Frederick Ellsworth Howe (1887-1980); A country man cut from a different mold.
The Ithaca Journal, Aug 2 1980
- Part 1, with photos, one of him as young man and one of the house he built in 1924. on page 3
- Part 2, on page 4
Extract:
=== from Part 1
'He called himself Frederick Ellsworth Howe, but his real name was just Fred. And if heaven's got an award for stubbornness and eccentricity on earth, he's surely an Ithaca contender.
Frederick Ellsworth Howe: A big, hard-working man with a green thumb who in his youth could lift a sledgehammer with a single finger and who could nurse walnuts into trees.
To hundreds of Ithaca school children, he was the eager-to-chat man who chopped wood and gardened in a house surrounded by Ithaca High School athletic fields.
To school administrators, he was a thorn who wouldn't budge, who preferred to keep his house rather than sell to allow the expansion of school property.
Born April 26, 1887, in Peruville. A blue-collar man. Work was a passion. Country and family were his first concerns. Last Saturday, weak and feeble at 93, Howe died at Lakeside Nursing Home.
The blue-gray North Cayuga Street house Howe built in 1924 sits boarded up and silent now.
Probably within a year, the Ithaca school district, its new owners by a five-year-old agreement with Howe, will arrange to have it razed or moved.
Howe, an eighth-generation red-headed American whose ancestors journeyed to the North America from England in 1630, was first approached by the district in the mid-1950s and asked to sell, according to school officials. Yet it wasn't until nearly 20 years later, in 1975, that he sold the house for $35,000, on the condition that he could spend of the rest of his life there.
"He was a rare character," said Kenneth Decker, who worked with Howe for nearly 20 years as a steam fitter at Cornell University. "He came up the hard way, and he did things the hard way. Instead of using jacks and hoists, Fred did it by hand — just as good as everyone else.'
=== From Part 2
'As for the house itself, school officials say they will consider its fate in two or three months. Possibilities include razing it or selling to someone who will move it, said Superintendent of Schools Richard Backer.
"I hope they move it," said Peg. "It's a fine old house, in bad shape now, but those oak floors never creaked."
Frederick Ellsworth Howe: April 26, 1887 - July 26, 1980. Five grandchildren, 12 great-grand-children and many memories. '
Frederick Ellsworth Howe (1887-1980); A country man cut from a different mold. The Ithaca Journal, Aug 2 1980,