Posted by Michael Toler on June 25, 2009:

I really did not know Howard as a cadet. We were in different regiments and I was not on any extracurricular activity with him. But Howard really impressed me with a single act of honor, selflessness, and personal responsibility that still impresses me to this day 39 years later. In 1970, I had a personal wager on the Army Navy football game with a Midshipman whom I had known in high school. Army won the game and my friend owed me a Navy bathrobe. Howard was visiting the Naval Academy shortly after the game for some reason I cannot recall now, but my friend asked him if he would bring me the bathrobe. When Howard returned to West Point, he had a plebe deliver the bathrobe, who must have taken it to my company orderly room and left it with instructions that it was to be given to me. Some other cadet in my company apparently took the bathrobe without me ever knowing it had been sent or delivered. Several months went by and I reminded my midshipman friend of his debt in a letter. He in turn informed me that he had given it to Howard for delivery to me some months before that. So I looked up Howard's company and called him on the phone; Howard told me what he had done and was surprised that I had never received the bathrobe. I was not angry, just disappointed, and Howard sensed that. A few days later, Howard paid a personal visit to my company barracks and found me in my room. He gave me a new Naval Academy bathrobe still in the original package that had "Cadet Howard Smith" stamped in the collar. I told him it was alright, that he did not need to give me his own bathrobe, which I was sure he also had obtained only through a wager with midshipmen and may never get a chance to have another one. But he insisted, saying he was honor-bound to give me the robe, since it was his responsibility to have properly delivered it to me instead of telling someone else to do it the first time. I still have and wear that Navy bathrobe with Howard's name proudly displayed in the collar. That was the kind of person that Howard was. Years later, at each reunion, I took the time to look up Howard and to remind and thank him, and talk with him about his life and family. He was a fine man and good classmate, very proud to have been a member of the Class of '72 and representative of the Academy. Be thou at peace. Well done, Howard.

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