor Rating shown by the white star that was on our uniforms above the right breast pocket, which meant we were in the top 10% of military schools. What it meant to us, was it was time to clean the barracks within an inch of their lives.
Charlie Snauffer ’72 Writes About Boots And White Socks
One of my lasting memories is those overcoats they were heavy and didn't do anything to keep you warm. You had on your wool field uniform, wool shirt and pants, then the over coat. I'm going to tell you standing in formation for first mess in the dark with wind blowing and sometimes snowing was not fun. The march from the Lower School barracks to Mess Hall seemed like it was a hundred miles long in the winter.
A Howe Novel
Enter Jerry, by Edwin Meade Robinson 1894, a classmate of Frank Wade, M.D. They are both listed in the Fifth Form roster in the 1893 Catalog on our website and are both natives of Lima (Howe). Robinson went to Wabash College and then became a newspaper columnist, mostly for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Charlie Snauffer ’72
I will start with some of my first experiences with the Howe way of life. After my first meeting with COL Bouton and having received my first G.O.[General Orders – a maroon-covered booklet given to each cadet upon enrollment with the School’s Rules and Regulations and a list of demerits for various infractions. In the early 1950s it was 3×5 and about 1/8-inch thick. Charlie’s copy was 5×7 and almost a half-inch thick. There were detailed drawings how your room was to be arranged. The double rooms in Gray Hall and Howe Hall were much larger than those in the c. 1954 barracks...