First Posted: 3/2/2015
LIMA — “Is the flapper girl the most popular type? Do men and boys still prefer the girl ‘like married dad?’ Which, the drugstore cowboy or the boy with ambition, does the girl of today ‘fall’ for permanently? And if the morals of the sheik and the young flappers are ‘kiboshed’ by society, what then are the correct standards?”
Students of Central and South high schools waded into those age-old questions couched in the slang of 1927 at an open forum led by Central teacher Gayle Howey, The Lima News reported Feb. 27, 1927. From flappers to flower children, Miss Howey would lead Central students for more than 40 years before retiring in 1968.
She was one of six daughters of the Rev. Mathias Cowen Howey and Rebecca Snyder Howey as Rev. Howey served Methodist Episcopal Church congregations in northwest Ohio. In his wanderings over four decades as a pastor, Rev. Howey, who was born in 1858 in Hardin County, would serve, among many, congregations in Findlay, Middle Point, Spencerville, Columbus Grove and at Lima’s Epworth church.
Of the six daughters — Carey Luecil, Clara Blanche, Harriet Mae, Mary Elizabeth, Ruth Leo and Gayle Howard — two, Harriet and Gayle, would maintain close ties to Lima, where Rev. Howey’s widow would settle after his death in 1924 and stay until her own death at 92 in 1956. The homes on West North Street and later West Market Street, which the widow Howey shared with Gayle, became the focal point of the family.
The Howeys’ oldest daughter, Carey, born in 1885, died in 1909 at a tuberculosis hospital in Toledo. Clara, born in 1887, married Charles E. Palmer in 1911. She died in 1942. Mary Elizabeth, born the day after Christmas in 1891, would become first a teacher, and later work at various YWCAs in Ohio and elsewhere. Ruth, born in 1892, married Raymond F. Lowry in 1919 and traveled with him to do missionary work in China. She died in 1996, the last surviving Howey sister.
Harriet, like all the sisters a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, was born in 1888, would become a missionary in Japan, a world traveler, a school administrator and frequent speaker in Lima. She died at 100 years of age in 1989. Gayle was the youngest, born in 1897 in Findlay where her father was then leading a congregation. Her middle name, Howard, was taken from the name of Rev. Howey’s church in Findlay.
By Jan. 2, 1913, the Howey family had arrived in Lima, where, according to the News, Rev. Howey spoke to nearly 200 “newsboys of the city, when their annual dinner and entertainment was held last evening at the Salvation Army barracks.” Rev. Howey, the News noted, “left a splendid impression in the minds of the boys.”
Rev. Howey employed the vocal talents of his daughters to reach a wider audience May 15, 1916, according to the Lima Times-Democrat. “The preacher and singers will use a motor car from which to proclaim the gospel, the same to be parked in front of Hughes jewelry store in the square,” the newspaper wrote. “Mrs. (Clara) Blanche Howey Palmer, Misses Harriet, Mary and Ruth Howey, composing the Howey Sisters’ quartette, will aid their father in providing delightful music …”
Harriet Howey had returned to Lima at the end of April 1916 after teaching in the Dola schools. The school year in the Hardin County village ended on a tragic note as one of her students was killed when a switch engine on the Pennsylvania Railroad ran over his horse and buggy. “He was an unusually bright child, and a favorite with his teacher, who arrived home last night saddened by the happening,” the Times-Democrat reported April 26, 1916.
Supported by Trinity Methodist Church, Harriet Howey left in mid-October 1916 for missionary work in Japan, where she would spend most of the next two decades.
Nineteen sixteen was a year of departures for the family. On Sept. 8 the Times-Democrat wrote, “The misses Ruth and Gail (sic) Howey left today for Delaware, where they will attend college at Ohio Wesleyan University this year.” And, on Sept. 11, the Times-Democrat reported Rev. Howey had been assigned to the Clifton Avenue Methodist Church in Springfield.
Rev. Howey died Feb. 24, 1924, at his home in St. Paris. “Surviving him are a widow and five daughters,” the Allen County Republican Gazette noted, “one of whom, Harriet Howey is a missionary in Japan, sent there by the Trinity Methodist Church of Lima. Another is a missionary in China.”
On June 11, 1924, the News reported Gayle Howey had been appointed a teacher in the Lima schools. By February 1925, she was involved with the Central High School debate team while finding time to sing at various venues in Lima. In the summer of 1927, Gayle Howey accompanied the Ohio Wesleyan glee club on a six-week trip through Europe.
Mary Howey would join her sister Harriet in Japan in 1927 for a two-year stint teaching in Tokyo. Meanwhile, on May 22, 1928, Gayle Howey was elected vice president of the Lima Teachers Association. Mary and Harriet returned to Lima in the summer of 1929. In August, Mary Howey returned to her work with the YWCA in New Britain, Connecticut.
Harriet Howey would spend her furlough time speaking about Japan to interested Lima audiences. On June 12, 1930, she spoke at a homecoming celebration at Epworth. “When I went to Japan as a missionary more than 10 years ago it was difficult for a Japanese girl to receive even a common school education,” she said. But after “inculcating the western idea of womanhood and now even college education for women is popular.” Harriet Howey returned to Japan in September 1931 and “while at Karuizawa (Japan), she met Col. and Mrs. Charles E. Lindbergh and attended a reception in their honor,” the New wrote Sept. 18, 1931.
Gayle Howey visited her sister in Japan in 1937 and both returned to Lima that September. With tensions rising as World War II loomed, Harriet Howey would not return to Japan after her furlough ended. On Sept. 28, 1938, the News reported that “Miss Harriet Howey, 842 W. North St., left this week for New York City, to attend Columbia University.”
On April 5, 1940, Gayle Howey was elected president of the Lima Teachers’ association while, on May 14, 1942, Harriet Howey left to become dean of women at Chevy Chase college in Washington, D.C. By May of 1943, Gayle Howey was dean of girls at Central.
When Central and South high schools were merged to form Lima Senior High School in 1955, Gayle Howey became dean of girls at Central Junior High School.
In 1960, Harriet Howey went on a five-month world tour, which included a visit to the mission school where she taught in Japan more than two decades earlier, visiting many of her former students. “It was a wonderful privilege to see them again,” she told the Lima Citizen Dec. 20, 1960. “Although they remembered me, I had a little trouble recalling them until I asked their maiden names.”
After 44 years at Central, Gayle Howey retired at the end of the 1968 school year. “I don’t know exactly what I’ll do,” she told the News on June 2, 1968. “Maybe, travel. For sure, I don’t want to sit.”
