It was a cold, and smoggy Thursday morning in Los Angeles. Lynwood St Francis Hospital was all a buzz in anticipation of the arrival of Claude the Great! At approximately 11:30am he appeared discussing economics and politics and foreign affairs with the OB-GYNs and their assistants, thus started the life of Claude Howard III.
The first two years of his life were spent counseling gang members in south central LA not far from where he lived on 121st and Central, north of El Segundo and south of Watts. At the age of three Claude advised his parents to move out of the inner city to the suburbs and they took him literally at his word; suburbs must have had a different definition for them.
They bought two acres of land, 2 miles off a main dirt road, on a dirt road, at the dead end of a dirt road that was actually a cul de sac with no other houses on it.
Here his formative life continued, without the finer things of life. Initially there was no running water, electricity, gas heating or telephone. And over the next couple of years these conveniences were added one at a time, first electricity replacing the kerosene lamp. Then a 90 foot well, in the back yard, providing running water especially to the bathroom which eliminated the need to use the backyard privy.
Propane tanks that had to be replaced twice a month provided gas. A wood stove located in the front room heated the house. This was the house that Claude’s father built from scratch with recycled lumber.
Claude interrupts the dictation to say, “Oh, by the way I know you are wondering how the food was kept cold. We had an icebox. We used to go to the ice house approximate 10 miles away, in Riverside, to get ice. Ice would keep the ice box cold enough to keep the food, but not cold enough to keep ice cream.” Which we all know was important to Claude.
Claude soon began school, graduating as student body president in high school before going to college, where in 1970, he received a Bachelor of Science degree from Loma Linda University in Physical Therapy.
The year before graduating from college, Claude married Carolyn Brown. From that marriage there were three children: Kimberly the eldest, the artist, the idealist; Kristen the middle child, the lawyer, the pragmatist; and Kevin the baby, the Goodwill computer cataloger, the dreamer.
The kids grew and with life’s challenges in 1980 he and Carolyn divorced. Three years later Claude married Jacquelyn Greene, the love of his life, his soul-mate, and best friend. They celebrated their twenty-eighth year of marriage this past December.
In 1982 Claude decided to pursue a graduate degree in business administration from Pepperdine University. In 1984, he graduated with an MBA in Management.
His work career spanned 42 years and included acute hospital rehab, out- and in-patient rehab, and Rehabilitation Director at two hospitals in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
In the mid-1990s Claude decided to return to patient care through In Home health services providing rehab to home bound patients. This direction of his career lasted through approximately 2010 when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
In 2008 he also went on board with a virtual company named Senior Metrix specializing in patient outcomes management for Kaiser Facilities and other facilities nation wide.
On April 29, 2010 Claude had a right lower lobectomy, a biopsy of which indicated that he had Stage Two, Adeno Carcinoma of the lungs. He went through a summer of chemotherapy and appeared to be in remission. But life took a different turn and in February of 2011 he proceeded to pursue 11 months of aggressive chemotherapy that ended in December 2011. Subsequent to that he continued to work and attend meetings until April 15, 2012 – Income Tax Day - when he officially retired, receiving his first social security check on May 9, 2012. He fought the fight until June 11, 2012.
Claude said, “Make sure you say ‘He [helped] raise strong daughters for which he credits with thanks his mother, Betty Howard and his grandmother Mary Alice Underwood.’
We wanted it to be said that Claude Howard III had compassion and empathy in spades. He had the kindness to really see people where they are. Yet he would never take mess from anybody.
He is survived by his wife, Jacquelyn Greene Howard; his father, Claude Howard in Huntsville Alabama, his three children and their families: Kimberly Howard and Charles Sanderson in Portland Oregon; Kristen and Adam Taoatao, two grandchildren, Lauren and Hudson Taoatao; and his son Kevin Howard; in-laws Mom and Dad Greene; his sister Alice Lester in Riverside California, and her children Yolanda Echols Gordon and George Echols; brother-in law Gary Greene and his family, sister in law, Lola Greene and her family; sister in law Olia Lankford and her family and Aunt Bernyce and her son Scott.
SHARE OBITUARY
v.1.8.18