Alicia Dawn Howard-Starks, 38, said she’s dealing with the loss of her father and brother one day at a time.
“I was raised to be a strong person so I can’t sit around and feel sorry for myself,” she said Thursday afternoon. “I have to help take care of his wife, kids and my kids.”
D.D. Howard, a 1985 MHS graduate, hadn’t completed all the paperwork from his father’s death when he died from pneumonia Tuesday morning at Miami Valley Hospital.
He was 44.
As one of his close friends, Gary Beatty, asked: “Why does it seem the good ones always die young?”
Howard’s death shocked his family and friends.
Al Milton, a 1984 MHS graduate, said he was texting Howard as they often did — debating whether the MHS Class of ’84 was better than the Class of ’85 — for a couple of days before he realized Howard was hospitalized.
He said they were organizing a basketball game to “finally put it to rest who was the best class.”
That game now will have to be in Howard’s memory.
Milton said Howard possessed two demeanors — the fierce football competitor and the teddy bear-like personality off the field.
“When it came to football, he was mean and he wanted to win,” said Milton, who quarterbacked the Middies in the early 1980s. “He loved being a Middie and he never denied that.”
Milton, who admits he talks a lot, was “speechless” when told of Howard’s death.
“The world is a sadder place because we have lost a good man, a father, a coach,” Howard said. “I kept waiting for the call that it wasn’t true.”
After high school, Howard earned a football scholarship to Ohio State, where he graduated in 1990. He also earned his master’s degree in counseling from University of Dayton. He worked at the Nicholas Residential Treatment Center in Dayton where he was promoted to superintendent.
While he lived in Dayton, Howard never forgot his roots. He coached the Little Buckeyes, an all-star team of players from the Middletown youth football program.
Howard was the team’s coach and its biggest fund raiser. When a player said his family couldn’t afford the $75 registration, he never turned them away.
Instead, he instructed Beatty: “Get that baby a helmet, get them a football uniform.”
Beatty said: “They were all his babies. They flocked to him.”
Beatty said the Little Buckeyes dominated the local leagues and won the Turkey Bowl in Gatlinburg, Tenn., and the Rocky Hill Classic in Knoxville, Tenn.
He said several players on this year’s MHS team that went undefeated and advanced to the playoffs, played for the Little Buckeyes and benefited from Howard’s coaching and guidance.
The Little Buckeyes were more than champions.
“We were like a family,” Beatty said. “That’s the way he (D.D.) wanted it.”
Beatty, owner of All About Cutz on South Main Street, and Howard had talked about getting their “health together” by losing weight and lowering their blood pressure, he said.
Howard is survived by his wife, Nhyere, and two young children: Deyon and Danae Howard. Visitation and funeral services will be Saturday in Dayton.
Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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