Category: Howe News Bulletin

Codie Brinlee’s says she’s been called by God to travel to Moldova to help prevent human trafficking by sharing His word. The small country in between Ukrane and Romania is being helped through pumpkins sales of a local store and through New Beginning Fellowship where she is currently the youth leader.

Salvage Junky of Howe is donating a portion of the sales of all of the pumpkins located on the premises. Owner Debbie Wallis says that the pumpkins are grown on a Navaho Indian Reservation in New Mexico.

“It’s a job creator for them and a percentage of the sales goes to them.” says Wallis. “The rest of it goes to Codie and the rest is cost-covering. It’s a act of love from our family to her. Everybody in our family is working it for her.”

Brinlee says that she’ll leave in the fall of 2016 and stay there for a year and come back for a few months. If there are more funds available for her to return, she wants to do that.

“When I started seeking His will for my life, He just put this in front of me and I just started praying for people that are affected by human trafficking and interceding for them.” said Brinlee.

The North Texas Assembly of God is also supporting her cause as she will be traveling to other churches and talking about her mission in hopes that each church will support her in her cause.

Brinlee grew up in Howe and attended Howe schools from kindergarten through her graduating HHS class of 2007. She is the daughter of Ricky and Sherry Brinlee, who are also Howe graduates. After high school Codie Brinlee moved to Huntsville and Conroe, Texas to attend college and then returned to Howe.  After completing nursing school, she’s now employed as such.

Brinlee says that they are unable to share the Gospel on college campuses, but will be reaching out to college-aged students through fellowship and offering various classes at a local coffee shop.

If you feel led to donate, please make checks payable to mail to: New Beginning Fellowship, Note: Codie Brinlee, P.O. Box 295, Howe, Texas, 75459. For online donations, go to www.nbfhowe.com Note: Codie Missions.

An announcement was made on Tuesday at the Commissioner’s Court that will honor the late Chad Key with the naming of a portion of US 82 in Sherman after him. Key was killed by drunk driver, Ricky Trent Stanley, Jr. on the night of April 20, 2013 on the particular portion of the highway that will now be named in his honor.

The portion named for him will be from Junction Road to Bethany Road on US 82 . About a year ago, Key’s widowed wife April said something her my mother and Lt. Ricky Wheeler at the Sheriffs Office that she wished they could name part of the highway after her late husband, since that’s where he was killed at. According to April Key, for the last year, Lt. Wheeler long with her month, the Grayson County Sheriffs office and Senator Larry Phillips were working on it.

“It was kept a surprise and I received a call last Thursday night that the County Commissioners were going to vote on it this morning.” April Key said on Tuesday. “So I was there this morning and it was a unanimous vote yes.”

Now TxDOT will make the signs and there will be an unveiling and dedication at a date to be determined.

“On behalf of me, our boys and the family, we are so honored and grateful that Chad is remembered everyday by so many people, and that he is being honored in such a huge way by naming part of Highway 82 after him.” April Key said in a released statement. “Thank you to everyone involved in making this happen, especially to Grayson County Sheriffs Office and Senator Larry Phillips.”

Stanley was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the felony murder, and 42 years for the first degree aggravated assault causing serious bodily harm to a public servant charge, along with fines totaling $20,000.

In April of this year, a 5K run at Loy Lake Park in which over 550 registered to run to benefit the scholarship fund in the name of Key. The run not only benefited the Chad Key Memorial Scholarship Fund, but also will benefit the Grayson County Police Academy and the Austin State Memorial for Fallen Officers. Half of the proceeds go to the scholarship fund and half will go to the memorial.

The event raised over $12,000 and is planned to be a annual event.

In irony of irony fashion, a young man with the last name of Key finished first in the race. Kasey Key of Denison.

The Howe High School Marching Band, who has over the years become known as “The Pride of Howe,” went to Ponder on Saturday to compete with 12 other bands in the preliminaries. After their pre-lim performance, they sat as first place overall and and named best auxiliary and best drum major.

After the pre-lims were finished, they took six bands to the finals. Howe competed with Bridgeport, Decatur, Graham, Callisburg and Sanger, all of which are larger schools. None of that mattered as Howe received first place after the Saturday night performance.

Howe is no stranger to band domination. The program has been state champions in 1980, 1995 and 1997. This type of result could give the program the confidence to become Howe’s fourth state champion.

“We won this competition and we were very proud and excited to except the award but we accept it with humility.” said Ashlyn Ellis, captain of the color guard. “We all feel very good about this year and this competition just goes to show us that hard work pays off. I believe that we have what it takes, we just need to continue on the path we have stared and finish it strong.”

Band Director Angie Liss dodged the question of whether or not this band was capable of winning state, however she is quite confident in her performers. “I’m extremely proud of how hard the kids are working and each performance is better than the one before. We all really love this show so we’re having fun and learning so much as we tweak and fine tune all aspects of it. Our football crowd doesn’t get to see it with all the props and bells and whistles since we only pull those out on turf fields but we’re proud of the concept we’ve put together and anxious to see where we can go with it.”

Award winning Drum Major Jessica Doty said, “A performance like this weekend definitely gives you confidence going into future competition especially with UIL starting this week. A great run this weekend was definitely needed as a confidence booster for everyone. We know we need to continue to work even harder to clean our show but this weekend shows how capable our band is of achieving our goals and succeeding this year.”

Great things could be in store in 2015 as the band keeps progressing each week. The Pride of Howe showed why on Saturday.

Mrs. Rebecca Luna is pleased to announce the successful completion of lease negotiations with Ben E. Keith Company for her property located at 701 W. Haning St. The property will be used as a Shuttle Depot for their food service division and will provide a strategic and logistically advantageous site for servicing the US-75 corridor and rapidly growing area of North Texas.

“No warehousing, nor inbound freight handling will occur”, according to Mark Mullins, Ben E. Keith Co. Director of Transportation DFW. In addition, Mullins stated, “we would hire resident Class A CDL drivers in the area to run our existing routes as well as focus on expanding our service in the area with new customers and expected growth in the area. A real potential of employment for 2-20 qualified people in the first year of our residency is our expectation.”

“Ben E. Keith Co. is a familiar and highly respected name in the food and beverage distribution industry.” said Luna. “I am extremely pleased that I was in a position to compromise my investment strategy so that a mutually agreeable lease could be finalized. Not only will Ben E. Keith Co. bring new employment opportunities to the community, but they are very well known in other areas for their contribution to and civic involvement in the communities they serve. Please make them welcome.”

Oct 1 – At approx 6:30 am, Officer Jamie Morris arrested a 56-year-old Arlington man for DWI. The arrest was the result of officers responding to a two vehicle accident in the 1400 block of N Collins Freeway. The suspect was the driver of one of the vehicles involved in the accident and found to be at fault. Officers smelled the odor of alcohol on the suspect and the man subsequently failed a sobriety test. He was taken to a nearby hospital for a blood draw, which resulted in a final trip to the Grayson County Jail.