Lived in Trumball Co., OH in 1940. Later moved to Miami, FL. ca 1943.

Leon, as you may know, was the youngest of Milburn and Victoria Howard’s children after Ismal (4 years younger than Leon) died of measles in 1907. I understand that Leon spent a lot of time living with his married older sisters after Milburn died in 1908 because Victoria had her hands full taking over the store and post office and couldn’t spend much time with him. He graduated from dental school and got a job in Cincinnati in the mid to late 1920s. It was there that he met Gladys McHugh, my Canadian-born grandmother. She was a career girl at the time, working for Pepperell Mills textiles. They sent her all over the country in what was essentially a PR job. We used to have a photo of her from the front of a magazine, all dressed in antebellum hoop skirts and identified as the face of Pepperell Mills. Anyway, Leon and a friend were having dinner in the downtown Cincinnati hotel where she was staying when he spotted her in the dining room. He told her afterwards that he said to his friend, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.” So I guess it was love at first sight. 

The story of how she came to the US from a tiny fishing village (Tignish) in PEI is very interesting. She saved up money from a job teaching in a one-room schoolhouse a la Anne Shirley of Anne of Green Gables, moved to Boston to work as a milliner at Filene’s, and was hired by Pepperell after she stopped by their booth at a trade show in Boston to offer advice on setting up their display. 

But I digress. Leon and Gladys married in Cincinnati in 1928. None of the Howard family was there because Leon didn’t tell them! Later, when my grandmother found out how close they lived to Cincinnati, she was rather perturbed. My mother was born a little over a year later on Feb 12, 1929. She grew up in Warren, Ohio, where her father was a dentist. It was an idyllic childhood apparently, in a pretty neighborhood near a wonderful school. They had a young live-in maid, which I guess was pretty standard back in those days. But Leon was not a fan of Ohio winters. By the time my mom was 14, after an incident in which he slipped on the ice and hurt his back, he made up his mind to move to Florida. They had vacationed there, which is what gave him the idea. Because he had to be a Florida resident to take the Florida board, he moved the family to Tampa temporarily. It was early in the war, and he spent the time (6 months I think) studying to take the test. They went back to Warren while he waited for his results. Then they moved to Miami — I think in 1943. Leon opened his own dental practice there, and he was still practicing (out of a home office) when I was a little girl. In fact, he was our family dentist for many years.

There were four daughters in the family: Lorraine Theresa (after Victoria Theresa), Suzanne (called Shawnee), Janet and Mary Lou, who was born in 1939, 10 years after my mother. All four sisters are alive. Janet  unfortunately suffers with Alzheimer’s. Her daughters take very good care of her. 

Mom met my father Frank Scruby when she was a senior in college at Barry College in Miami. They married in 1952. After Dad graduated from law school at University of Miami in 1957, they moved to Orange Park, a little town right outside of Jacksonville that was predicted to boom in the next 20 years — which it certainly did! Dad’s law office was in Orange Park, but after the first couple of years, we moved to Jacksonville, which is where I grew up. My parents had five children: Shannon (1953), Robert (Rob) Marion (1954), Mark Howard (1957), Lynne Francine (1964), and Jennifer Lorraine (1966). Lynne and Jen were born in Jacksonville. I was born in Maine because my father was a Naval intelligence officer there during the Korean War. We returned to Miami when I was six months old, and Dad went back to law school.

Shawnee met her husband Harry Fleming in Miami when she was a senior at the University of Miami (she also spent 3 years at Barry College). The Flemings and my parents had a double wedding! I have some great pictures of Leon from that event fyi. Harry was a commercial real estate appraiser. Like my parents, they had five children: David (1953), Amy (1954), Wade (about 1956), Lisa (maybe 1957?) and Kevin (1960). 

Janet and Mary Lou graduated from Barry and both decided to sign up for the USO so they could travel. They met their husbands in Germany (though not the same year!) Janet married Ralph Hanson, a US Air Force pilot. They lived all over the US, and eventually landed in Dallas/Ft. Worth. They had four daughters, but the first, Mary Kate, was born with a heart defect at 9 months. The second, Carolyn, had the same hole in her heart, but by the time she made it to 9 months, a surgeon in Texas was able to operate and fix the defect! The other two daughters are Patty and Christine. They are all married and all Texas based. 

Mary Lou married Richard Atkinson, a US Army officer. He was from Vermont, which is how they ended up there. They have two children, Trevor and Tracy. 

Just one more thing — my mother was crazy about her father and said that all of her friends were too. Their house in Miami was a gathering spot for kids from their high school, and "Dr. Howard” tolerated all the chaos without complaint. He was always very sweet to me too. I remember that he was an inventor who figured out how to zap commercials back in the 60s (!) and listened to TV with earphones so it wouldn’t disturb the house. He was quite the news addict! 

Shannon