Letter to the Editor / Howell remembered as sage and funny writer

Dear Editor:

KonkLife’s beautifully poignant salute to Mark Howell — the Key West writer, editor, and raconteur who passed away on March 31 — perfectly expressed Mark’s personality and the wonderful ease with which he related to people from all walks of life.

I doubt there’s anyone who knew Mark in Key West or elsewhere who doesn’t feel a personal connection to, and affection for, this literary and humorous man. That especially includes budding (and accomplished) writers, sculptors, water color painters, scrimshaw designers, playwrights, and other artists he interviewed and wrote about in KonkLife, Solares Hill, The Key West Citizen, and other publications.

His mind always sought new angles from which to examine an artistic or political or social proposition; the joy of being around him was seeing his glee in finding that aspect. He had compassion for others, too, perhaps born from family tragedy when a young niece disappeared in the United Kingdom, which police (and Mark) believed was the work of a serial killer. Mark expressed the family’s consternation and loss in a documentary interview on that unsolved case.

As local news reporting requires, Mark wrote sagely about nearly every aspect of Key West: its leaders, homeless citizens, restaurant owners, musicians, female impersonators (this is Key West thank you very much); ship’s captains, dancers — the individuals who make this city whole. He also covered politics, environmental issues and other timely subjects in the Southernmost City, ensuring a voice for the least of us while calling out misdirected public policy.

His real genius was in his word choice in conversation and ultimately, writing. Here he is, telling interviewer Lisa Sanders about coming to America for the first time.

“It was 1964 … and most young Englishmen before they went to university would want to come to America and I was one of those people,” Mark says. “We came across aboard the SS United States, an enormously wonderful boat, may be in the knacker’s yard now, but in its day, it was a record-breaking liner across the Atlantic. You’d rise in your bunk as you wake through the bay of Biscay, and crash down,” Mark says, laughing. “It was an extraordinary experience, really lovely.”

His choice of ‘knacker’s yard’ is genius. A knacker’s yard is the part of a slaughter house where carcasses are rendered into hides and other useable parts. This is just one example of an extraordinary man’s ability to snap the pieces of a great sentence together on the fly.

A bachelor’s and master’s degree in literature from Cambridge University, as well as top editing jobs at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Pyramid Books and other New York publishers, honed Mark’s writing skills in the years before he came to Key West. A former publishing colleague of Mark’s in New York, Laurence James, said this about Mark:

“And that was Mark Howell. And we were very good together, we were really good. We were publishing 200-odd paperbacks, 60 to 80 hardbacks monthly and we had no freelancers at all, absolutely none. We did all our own editing, we did our own proofreading, we wrote the jacket copy for all those books, just the two of us.”

Shirrel Rhoades, publisher of Absolutely Amazing eBooks in Key West, released two books on the JFK assassination by Mark and Tim Gratz. In fact, the two found evidence in the Warren Commission report that ties people and events in Key West with the assassination. Rhoades also published a third book by Mark titled Like A Rolling Stone, a fictionized story of his crossing America while passing himself off as a member of the famous British rock ‘n rollers.

“It was in Key West in the 1980s, joining the world of Solares Hill newspaper with David Ethridge at the helm, that Mark Howell would win numerous awards from the Florida Press Club,” Rhoades writes. “Among the winning entries was his weekly must-read column ‘Soundings.’ He was a weekly lunch companion whose conversations are dear to my heart. I will miss having Mark’s friendship and humor in my life.”

Randy Becker, who served on the Bahama Village Redevelopment Advisory Committee, the Truman Waterfront Advisory Board and was president of the Interfaith Ministerial Alliance, was a subject in Mark’s articles over the years. He was part of a weekly lunch gang where Howell and other like-minded gentlemen ate lunch and discussed local matters.

“When I first came to this island, he was a great help in connecting and figuring out the lay of the social land,” Becker says. “His great wit gave troubles pause and his wisdom put fools in their place — all with an accent that made English sound so good. His vision from atop Solares Hill elevated all of the Conch Republic. Journey on, friend.”

— John Guerra

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