Author: Howe Enterprise

Brice Harvey of Dorchester petitioned the City of Howe for a zone change at 904 Maple St from single family to multi-family in order to construct a duplex on the premises. Harvey told the council that the measurements showed the lot to be 85 feet by 125 feet which would allow him to build a 65 foot wide by a 60-foot deep structure which would allow for 1,200 to 1,500 square feet per section of the duplex.

“I’m trying to build nice rental properties in Howe, Texas. It would be my standard of construction,” said Harvey to the council.

There was a discussion at the Planning & Zoning Commission meeting on Monday night with local residents that questioned having renters that are not vested in the community.

“Rent like this would generate or take a little higher-income individual,” said Harvey. “There’s going to have to be pride there or they don’t get to stay.”

A nearby resident of the Maple location asked Harvey if he had other rental properties or if this were his first. Harvey’s response was that he had other rental houses in Howe, but not another duplex. He stated that he hadn’t had any complaints from the city on any of his properties.

“I still think it should be single-family,” said a Maple Street resident.

“Put a nice house on it,” said another neighbor. “I live by a duplex and we people that live in the duplex drive across our yard. We’ve had a lot of trouble and you cannot watch them people. I’ve had rent houses and I’ve had some really bad renters. You don’t know what they’re going to do when you’re gone.”

One resident asked a question directed at no one in particular of how a duplex would enhance property values or parking.

Mayor Jeff Stanley told the audience that the council was there to discuss the zone change and not the particulars of the structure including rent, space, and property values.

“We might as well leave it we’re not going to get to say what we want to say,” said a neighbor.

The mayor stated that 30 letters were sent to neighbors of 904 Maple Street in which five came back in favor of and 13 came back in deny the zone change.

Councilman Bill French made a motion to deny the zone change which was seconded by Sam Haigis. The motion approved unopposed.

Mayor Stanley then went on to the budget item on the council agenda where he stated that the budget would gain approximately $300,000 in revenue than in the 2017-18 budget largely due to new homes in Summit Hill and Howe Estates. He stated that the city is hiring two new employees to help with the overflow workload that has been caused by the growth.

The highlight of the evening was when Mayor Stanley stated that the city was adding $400,000 to the road budget which caused City Administrator Joe Shephard to literally choke up his water. The correct amount was $40,000 as the mayor misspoke. Councilman Haigis did not miss a beat and quickly stated that he approved the slotted road budget.

“We are adding $12,000 to the park budget for repairs to Ferguson Park and we’re giving a five percent increase in pay to the employees,” Mayor Stanley stated.

The Ad Valorem tax has not been determined as of yet. The budget could see a slight increase or decrease depending on the what the tax rate comes in at.

The budget will be posted by August 1 and the first public hearing will be August 21 at the regular meeting which will also be the first tax hearing.

On Friday, the Howe Enterprise learned that Howe Police Chief Matt Whitworth had officially turned in his resignation to the City of Howe in order to take the position of police chief-to-be at Howe ISD. He will first serve as the SSD (safety and security director) as there is a process to be approved to have an ISD police force which is a three to six-month process. In the interim through the process period, Whitworth will have that title instead of police chief until the ISD process has been fulfilled.

Whitworth, a native of Howe and a 1990 Howe High School graduate became the Howe Police Chief in August of 2017. The position came open in July when former Chief Carl Hudman resigned to take a similar position in Alaska.

Whitworth has been in law enforcement for the past 13 years and worked in corrections with the State of Texas prior to that. He started his career with the City of Howe back in 2005 as a reserve and went full-time shortly thereafter. Since leaving the Howe Police Department, he has been at the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office working first in patrol and later in investigations. Whitworth and his wife Lori have three children and seven grandchildren.

Howe ISD Superintendent Kevin Wilson read the following verbiage at Monday’s school board meeting which officially initiated the creation of the Howe ISD Police Force.

WHEREAS, School Safety is a primary concern of the Howe Independent School District; and

WHEREAS, the Howe ISD Board of Trustees believe that school safety and service to the school community will be improved; and

WHEREAS, recent acts of school violence have heightened awareness and the need for a law enforcement presence in the Howe Independent School District; and

WHEREAS, Texas State Law allows for the formation of an ISD Police Department,

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Howe ISD Board of Trustees shall form the Howe ISD Police Department in accordance with state law and the Texas Education Code, and that the primary jurisdiction of the department will be any property within the Howe ISD boundaries and outside the District’s boundaries when the property is owned, leased, or otherwise under the control of the Howe ISD within the state of Texas.

The school board adopted the resolution which was the first step in officially forming the department.

The new chief of police will report to the superintendent.

The board had to amend an item in the current ISD policy which authorizes the officer to carry a weapon on campus.

by Monte Walker

Over the weekend, our family experienced something overwhelmingly emotional. We were introduced to a cousin of ours that we never knew of. Not a distant cousin, but my dad’s first cousin. Without DNA testing, we would have never known that we have a Vietnamese-born cousin from a relationship that took place between an Air Force Sergeant and a Vietnamese med student. This is the story of my grandfather’s brother Eugene Kenneth Walker.

Many years ago, before everything was online including this newspaper and before DNA kits became widely available for purchase, I researched the history of our family and connected some dots. But a certain dot could have never have been connected without the readily available DNA testing that exists today.

As someone who has taken the Ancestry.com DNA test, the first thing it tells you is your “Ethnicity Estimate” which for me is 43 percent Ireland/Scotland/Whales along with 30 percent Scandinavia. There are six other “trace” regions which are Europe West at 15 percent, Europe South (5 percent), Finland/North Russia (4 percent), and Africa North (1 percent).

Another thing the test does is match you with other test-takers and identify them as people that share a certain ancestor and formulate the closeness of the relationship through the DNA strand. The test itself is easy to take – just spitting in a tube. Creating an ethnicity estimate based on your DNA sample is a complex process, however, based on probability, statistics shared DNA, and ongoing research and science. Ancestry.com DNA calculates your ethnicity estimate by comparing your DNA to a reference panel made up of thousands of people. Because reference panels and the way they analyze your DNA both change as we get more data, your ethnicity results can change as they get more data, too.

In our case, the DNA tests have been taken by my wife, mother, dad’s brother, and a couple of their first cousins. Several other close relatives on my paternal-maternal side have taken the test as well.

The DNA Matches page indicates several levels of how a person is related, so in my case, it shows my mother and my son in the category of “Parent/Child.” My dad’s brother shows up under the “Close Family” category. My grandmother’s brother shows up in the “First Cousin” category which is not exactly the exact category, but we get it – he’s very close family but not in the immediate family.

The next group is “Second Cousin” and this category is still full of close family members, just not immediate family members. In the “Third Cousin” category, the matches are groups of that you share an ancestor with, but it’s very likely you don’t know them. It’s this “Third Cousin” group that is a tedious process where the individual wants to try and find out who our shared ancestor is (which is normally a great-great-great-great something. After doing this half a dozen times, unfortunately, those requests get culled due to the time available that I do not possess to look into this research.

Recently, I received an email from someone trying to do just this and I first set aside the email and did not respond as I have been in a bad habit of doing lately. A couple of days later I get an email from my uncle saying he was contacted by this person. I still ignored it. Then I get a Facebook message from another relative who is a historian and I took the time to go back and re-read the first email from the person asking about our relationship connection. I went to my profile for the first time in quite some time and looked at the categories of close relatives, first cousins, and second cousins and BAM – there was her name, “Mo Nguyen Vo” staring me in the face right next to my other cousins that I know very well. I thought to myself, “what in the world? How could this be?”

In her email to me, Mo Nguyen Vo was asking if I had any relatives in Vietnam in the timeframe of 1968 through 1969. My first thought was that my uncle Ken (my Papaw’s youngest brother) was in Korea, but not Vietnam, so I quickly responded with, “I’m sorry, I’m not aware of anyone in our family that fits that criteria.” I then told my mother the story and she informed me that Ken was in fact in Vietnam. I asked her to get his documents and tell me when and where. As it turns out, he was stationed at Phu Cat in March 1968. A year later, he was back in Texas at Goodfellow Air Force Base near San Angelo. But during that year, a relationship took place between Ken and a 31-year-old Vietnamese lady that produced Mo Nguyen Vo.

Mo’s family lived in Cam Ranh during the time of her birth. Her mother worked at an American base in Qui Nhon where she met my uncle Ken. Mo’s older sister told her that my uncle would pick up her mother from school in a Jeep. She learned that her father had left Vietnam shortly after her birth. He had left behind photos, but her mother had to destroy them in case the Viet Cong raided the home again. Since childhood, Mo accepted that she may never know anything more about her biological father. This was the reality for many ‘My Lai” (mixed Vietnamese children) at the time.

After determining that there is a greater than 99 percent chance that my great uncle Ken was, in fact, her father, I had the daunting task of informing her of what I had found. How in the world do you have that conversation? Especially through email to someone who may or may not speak English because all of the communications have actually been made from her daughter.

One would think that it would be a very enlightening information session giving someone the information they’ve been seeking their entire lives. However, there were things that she didn’t know about her newly discovered father. Ken was married to a native Hawaiian in 1953 and remained married until her death in 1991. He was actually married during the time he was in Vietnam. How would this information play with her? I also thought it was appropriate to tell her that her father died in 1994. All of that information had to be extremely difficult and emotional to take in with one email. Being very thoughtful with her emotions, I offered to send photos of Ken that I had and that our family was welcoming and anxious to have more conversations.

In 1991, Mo and her nuclear family immigrated to the US through the AmerAsian sponsorship program. She began her search for her father in the mid-1990s.

Ken was overcome with grief of the death of his wife in 1991 and died in 1994. They had no children together. One might wonder if he had known in 1991 that his biological daughter was in the U.S. that it would have given him something to live for.

But in the end, a 49-year-old English-speaking Vietnamese cousin with her husband Tony and two beautiful daughters Thea and Thanh have entered our family. Over the weekend we were able to meet with her and her family for the first time and let Mo see her biological family for the first time. It was very emotional for her, and for us.

This is not the first time that a story like this has happened. There was the story of Bob Thedford who served in the Vietnam War from March 1968 to March 1969. His son Nhan was born in August 1969 but never knew about him.

More than 3,000 Vietnamese orphans were evacuated from Vietnam in the chaotic final days of the war. The lives of the rest changed with the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987, which allowed 21,000 Amerasians and more than 55,000 family members to settle in the United States.

When the last U.S. military personnel fled Saigon on April 29 and 30, 1975, they left behind a country scarred by war, a people uncertain about their future and thousands of their own children. These children came from liaisons with the laborers who filled sandbags that protected American bases. They are approaching middle age with stories as complicated as the two countries that gave them life. Growing up with the face of the enemy, they were spat on, ridiculed, beaten. They were abandoned, given away to relatives or sold as cheap labor. The families that kept them often had to hide them or shear off their telltale blond or curly locks. Some were sent to re-education or work camps or ended up homeless and living on the streets.

Mo praised her mother for not abandoning her or having her killed like so many others. She praised her mother who has since passed.

Over the weekend, the family drove Mo by her dad’s childhood home on Jefferson Street in Van Alstyne, which has now been torn down with a new home on the lot. She met all of her first cousins and members of her family she never knew existed.

Mo still doesn’t know when she was born. But an ashtray made from a military shell shows engravings with his service time in Vietnam. It brought tears because she now knows her approximate birthday.

On Saturday night, she was presented her father’s American Flag that was used during his funeral and was given all of his medals and military patches from his long and distinguished service career. On Sunday, the family gathered for a feast and had a special moment in a hand-held circle full of prayer and praise. She was given his baby clothes, military documents, and things that he had written. Seeing his handwriting was overwhelming for Mo as emotions were so strong all throughout the weekend.

Mo is a devout Christian and her lifelong prayers were answered. She now has a family of her own.

In a release from Grayson County Commissioner Jeff Whitmire, he states that Ponderosa Road will begin resurfacing immediately.  With a cooperative agreement between the City of Howe, Howe ISD, and Grayson County, Ponderosa Road in front of Howe High School is set to be rebuilt. The work zone is between the State Highway 5 right of way on the west and the railroad right of way on the east.

Beginning Monday morning Grayson County will be grinding up the existing surface, reconditioning the sub-base and adding six inches of new limestone base rock. The road will be closed between 8 am and 5 pm on Monday and Tuesday. There will also be some additional closures on Wednesday and Thursday as the county brings in approximately 60 truckloads of rock. Plan now for alternate routes via Shepherd to the north or FM 902 to the south.

The Annual Community Pep Rally has become a tradition in Howe since 2011 and this year will be extra special.  Not only will all teams be recognized from kindergarten through varsity of each fall sport, but a special tribute to Norman Dickey for his dedication to Howe athletics for over 50 years will take place that evening.  All living Howe Bulldogs Head Football Coaches are invited to participate in an on-field recognition and those already confirmed to be in attendance are Buck Smith, Joey McQueen, Davey DuBose, and Zack Hudson.  The pep rally is scheduled for Saturday evening, August 18 at 7 pm at Bulldog Stadium.

Several Texas high school football programs have had head coaches reunions and Denison stands out as one that continually recognizes their past leaders.  However, never before have the Howe Bulldogs had such a head coaches reunion and the committee is in the process of locating and contacting each former head coach.  Back in 2011 during the first community pep rally, a ceremony took place with players from each decade of the program from the 1930s to the 2010s passing of the torch (a football) from decade to decade.

Norman Dickey was Howe’s 13th head coach when he was hired before the 1964 season.  He coached 12 seasons and still leads all Howe coaches with 51 victories.  During his tenure, the Howe Bulldogs were District, Bi-District, and Regional Champions.  Dickey also served as an interim athletic director on three separate occasions before retiring from the district in 1996.

After his coaching career in Howe, Dickey was often found maintaining Bulldog Stadium, working stats, running the clock, officiating junior high games, and everything between.  He also keeps a ranking for all Howe athletic teams in each major sport and has done so for decades.

The community pep rally allows athletes of all ages to run through the Bulldog tunnel on the field and be introduced to the large home crowd.  A typical community pep rally recognizes cheerleaders from pee wee to varsity, football players from kindergarten to varsity, cross country, band, volleyball, and of course Spike.

Over the years, Coach Steve Simmons has led the chants on the field for a big finale of all athletes together.  The retirement of Simmons has not interfered with tradition as Simmons has confirmed the tradition train will keep rolling by Bulldog Stadium as he will be there with his megaphone.

Little Ernie’s Cafe Food Truck will be on-site with hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dog baskets, and Dippin’ Dots.  All proceeds will be donated to the Howe Athletic Booster Club.

Howe’s newest Head Football Coach Bill Jehling will get a special welcome and greeting from all of the former Howe head coaches in attendance.   All living Howe Bulldogs Head Coaches are invited to be in attendance and be recognized.  The list:

Norman Dickey,1964-75 (confirmed)
Buck Smith, 1980-84 (confirmed)
Jim Fryar, 1985-89 (unable to attend)
Joey McQueen, 1990-92 (confirmed)
Terry Davis, 1993-95
Davey DuBose, 1996-2000 (confirmed)
Larry McFarlin, 2001-02
Woody Martin, 2003-05
Stony Coffman, 2006-09
Cory Crane, 2010
Joe Watson, 2011-12
Zack Hudson, 2013-17 (confirmed)

For more information,  Monte Walker at 1-903-339-0100 or at mwalker@howeenterprise.com

Local photographer Stephanie Halley, who owns Faith & Love Photography, received some great news about a photo shoot that she did recently. After capturing Kambree Boyett, an Oklahoma 7-year-old, in a mermaid photography set, she learned that her pictures are being used in three different magazines. Boyett has a modeling site and her mother had posted the pictures on the site which drew interest from Model Trend Magazine and Child Coulture Magazine, and Elite Beauty Magazine.

The young model gets a lot of help from her mother who promotes her photo shoots and Halley says that there very well could be more of her photographs in more magazines in the near future.

With the high quality of the photographs, Halley says that other photographers have actually stolen hers and used them as advertising for their business.

“I had another photographer message me and let me know,” said Halley. “I had to send them a cease and desist and take my pictures down because they didn’t have permission.”

The mermaid idea came to Halley about a year ago and she’s been purchasing tails a little at a time. She has sizes that range from 12 months to adult extra large. She does her mermaid shoots at Eisenhower State Park because of the rocks and shadows. But while the mermaid shoots have taken a life of their own recently, Faith & Love Photography has a wide variety of photo shoots taken in multiple local locations.

“I’m always scouting new locations and I’m working on a Super Hero shoot right now where she’s going to be Harley Quinn,” said Halley.

Halley says that the mermaid shoots has brought her more business and that she’s doing mother-daughter mermaid photos and even daddy-daughter mermaid photos. Even a local male celebrity has decided to go through with the mermaid shoot, but Halley wouldn’t reveal who it was because it wasn’t officially scheduled and it might ruin the surprise of the photo.

Halley had seen mermaid shoots before but hadn’t seen them in this area so she decided to capture the local market on mermaids.

“I’ve got about six more tails on order,” said Halley. “I want to do this each year so that I can give the girls a great experience. They really light up when they put on a mermaid tail. I just tell them to splash and make the biggest wave they can. It’s not just for little girls, but I’ve had little boys do it too.”

Halley wasn’t expecting the amount of business that she’s been getting from the recent shots and says she’s nearly booked for the entire month of July and have opened up some later spots to accommodate new clients.

Halley says that Boyett is a natural and had made the shoot special due to her lack of fear and willingness to take great shots.

Incoming Howe sophomore Marissa Agee is starting to compile quite the resume for an amateur track athlete. Recently, Agee qualified as part of a relay team to the AAU National Meet to be held in Des Moines, Iowa from July 29 – Aug 4. The 4x800m relay team took the gold medal with the second-fastest time in the nation of 9:53.63 in Abilene, Texas.

This spring, after making it to the area round of track for Howe as a freshman running varsity, she wanted to continue running and competing, therefore, she found a summer team called Team Quest to not only continue competing but improve and enhance her performances. She and her father Brian became interested in Team Quest due to Kelcie and Natalie Simmons, a pair of sisters from Leonard that also went through their program and dominated North Texas in track events.

“We were looking around for more training, then we found summer track and that seemed to be more affordable and lasted all summer,” said Brian Agee. “And then if you improved, you got an invitation to run indoor track.”

Marissa Agee said that she was nervous during her first trip to Team Quest because she knew that she wouldn’t be the fastest girl there. The training is much more difficult than what she’s been used to in high school. She says that she doesn’t particularly like practice running but is driven by competition.

Agee had never run an 800-meter event before going to Team Quest, but placed third in the first race she was in among athletes from all classifications, not just 3A. Because of her outstanding performance in the 800 meters, the distance coach took her and teamed her with other similar runners such as Jamison Gladney, Cassandra Cruz, and Suzanne Ramirez who eventually would combine to run the second-fastest time in the nation. In her freshman varsity year, she was a member of the 4×200 relay and the 4×400 relay but now feels like she’s found her race.

Upon laying claim to the 800-meter race, she’s now working on perfecting that race. As a matter of fact, she placed fifth in the USATF division event in Lancaster which will send her to the Regional 12 Junior Olympic Championships in San Antonio starting tomorrow.

“We just thought we’d run the USATF event as a tune-up and run unattached with no team affiliation,” said Brian Agee. “We went and she got third in the 800-meter individual so we’re going to go to San Antonio and if she does well, she could earn a right to go to the USATF Junior Olympics in North Carolina.”

Agee is currently working out twice per day lifting weights combined with a mile run for breakfast. In the afternoon, she has Team Quest practices where she was running 20-25 miles per week until recently cutting the distance down to work on more speed. Last week she was very close to breaking a 6-minute mile which is quite the accomplishment.

 

“Training at this intensity, she definitely has to have the right vitamin mix, proteins, and has to stay hydrated,” said her father. “It’s really hot – training is difficult in 100-degree weather. She’s drinking Pedialyte and coconut water.”

 

The Howe Lady Bulldogs track team should be highly competitive in 2019 with the return of Agee, Kacie Segleski, Jamie Taylor, and Bethany Masters. Sidney Rector, who was injured late in the season will also return to form a dynamic relay team.

Agee moved to Howe in the summer of 2013 from Anna. She’s currently second in her glass grade-wise and is hoping to become the valedictorian of her class over the next three years. Agee was once awarded the HMS Award for the top student. She’s also the president of the Business Professionals of America.

“I definitely like Howe better,” said Agee. “At first, I was really shy, but I liked it because it’s smaller.”

Her goal is to run track in college and prefers to stay in Texas. Her Chickasaw heritage could help her in that area as well.

Her father said that the reason they even participated in summer track was to improve for next track season so that she can shine as a Howe Bulldog. They’ve already begun talking with the track coaches and requesting to run the 800 meters next season. One Howe coach, Derek Lands, may want to have a discussion with her as she was also a varsity basketball player a year ago and one would think Coach Lands would like for her to not be a one-sport athlete.

“I still plan on playing basketball, but that does kind of go into the indoor track season,” said Agee. “I did like being on the team.”

Basketball is a long way away and Agee is focused on one thing right now and that’s San Antonio followed by Iowa. If she continues her current 800-meter times and improving upon them, she will have a great shot at qualifying for state over the next three years.

“Our goal is next year,” said her father. “We’re going next year.”