He’s spent decades as a college professor, been an eighth-grade football coach, a college punter and, just this summer, had a documentary film released on his life.
And yet in an hourlong conversation from his Santa Fe home Friday, Dean Howell didn’t really discuss any of that too much. Most of it he never mentioned.
Instead he talked about Stivers High School – his alma mater and the school that will induct him and 13 others into its Athletic Hall of Fame on Sunday at a luncheon emceed by Don Donoher and Bill Hosket.
It’s safe to say none of the other enshrinees is more eccentric, provoking or passionate than the 72-year-old Howell.
“This is a real honor, of course, because I identify with Stivers so much. The school is in my blood,” he said. “But I also have some real mixed emotions. I’ve changed a lot from high school. My thinking now is I don’t always want to be No. 1. I have a bit of a psychological conflict with badges and trophies and being singled out for distinction.
“Today, too many people want to be the most beautiful, the strongest, the wealthiest. But is that what we’re really living for? When I played football or ran track – same as when I do my art now – the sheer art of just doing it is what made my day.
“That’s what I’ve been teaching all these years. So that’s where some of my conflict comes now.
“And yet, with that said, I am one of the proudest guys in the world to come back to Stivers. It was very pivotal in my life. It’s the place where I started to come alive.”
He said he was not just talking about sports, but with academics, in social issues and in realizing the possibilities in life:
“Stivers High is where I came out of oblivion.”
Star QB, sprinter
Like so many who ended up in east Dayton back in the 1950s – especially the neighborhood around Stivers – Howell was born and initially raised in Kentucky.
“We came from Prestonburg in Floyd County,” Howell said. “That’s eastern Kentucky. My father was a coal miner.
“I remember when I was a little boy – maybe just 4 or 5 – I was always waiting for my dad to get home from the mine so I could toss the football with him. I also couldn’t wait to show him the things I’d made during the day.
“He used to bring home rusted, crooked nails from the mine. I’d straighten them and then pound them into old two-by-fours or any pieces of wood I could find. I’d nail them together and make things.”
Like with sports, that’s where the seeds of his artwork were first sewn. The family then moved to Virginia when he was in seventh grade and two years later to Richards Street, a couple of blocks from Stivers.
He would go on to become a star sprinter for the Tigers track team and a three-year football letterman as a strong-armed quarterback, punter, running back and tight end.
By the time he graduated in 1959 he said he was also socially aware enough that he questioned certain issues of racial divide, class consciousness and authoritarian rule.
He walked onto coach John Pont’s Miami University football team, punted for a season and then quit the team and, for a while, even the school.
He got a job working with kids at a city park. It was there that he ended up building a float for a neighborhood parade and in the process having an epiphany of sorts: “When I finished I realized I had had a ball and thought maybe that’s what I should be doing. I was making things the same way I did when I was 4 and 5 years old.
“And then I couldn’t get back to Miami fast enough. I begged to get into the art department, even though I had no training. They asked for a portfolio and I didn’t even know what the word meant.”
He was persistent in his requests and finally was admitted thanks to a benevolent administrator. “As soon as I was accepted, I went to the student union and bought $47.37 worth of art materials,” he laughed. “I didn’t even know what the stuff was. I just liked how it looked.”
He ended up earning a doctorate in sculpture, psychology and art education and – after teaching and coaching briefly at Mad River Junior High – he began a career that took him to instructional posts at Sinclair Community College, the University of Dayton, the Dayton Art Institute and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Eventually he moved to New York City, where among his many artistic ventures, his sculptures became part of several major exhibits.
Love for Stivers
Over the years he returned to Dayton, most notably in the early 1990s to what had become Stivers School for the Arts. There he became the artist-in residence and wrote, produced and directed a six-month, much-acclaimed experimental curriculum based on creativity.
Sunday, when inducted, he said he will read three poems that will both show his appreciation and his point of view, hopefully without ruffling any feathers.
“The bottom line is that I love Stivers very much for all it’s done for me,” he said. “I appreciate the way it opened my eyes and helped open up the world to me.”
After the enshrinement, he’ll return to Santa Fe, where early next month he launches his annual show for artists who, he said, haven’t been able to do what they’ve wanted because of a lack of money, permission from their gallery or because their work may be too controversial.
“I tell them just do what you’d like to do and we’ll find a way to show it,” he said. “We’ll find the way to get it out there.”
That goes back to the lessons he originally learned at his alma mater, the school where he came alive, the school where he learned about the possibilities of life.
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