  USS
OAKLAND CL-95
Memorial
to
Lieutenant
Jack
R. Howard
A Tribute to Lieutenant Jack R. Howard.
"THE
JACK HOWARD" of Scripps Howard Foundation.
Officer and shipmate in the USS OAKLAND during World War II.
 To His family,
I remember Lt Jack R.
Howard when he served
in the USS OAKLAND. It has been a
long time ago and his
shipmates are all getting older or slowly passing away. Each year
the
complete address roster
gets smaller and the deceased and unknown rosters gets
longer. The
officers and crew of USS OAKLAND are very sorry about learning
of the
passing of Mr. Howard and may he rest in eternal peace.
Paul D. Henriott,
Chief
Warrant OfficerU.S. Army Retired
Webmaster of USS
OAKLAND website.
One of the last eight
plank owners to depart the OAKLAND in 1948.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I would like
to thank Scripps Howard
Foundation for the use
of their Scripps Howard
Foundation News Release Archive
March 22, 1998.
In
Memoriam Jack R.
Howard 1910 - 1998
With
out this help supplying the information and images I would not have
been able to
create this Memorial.
 Former
Scripps chief Jack R. Howard
August
31, 1910
- March 22, 1998
He
was
transferred to the
USS Oakland CL-95 for what would
have
been the
invasion of the Japanese mainland
in 1945.
FROM
THE OFFICERS AND CREW
OF
USS OAKLAND
CL-95
 SO
PROUDLY WE SERVED
CINCINNATI --Jack
R. Howard, a pioneer in the broadcast industry and heir to one of
the great names in American newspapering, died Sunday, March
22,
at 7:15 a.m. in his
New York City home. He was 87. The cause of death
was pulmonary failure.
Howard's
journalism career spanned 48 years from work as a summer copy aide in
1928
to retirement in 1976 as president and general editorial
manager of The E.W. Scripps
Company.
Jack
was determined to put his imprint on the company and he did it in
the broadcasting
area," said William R. Burleigh, president and chief
executive officer of The E.W.
Scripps Company. "What we see today in
our broadcasting division is the Jack Howard
legacy to Scripps Howard."
Added
Lawrence A. Leser, chairman of the board for The E.W. Scripps
company,
"His biggest attribute was creating Scripps Howard
Broadcasting. He put
us into radio
and later television."
Jack
was the son of the legendary Roy W. Howard, who built United Press into
a
worldwide wire service and through his association with E.W.
Scripps became the
"Howard" in the Scripps Howard concern.
Born
August 31, 1910 in his parents' house on Upper Broadway in Manhattan,
N.Y., he
was named Jack because that had been his father's nickname
as
a young man.
JRH
seemed destined to live a life in the public eye. His mother, Margaret
Rohe
Howard, had been a writer of verse, a reporter and an
actress on
Broadway and the
London stage. His aunt, Alice Rohe, was an
internationally
distinguished reporter.
He
attended the Phillips Exeter Academy, where he served as business
manager of The
Exonian, the
school newspaper, and coxswain for the crew
team. In 1928, he joined
United Press to cover the Olympics in
Amsterdam, working his
passage there by waiting
on tables in the steerage class of the Liner
SS Levithan.
He
then attended Yale University and worked for the Yale Daily News until
he earned
his degree in 1932. Upon graduation, Jack Howard began his
newspaper career. He
worked as a reporter and copy editor on the Japan
Advertiser in Tokyo and the Shanghai
Evening Post in China. He also
worked as a reporter for UP in Manchuria.
He
returned to the United States and joined the Scripps Howard newspaper
group as a
copy editor on The
Indianapolis Times. After a stint as a
courthouse reporter, he moved
to Washington, D.C.,
and The Washington
Daily News, where he rose from police
reporter to telegraph
editor.
Curiously, for an
individual who was
to have such influence
on journalism, this
mid-level slot was his highest position on the
editorial side of newspapers.
And
it was here Howard's career began to diverge from the prescribed path.
"His one
obsession," his father said of Jack, "is not to be Roy
Howard,
Jr." The elder Howard
was uninterested, even hostile to, the burgeoning
new field of radio. The young Howard,
showing a certain stubbornness
and independence, was fascinated.
In
1935, Scripps Howard bought its first radio station, WCPO in
Cincinnati; in 1936,
Howard left Washington to go to work for the
company's second radio
station, KNOX
in Knoxville, Tenn. There, Howard set out to learn the
radio business from the ground
In
1937, Howard moved to New York to become president of the two-station
operation
that, under his aegis, would eventually grow into
a division that now includes nine
television stations. TV station KJRH
in Tulsa carries Jack Howard's initials.
Although
preoccupied with broadcast, Howard did one lasting favor for the
company's
newspaper
division in particular and journalism in general.
In, Roy Howard was
determined
to close a faltering Denver newspaper. Jack Howard
intervened to reverse
that
decision and remade the paper as a tabloid.
Today, the Rocky Mountain News is
Greater
Denver's most-read newspaper
and one of the largest dailies in the
country.
"The tabloid-sized
newspaper in
Denver was a genius move," said Burleigh.
Jack
Howard was
the author of the
tabloid Rocky Mountain News."
Howard served in
the Navy during World War II, spending much
of his time in
Australia.
Later, as a lieutenant and intelligence officer aboard the
destroyer USS
Fletcher for
eight months, he saw action in and around
the Philippines, including the
landings at
Leyte and Lingayen Gulf. He was part of a task force that was
instrumental
in the
capture of an island in the Tokyo Bay area, for which he received a
naval citation.
Later, he
was transferred to the
USS Oakland for what would have been
the invasion of
the Japanese
mainland. In 1945, after the
surrender, he took part in the occupation of
Yokosuka
Naval Base. Howard retired from
the navy as a Lieutenant Commander and
returned to
civilian life in 1946.
That
year, Howard was elected executive vice president of The E.W. Scripps
Company,
the holding company for the newspaper, broadcast and
syndication subsidiaries and UP.
In 1953, Jack succeeded his father,
Roy W., as president, a position he held until his
retirement in 1976.
He helped to found and later
served as president of the Scripps
Howard Foundation, which fosters
excellence in journalism through scholarships and a
nationally
acclaimed
journalism award program. For a time, he
also served as a
successor to The E.W. Scripps Trust.
Even
after his retirement, he remained a director and chairman of the
executive
committee of The E.W. Scripps Company and continued as
president and later chairman
of the board of Scripps Howard Broadcasting Company, which
he had
served as
president since 1937 in its earliest days as
Continental Broadcasting Company.
"He
was very much highly regarded by the people who worked for him," said
Charles E.
Scripps, chairman of The E.W. Scripps Company Executive
Committee. "I could almost
say loved by the people who worked for him."
He was active in numerous charities,
including the Wildlife
Preservation Trust International and the Population Institute of
Washington, D.C.; however,
his primary interest was supporting scholarship students at
his
Phillips Exeter alma mater, for which he'd served as alumni president
and received
the distinguished alumnus award in 1990.
Howard
also was active in his industry's professional associations as a member
of the
American Society of Newspaper Editors, a former board member
of
the American
Newspaper Publishers Association and a former president of
the Inter American Press
Association.
In
1934, Howard married Barbara Balfe of New York City. The couple had two
children, Pamela Howard of New York and Michael Balfe Howard
of Denver,
Colo.
Barbara Howard died in 1962. In 1964, Howard married Eleanor
Sallee Harris, a
free-lance magazine writer who died in October 1997.
Howard had a lively interest in people and events. He prided
himself on knowing his
company intimately. In a typical gesture, he amiably waved
aside a newly hired
reporter's attempt to introduce himself, addressing
the reporter by name and saying
in his
distinct, high-pitched voice,
"Of course, of course, I know who the hell you are."
Much
of his time after his retirement from active management of The E.W.
Scripps
Company was spent involved in local politics of Centre
Island,
N.Y. For more than a
decade, Howard served as town trustee. His son Michael
recalls, "He considered himself
a 'country-style person' and established his legal
residence on Centre Island on the north
shore of Long Island."
If
he had an a vocational passion, it would have been the outdoors in
general and salmon
fishing in particular. He was a founding member and
partner of Le Club Watchichou on
the north shore of Quebec, and had been an ardent
Atlantic fly fisherman virtually all of
his adult life.
Howard's
other great interest was the Bohemian Club of San Francisco. He
attended the
club's summer encampment every year from 1946 to 1992,
until illness forced him to
become an inactive
member. Over the years,
his campmates at Cave Man Camp
included his father
and his son, Lowell
Thomas, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker and Richard
M. Nixon.
Jack
Howard maintained throughout his life a loyalty and fondness for The
E.W. Scripps
Company and members of
the Scripps family. Says Michael
Howard, "In the very best
sense, he was a
company man to the very end."
In
addition to his two children, he leaves seven grandchildren and a
sister, Jane Howard
Perkins.
A
private funeral service was handled by the Frank E. Campbell Funeral
Chapel in
Manhattan.
The
family asks that memorials be directed to the Scripps Howard
Foundation, P.O.
Box 640186,
Cincinnati, OH 45264-0186, or Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main St.,
Exeter, N.H. 03833.
Contact Susan Porter,
The E.W. Scripps Company
513-977-3030
Other links:
 This
Web Page was created by and
is
maintained by Paul
D.Henriott
Last updated 26 March 2006 |
