Before long, Tony convinced him to accept the position of vice president. “All you’ll have to do is sign a few papers,” he said. Howard answered, “Ah, Tony, for a friend like you, of course I’ll sign a few papers.” Howard has been signing papers – and doing much more than that – ever since. Howard became president of Feed the Hungry San Miguel in 2007 and continues in that position today.

Before Howard found his way back to being the progressive citizen he was taught to be, he spent years accumulating the experience and knowledge one needs to run an organization like Feed the Hungry. As he was finishing high school, he met Lynne Murray, who attended what Howard called a “‘proper all-girls’ school.” They married soon after he graduated from Tulane University. After their honeymoon, Howard went to San Diego for deployment on the USS Paul Revere (APA-248), an attack transport, then the newest ship in the amphibious Navy.

Eventually Howard’s ship deployed to the Philippines. On New Year’s Eve, as he was having drinks with an old high school classmate in Olongapo, a truck with a loudspeaker passed by to order all military people to return to their ships immediately. The task force deployed to the South China Sea that night for several weeks. He ended up on the Paul Revere on a secret mission to the South China Sea for 55 days. Howard was the ship’s cryptographer and one of his favorite memories was, while he thought he was supposedly “waiting to go to war,” he decoded a message that began, “According to Time magazine….” Howard raised his eyebrows and laughed, saying that was the beginning of his “skeptical attitude” toward governmental intelligence capacity and just what a “secret mission” meant.

When Howard left the Navy, he began his apprenticeships first at General Electric and then at a series of construction firms. In 1977 he began a construction consulting firm using new computer modeling techniques to analyze and help resolve disputes. The firm began with one person and grew to 60. The company’s work involved projects in every state and all over the world. Lynne followed Howard to California, the Philippines, Connecticut, Florida, Guam, and Georgia. Wherever she was, she studied art and eventually she completed her degree at Georgia State University with a BFA.

While they were living in Atlanta, they visited the Minneapolis Art Institute where Lynne had an exhibit. There a friend told them about San Miguel de Allende in Central Mexico. The friend had studied in San Miguel a decade earlier and prophetically said, “Lynne would love it.”

A year later, the Gleasons and their son Wesley drove to Mexico. On their way into the city, they stopped at the mirador on the Salida a Querétaro that overlooks San Miguel, and Lynne said, “This is it. This is home.”

The family visited the city for many summers during the seventies and eighties while Howard continued to work with his firm. After they moved to London at the end of 1990, they visited San Miguel only once until 2002, but they never forgot the town. However, it wasn’t until Howard’s retirement, followed by extensive travel, that they made the city their home.

During part of their 12 years in London, they lived in an apartment that overlooked the training of the Queen’s household cavalry. Out their windows they saw, in Howard’s words, “the excitement, the incredible beauty that comes with horses. Lynne, who had always loved horses, was amazed by the pageantry of the Royal Household Calvary in our front yard and began to paint the scenes. Her work became known to the Commanding Officer of the Royal Household Calvary who offered to ‘moot her show at the officers’ mess.’ Even when Lynne found out that ‘mooting’ meant they would exhibit her work and give a reception, she was not thrilled by the ‘mess’ part, at least until set straight by a British friend who explained what an honor it was. The setting, the reception and the exhibition were spectacular. A publisher saw her exhibition which led to his producing the book, All the Queen’s Horses, the Art of Lynne Gleason.

The Gleasons had a good friend who became Queen Elizabeth’s transportation officer. “He invited us to his home on the grounds of Buckingham Palace when events were held for the Queen’s drivers, coachmen, and grooms. There we casually met the Queen a few times. Later Lynne was commissioned to do a painting for the Queen of her Windsor Grey horses which were stabled on those palace grounds. As part of a dedication event, Lynne met the Queen again, along with Prince Philip.”

As if that weren’t memorable enough, Howard talked about the “most exciting royal thing. It happened when the Commanding Officer of the Royal Horse Artillery asked Lynne to play the part of the Queen for the event held to commemorate King George’s naming of the Royal Horse Artillery, “The King’s Troop.” Lynne was picked up in the Queen’s limousine and escorted by the ex-head of NATO who played the part of Prince Philip. They were then transferred to the Queen’s horse-drawn carriage and taken to the reviewing stand where Lynne received the salute of the Commanding Officer. This was followed by a luncheon. She had a chance to sip some gin from the Queen Mother’s stash in her private quarters before being introduced to a cadre of officers as Queen Elizabeth II.” As a footnote, the Gleasons also met Princess Anne in conjunction with Riding for the Disabled. Anne wrote the forward to the book on Lynne’s work: All the Queen’s Horses: the Art of Lynne Gleason.

In 2001, when Howard retired from his consulting business, they had no specific plans so decided to be homeless for a while and sold their homes in London and Florida. Free of many responsibilities, they traveled to Sri Lanka, Europe, and Costa Rica. When in Costa Rica, some US curators, impressed by her work, asked Lynne to complete a series of horse paintings for exhibition. She told Howard she would need six months to accomplish such a commission. But where should they go? “Why don’t we go back to San Miguel?” they said to each other. The Gleasons arrived in San Miguel on a Friday, and by Saturday they were looking for a house to buy. Even though it took them a year to complete a purchase, they became Sanmigulenses. Their son came to San Miguel a couple of years later, by which time Howard had had that cup of coffee with Tony Adlerbert.

When Howard moved into the presidency of Feed the Hungry San Miguel, he found that in many ways, it still “had a way to go to find a model that would allow them to be able to receive donations from a broad array of organizations. The main core of donations came from, and still does, individual donors and event profits, but by getting the time consuming process of detailed financial accounting in order, Feed the Hungry has been able to apply for grants, to receive funds from large foundations, state and federal agencies, and to allow Canadians to deduct their donations.”

Jack H. Watson, Jr., chief of staff for former President Carter, once accompanied Howard to the Feed the Hungry kitchen at Jalpa and talked about how Carter had built something like a “hub and spoke” program for communities in Georgia. The idea stuck in Howard’s mind and as he watched what many of the board members were doing, he realized there would be support for such expansion.

As he reflected on his years as board president, Howard is happy about the way the “core business has grown since 2007 by adding eleven kitchens; how Feed the Hungry’s horizons have expanded; and how, in addition to our feeding programs, we now assist children and communities to end hunger as a step toward ending their poverty. We are still accomplishing our goals through feeding people, but now also by teaching and by helping people in the ranchos plant gardens, teaching them about nutrition, and expanding our affiliated programs. Amazing things are happening. We are introducing other charities where we have a base and using our kitchens as community hubs.” Not bad for a guy who thought he’d just sign a few papers and have a few meetings with his pal, Tony.

Howard is also proud that Feed the Hungry delivers weekly food to seven other charities and works with other organizations, such as Patronato Pro Niños, Computadoras Pro Jóvenes, the San Miguel Community Church, Unitarian Universalists, the Mid-Day Rotary Club, Mujeres en Cambio, and Apoyo de Gente Emprendedora.

Today, Howard is back where he began, the kid from the progressive school that taught him to be a good citizen and to help the community. Sure, he had to be lured into taking a leadership role with Feed the Hungry by being told all he had to do was sign a few papers now and then, but Howard is doing what he loves the most, helping others.