In Memory

Howard Laws

Howard Laws

Howard Lee Laws, Jr., 67, of Hubert, NC passed away on Saturday, September 11, 2010 following a courageous battle with cancer.
Born in Wake County on March 4, 1943, he was the son of the late Howard Lee Laws, Sr. and Ruth Huffman Laws.
Howard is survived by his wife, Rebecca Forcum Laws of the home; daughter, Ashton of Fayetteville; son, Stuart of Burlington; granddaughter, Emily; sister, Shirley Moody and husband, Steve of Emerald Isle; and several nieces, nephews and great-nieces.
Memorial services will be held at 2:00 p.m. Sunday, September 26, 2010 at St. Peter’s By-the-Sea Episcopal Church, Swansboro with The Reverend Bert Eaton officiating. A reception will follow the service.
The family requests that memorials be made to SECU Family House at UNC Hospitals, 123 Old Mason Farm Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27517 or to the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society (LLS), c/o Joe Larson, 176 Cobble Brook Drive, Rougemont, NC 27572.




 
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07/27/21 12:34 PM #1    

Charles Styron

Howard knew tragedy in ways that most of us cannot imagine. I remember visiting him at the Wake County Courthouse Jail shortly after he was apprehended for the shooting death of his mother at Christmas time in the 11th Grade (I think). The pain and confusion that he was experiencing was unimaginable, and the situation that had brought him to that point was equally difficult to imagine for most of us. Howard was a bit unpredictable, and it was a significant strength in certain ways and definitely a liability in others. Howard Manning, Esq. was his attorney, and Howard could not possibly have had better representation. I remember sitting in the courtroom one day of his trail along with others, all of us there as possible character witnesses, but I don’t remember that any of us ever took the stand. I can’t remember exactly what happened either, but I do remember that Howard rejoined his classmates again at Broughton before we graduated. 

As with so many other male classmates, my memories of Howard are athletic in nature. The two of us used to return punts on the football team. We would both be deep on defense before the punt, and there was always a plan that Coach Walker (“Killer Clyde”) would decide upon beforehand. Either we would return the punt up the right sideline or the left, and there was an elaborate choreography that would attend each return. If the defensive back on the right side fielded the punt, he would run toward the left sideline, and the defensive back on the left would run toward the right sideline and pass very closely behind him. If the return was planned to go up the left sideline, the right defensive back, if he fielded the punt, would fake a handoff to the left defensive back as he passed behind and proceed to run up the left sideline behind a wall of defensive lineman who had peeled off to block for him while the punt was in the air. If the return was planned for the right sideline, the right defensive back, if he fielded the punt, would pass it off to the left defensive back passing closely behind him, and then fake running up the left sideline himself while the left defensive back actually returned the punt up the right sideline behind the wall of linemen. It sounds complicated, but it was actually fairly simple once the team got the hang of it. At one of our games in the Eastern part of the State—either Goldsboro, Kinston, or Wilson—I was the left defensive back, and Howard was on the right. The return was planned for the left sideline, and the punt came to me. I fielded it, ran toward the right sideline, handed it off to Howard, and continued to fake running the ball up the right sideline myself. I remember getting the daylights knocked out of me by two tacklers even though I was only faking the return. When I got back to my feet, I looked down the field and saw Howard dodging the last defender before going on to score. It was about an 80-yard return, one of a couple of successes that we had that year—always with Howard on the scoring end of the deal. Maybe I was a good faker, but I think it was more that Howard ran with such abandon and physical volatility. He was very hard to bring down in the open field. 

On another occasion in our Senior Year, Howard and I were both running in the mile relay of one of our dual track meets. Howard was running third, and I was the anchor. The mile relay was always the last event in a given track meet, and sometimes the outcome of the meet hinged on which team won. Howard was relatively fast, but as it turned out, he was new to the track team and had never run the quarter mile before—one lap around the track. To the casual observer, the quarter mile looks like a sprint, which it is, but it is a sprint with a difference. The difference is that it is also an endurance race, and one cannot sprint all-out for the full distance. One has to run at a relaxed sprint for about three quarters of the race (330 yards) and then give it whatever one has left down the stretch. This last 110 yards is usually where the measure of any particular lap will be determined. It is critically important to have something left and to be able to finish reasonably strong. Running the relay for the first time, however, Howard knew none of this strategy, and he had never experienced the dreadful anoxia that always accompanies the last part of a quarter mile lap. As a result, when he took the baton at the beginning of the third lap, Howard took off like a shot. He was tearing around the first curve and down the back stretch, leaving everybody far behind. He even kept gaining into the second turn, but as he passed the midpoint of the turn, he “hit the wall.” He still had a quarter of a lap to go, but he didn’t have any gas left in the tank. He was spent. It was painful to watch, but it wasn’t nearly as painful to watch as it must have been for Howard to experience. An athletic uncle of mine had once tricked me into running a quarter mile all-out on the same track and promised me a dollar if I could do it. I must have been about 10 years old. When I got about three quarters of the way around though, I gave out, and I quit, realizing that I had been tricked by my uncle into attempting an impossible feat. Howard, unfortunately, did not have the option of quitting. He had to finish no matter what. The race (and maybe the meet—I don’t remember) depended on it. And finish he did. It was one of the gutsiest performances I have ever seen, and he was almost crawling on all fours when he got to me with the baton. As I said, I don’t remember the results of the race, but I do remember Howard’s iron will. It was an astonishing sight to behold. He never gave up. 

HAIL HOWARD LAWS HAIL


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