Charlie Howard memorial plans shaping up

BANGOR – City officials and a local nonprofit are close to completing plans for a granite monument that would mark the site of one of the city’s most infamous hate crimes.

The Charles O. Howard Memorial Foundation has been working for nearly four years to erect a memorial to Howard, a 23-year-old gay man who was killed nearly 23 years ago when he was thrown into Kenduskeag Stream.

“I’m pleased to tell you that the [city’s cultural development] committee and the Charles O. Howard Memorial Foundation folks are on the same page regarding both the spirit and the design of the monument,” said Sally Bates, a city development officer who has been working with the group.

“What remains to be resolved are some of the technical drawings that the city needs to have before final approval,” Bates said.

Howard was walking along State Street in the late evening of July 7, 1984, when three teenagers attacked him. They beat him and threw him off a downtown bridge into the water below. Howard, who could not swim, had an asthma attack and drowned. The ensuing investigation suggested that he was attacked because he was gay.

Despite the passing of more than two decades, however, the site of Howard’s death remains unmarked.

The foundation has been working to change that.

“We’re all working hard together,” said Susan Davies, the foundation’s co-chairman. “It’s important to have this memorial as a reminder of what hatred and ignorance and homophobia can do – and did do – in our city.

“It is important for our city to remember and to honor, also, the changes in the general environment for gay and lesbian people,” she said.

Davies acknowledged, however, that getting the project through the approval process has taken longer than expected.

“It feels like an eternity, but we’re really, really looking forward to seeing it put up,” she said.

“I had hoped we could get this done by now,” Davies said. “It is important to the city that we get it done. I expect it to be done fairly soon.”

Dan Williams, a longtime proponent of the memorial, said he, too, wants to see the monument erected.

“People are asking, ‘When is it going up? It’s all paid for.'”

Williams said the monument was important “because it’s a reminder of what happened and we don’t want it to happen again. We need something to remind us. History does have a tendency to repeat if people don’t remember.”

The monument, he said, will be a “good focal point for reflecting. Right now, there’s nothing.”

The design for the Howard monument has undergone several iterations since it was proposed.

Plans now call for a gray granite bench and a rectangular slab upon which a stone flower urn will sit.

The monument also will include the following text, wording that has been agreed upon by city and foundation representatives:

“May we, the citizens of Bangor, continue to change the world around us until hatred becomes peacemaking and ignorance becomes understanding. Charlie Howard, an openly gay man, died here at the hands of hatred and ignorance on July 7, 1984.”

As Davies sees it, the community has become more accepting of gay and lesbian residents, although there is still room for improvement.

“We’re not home free yet,” she said. “It’s still not safe, often, to be gay or lesbian in many places in Maine, but the general public tenor is not as homophobic as what it once was.

“[But] people still get fired because they’re gay or lesbian,” she said. “People still stay in the closet for a long, long time if they are teachers or social workers” or engaged in other professions in which gays and lesbians sometimes aren’t welcome.

Williams agreed.

“I’d like to say it’s getting better, but every once in a while [discrimination] is still in the background.”

“I’d like to see the community rally and make a statement by saying that bullying and discrimination are not acceptable anymore,” he said.

Williams said Charlie Howard will be remembered on July 7, which this year marks the 23rd anniversary of his death, with a memorial service at 6:30 p.m. at Hammond Street Congregational Church. A procession to the bridge where Howard died will follow at 7:15 p.m.