Kenneth Howe

Kenneth Howe started every day by reading the obituaries in the newspaper. For the four decades he spent working as an agent for Nationwide Insurance, he said it was to check and see if any of his customers had passed away. For the two and a half decades after he retired, he said it was to make sure he wasn’t in there. At 91 years old, it’s finally his time.

Ken Howe of Middletown, Delaware, passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 23rd at Christiana Care Hospital in Newark, Delaware, after a short illness. He was born March 14, 1933 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania to Bessie and Russell Howe. He was the eighth of nine children. Ken was preceded in death as he said “by just about everybody” he knew, including his parents, his brothers Don, Russ, Bob and Dick and his sisters Betty Sweeney, Mary Knight, Ann English and Dot Gavetti.

Ken leaves behind his wife Patricia (Gifford) Howe, his daughters Kathie Howe, Kendra Langlinais (Kort), Kathryn Collison (Jim Shepherd) and sons Donald “Tim” Howe and Joe Collison (Amy), along with three beloved granddaughters: Jennifer Adams (Jamie), Lauren Collison and Rachel Collison, a grandson Jack Langlinais, two great-grandchildren, Katie and Zachary Adams and scores of nieces and nephews, including Jack Knight, who Ken thought was actually his brother for the early part of his life.

Ken served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, enlisting to fight in the Korean War at 17 years old. He was awarded the Bronze Star for heroic service after going back to rescue a fellow Marine who was injured on the battlefield.

After coming home from Korea, Ken spent several years working as a Meat Cutter at Acme grocery store, and somehow managed to keep all his fingers. After starting a family, Ken literally hit the streets to drum up business for his new career as an agent for Nationwide Insurance. His oldest daughter Kathie remembers people knocking on the door of the family house at all hours to tell Ken they’d been in an accident or bought a new car.

Ken was quite a clothes horse from early on, with a closet full of garments in his younger days that would rival any woman’s collection. He eschewed the common barber shop, opting instead for high-class haircuts at his favorite salon. He had a full head of hair that was the envy of many a shaved-head young relative, and he even asked his daughter to brush it on the day he passed. Ken loved to look good and smell good; he started wearing Ralph Lauren’s Polo cologne when it hit the market in 1978, and never stopped. It became an enduring part of who he was. His daughters all had the experience of dating a new guy and snuggling their necks only to pull back in horror, saying, “Oh my god, you smell like my Dad, you have to switch from Polo cologne!”

Ken was an avid sailor and owned a sailboat for most of his adult life. The last one was aptly named “My Way”, because as anyone who knew him will tell you, it was Ken’s way or bust on just about anything. He would scoff at people who only sailed in nice weather or spent their time just sitting in the marina. From late March until early November of every year, he would drag his wife and sometimes other family members out onto the waters of the Chesapeake Bay every single weekend. He missed more than a few weddings and other celebrations because it was a boat weekend. He loved spending all of his free time cruising on the Bay with Pat and their sailing friends. Whenever any of his children brought pals aboard for the weekend, they were warned they were about to enter “Captain Bligh’s School of Sailing”, in which never having stepped aboard a boat was no excuse for not knowing the difference between a sheet, a line and a rope. After retiring, Ken joined some friends on a mission to bring a rich guy’s sailboat down from New Jersey to Bermuda. This was way before cell phones, so it was no surprise to not hear from them for several days. It was a surprise however when they finally made land to hear that they’d been stuck in a near-hurricane with 15-foot seas and at several points thought they were never going to make it back to shore.

Ken had a love for U.S. history and dragged his family all around the eastern United States on a decades-long tour of Civil War battlefields. He loved to watch old movies, and would pause his eternal channel surfing any time there was a black-and-white war movie on any channel. His favorite holiday tradition was watching “A Christmas Story” when it aired on TBS, saying it reminded him of his own childhood. A daughter gave him a VHS copy when it first came out, but he refused to watch it that way, saying it only counted if he caught it on TV. We’ll make sure to tune in this year for sure, Dad.

Ken had a lot of love for his family, but he was never overly-emotional with anyone in his life. To the untrained eye, he could seem somewhat harsh. He regularly admonished his children who complained of pedestrian illnesses that they were not sick unless they were “bleeding out of their belly buttons” and that “kids don’t get headaches, they only give them.”  When asked to pull over to get a drink during lengthy car rides, he would instruct his daughter to “swallow her own spit.” But he had a soft side that showed through as well. He taught his youngest daughter how to drive a stick shift with a previously-unseen level of patience and shed a tear when she moved out of the house, even though she only relocated a few miles away. Ken always made sure the kids were taking care of their finances, regularly reminding his children to make sure they paid enough taxes and that they had good insurance.

For almost his entire life, Ken was vehemently anti-pet. When he moved in with his wife Pat, her family had two dogs and a cat. Within a few months, they had all found new homes. Luckily, the children were allowed to stay. Despite the continual and ongoing pleadings of his children and wife over the ensuing years, Ken refused to allow a dog or cat to live in the house. That lasted until the early days of the Covid epidemic, when his youngest daughter fostered a scrappy and wild-looking little dog named Nacho, who she thought was just what Ken and Pat needed as they were going stir crazy in lockdown.  Ken finally agreed to welcome this 15-pound terrier mix into the house, saying he was making the concession “for Pat.” The four-legged addition changed everything, quickly morphing from a tolerated distraction into an adored child. There has perhaps never been a greater love than that of Ken for Nacho. Conversations with his human children shifted from matters of meteorology and gas prices to that of a dog’s daily life. There was an unending stream of questions about what he should do to make this animal happy, from feeding him specially-roasted chicken to taking him for long walks in the cold snowy weather. Nacho turned Ken from a regular guy to a towering marshmallow of love. He ended any Nacho story by cooing, “he’s such a good boy.” The family often teased that Ken loved Nacho more than any of his human relatives, but it wasn’t entirely a joke. Nacho was quite probably the ultimate love of Ken’s life.

The family would like to thank the incredible medical staff of Unit 4C at Christiana Care for their compassionate and attentive service to Ken in his final days, and to send gratitude to the staff of Cadia Rehabilitation Broadmeadow in Middletown for the excellent care they took of him in between hospital stays when we had hoped he’d be going home again.

Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you honor Ken’s lifelong request to “send me flowers when I’m alive, don’t waste them on me after I’m dead”, and send or take a bouquet to someone you love. Or adopt a dog who may just change your whole life.