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| Last of the Trojans "Fab Four' is gone |
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7/25/2014
By Dan Manley
Advocate Sports Editor
The real story would fill a few volumes.
The short glimpses of a bygone era that you read here can’t possibly do justice to Rezin Howell who died last week.
Howell was a local treasure.
Rezin was in the seventh grade, having passed through Miss Pearl’s school, as it was known, to move on to Mt. Sterling High School, when he teamed up with three guys named Woody Fritts, Coco Jackson and Walter Johnson. They would become, under the direction of legendary Bain “Tiny” Jones, along with some of their classmates, perhaps the greatest basketball team in the history of Montgomery County. A team that reached the Kentucky State High School Basketball Tournament in back-to-back years and in 1943, when they compiled a 27-3 record and finished third in the state.
In 1942, the late Lexington attorney Harry Miller along with Dick French and David McFadden joined those four as the starting quintet for the Trojans and then in 1943 Orville “Bull” Wills was the fifth guy. There were others who certainly need mentioning, like Marvin Blevins, Tommy Breeze, Donald Stone and Lum Lockridge. But Rezin and Woody, Coco and Walter, were the “four horsemen” so to speak. They took great pride in their teamwork, something they always mentioned when talking about those years. Right up to the end, Rezin was always looking out for that team that played together. That played as those Trojans of old learned to play the game.
Howell, Wills, Johnson and Fritts also made up the starting backfield on the 1942 football team that went 5-2, losing only to Irvine and Henry Clay and beating Winchester’s 11 by a score of 50-7.
Although Tiny wasn’t much of one to brag on his players, he called the backfield that year the best in school history.
The two losses came early in the year and by the end of the season the Trojans were so dominant that Tiny said he felt they may have been as good as any team in the country.
The irony of the story, and there always seems to be a bit of irony, rests with Walter Johnson. The gifted guard who started at UK during his freshman season and then was called off to WWII, died on the USS Indianapolis 70 years before the last of his comrades, Rezin Howell, would take his curtain call.
Although his job didn’t place him directly in harm’s way, merely being on the islands of Okinawa and Saipan placed Howell in peril. But it was Johnson, aboard one of America’s mightiest vessels, that went down with the ship under enemy fire.
Out of the service, Howell came back to Montgomery County, married a lovely lady named Sara Mae and settled down to raise their three children, to became a remarkable farmer, and to live a rich and full life, filled with friends too numerous to mention.
Rezin Howell was a hard-working farmer. One who grew up during the depression and who was often the brunt of a joke over his “frugality” which was simply something that many in that era adopted.
One such event happened when Rezin had been putting up hay on his Grassy Lick farm and at the end of the day headed to the golf course. Bert May was there and when Rezin pulled his billfold out of his pocket to pay for his golf cart, hay and dust flew everywhere. “I guess it’s been a while since you took anything out of that billfold,” Bert supposedly said jokingly.
“That was Dad,” his son, Gist, said. Gist, along with son-in-law Tim Hodgson, gave his eulogy on Saturday. “But he was certainly very generous with his children.”
Rezin was a great sports fan throughout his life. He and close friend, the late Ovie Evans, were both big St. Louis Cardinal fans and often went to St. Louis and became friends with Stan Musial and some of the other players. And they loved following the University of Kentucky teams.
Howell worked the soil at farms on Paris Pike and Grassy Lick for 43 years, first in partnership with his father and later with his son. His advanced education consisted of a farming degree from Camargo Farming College, which many young men attended following WWII. I guess that old story about there being a University of Camargo, was close to being true.
Howell did well on the farm and then in 1966 moved his family to Mt. Sterling, getting his growing family closer to school and other activities.
Always an avid reader, Howell was a good businessman who kept informed of what was going on in the world. He loved to travel. Once on a trip to Scotland, Rezin and Chuck Crooks were golfing along with Olivia Stone and Lewis White. True to form, Olivia and Lewis decided to pay for caddies, Rezin and Chuck opted to pocket that money.
Rezin lost his ball on the first hole but the two caddies stepped in to help him find it. Same thing on the second hole, only this time just one caddy joined the search. Again, on hole number three, a lost ball, but this time no help was coming. By the end of the day Howell was borrowing golf balls from his playing partners and the next time, well, he decided to go with the caddy.
On one family vacation, daughter Judy promised to eat a big breakfast every morning but when she couldn’t get very far Rezin had to step in. He supposedly gained 10 pounds on that vacation.
Howell was proud of his family and got to enjoy the athletic success of his grandsons, Clark and Troy Howell and Sam Hodgson. Clark and Troy played in the state tennis tournament while in high school and Rezin got to see Sam take the floor with the Montgomery County Indians in Rupp Arena during their run to the final four in 2013. Ironically, that team and Howell’s ‘43 gang advanced further in tournament play than any other boys’ teams in the history of Montgomery County.
I’m not sure what heaven will be like but if you believe that somehow we get a chance to re-enjoy the good memories then I’m quite sure that when Rezin walked through the Gates he immediately heard Walter Johnson’s voice calling “Hey Rezin, we’ve been waiting for you. Come on over and shoot a few hoops with us.”
And th
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