Remembering a little boy named Howard

Saturday, July 5 was a day fit for a kid.

With the first full week of summer vacation drawing to a close, school was but a distant memory. It was sunny and warm, although a bit too muggy for my liking. Still, the kind of day where a little boy in shorts would feel tempted to pull off his shirt and poke at things he found lying in the dirt.

As I sat in Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Melbourne, for a few moments I wondered if my six-year-old son had given in to the lure of the lake at our camp in Meteghan.

But for the most part my thoughts were of another six-year-old boy.

One I had never met.

Howard James Newell was born July 2, 1948. He was the fifth child born to Loretta and Harold Newell. Three days earlier would have been his 60th birthday. Instead, hundreds of people sat in a church to remember a little boy who vanished from existence on an ordinary Saturday in January 1955. A little boy who will always be six years old in the hearts of those who knew him, loved him and miss him.

Howard’s surviving brothers and sisters – Zita, Barbara, Brian and Gerry – decided it was time to have a mass for their brother who had disappeared while walking home from a woodlot where he had been with members of his family.

July 5, 2008 held many similarities to Jan. 22, 1955. Like they had in the days and weeks following his disappearance, people gathered for a little boy named Howard.

No, it wasn’t the thousand-plus people who had searched to no avail for him in those frantic hours and days five decades ago. Still, those in the church came together for a little boy they knew, or perhaps didn’t, and also to offer their support to his family. At the reception afterwards there was a bounty of food prepared by caring hearts. Much in the same way food had been brought daily to the search scene all those years ago.

And so on this day we learned about, through words written by his sister Barbara, what Howard was like as a kid. That odd thing he could do with a bend of his ear, the cowboys boots he loved so much, the way he would tuck his legs into an open cabinet door as he sat on a stool at the counter to eat his meals.

Through words spoken by his sister Zita, we revisited the day Howard disappeared. The desperation of that day now replaced with a choking of her voice as Zita recited a prayer she’s said for her brother in all of the years since he’s been gone.

Being the mother of a six-year-old boy, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my own child to one day, suddenly, be gone. I can’t even comprehend what that was like for this little boy’s parents, although hearing Zita describing her mother laying on the floor crying and praying for her son painted a picture of the heartbreak.

How generous of the family, I thought, to let the rest of us be a part of these memories. How generous of others, I later felt, for them to return the favour with their own stories of growing up with Howard, and their recollections or experiences of the time he went missing.

After the service family and friends gathered in the cemetery not far from the church where a memorial stone in Howard’s honour was dedicated. The stone sits between the graves of the little boy’s parents.

The inscription, I thought, summed up the day perfectly: Always in our hearts.

Peace be with you Howard.