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Administrative/Biographical History
Arthur Howe, Jr. was born on July 19, 1921 in Watertown, Connecticut, to Arthur Howe, Sr. and Margaret Marshall Armstrong. He had four siblings: Richard, Alice Austin, Harold, and Sydney.
In the 1930s, Howe lived in Hampton, Virginia, where his father was working as the president of the Hampton Institute. Arthur Howe, Sr. was a Presbyterian minister and a chaplain at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut and Dartmouth before becoming president of the Hampton Institute. The historically black university was founded by Arthur Howe, Jr.’s grandfather, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, as the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in 1868 to provide education to newly-freed slaves.
Howe went on to graduate early from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, and spent a year at the Rugby School in England from 1938-1939 through an exchange program sponsored by the English-Speaking Union. He entered Yale University (Class of 1943) in the fall of 1939.
In the summer of 1940, while still a student at Yale, Howe tried enlisting with the American Field Service (AFS), a volunteer ambulance organization serving with the French military overseas. The German occupation of France prevented Howe’s initial service with AFS, however, until AFS realigned their involvement to serve with the British military in 1941. After that point, Howe reapplied as an ambulance driver and in January 1942 he embarked on the Egyptian ship “El Nil” in New York City for the Middle East with AFS unit ME 2. Because of the German submarine threat in the Atlantic Ocean, the ship had to hug the coast of South America and circumnavigate Africa before arriving in the Middle East. After stops in Trinidad, Cape Town (South Africa), Durban (South Africa), and Aden (Yemen), the ship arrived at Port Tewfik on the south end of the Suez Canal in early March 1942, seventy days after departure.
After receiving training at El Tahag Mobilization Camp in Egypt, Howe and his fellow AFS volunteers took a train to Beirut, Lebanon, from where they were deployed to medical centers all over Lebanon and Syria. In March 1942, AFS had two sections based in Aley, Lebanon (one with headquarters) and one section based in Damascus, Syria. Howe was stationed at the Casualty Clearing Station run by the New Zealand military in a school in Zahleh, the capital city of the Beqaa Governorate in Lebanon. Howe picked up wounded soldiers from the medical stations, drove to Damascus (where he slept at night), and then took them on to Jerusalem, where the British hospitals were located.
Between the end of April and the beginning of May 1942, Howe was ordered down to the Western Desert, where he drove an ambulance in a convoy back to El Tahag. He was made a section leader and placed in charge of five ambulances with a total of eight men. After a brief hospitalization in Beirut, he rejoined his company in Tobruk, Libya. After the battle of Bir Hakeim (May 26 – June 21, 1942), Howe’s unit retreated from Tobruk passing through Fort Capuzzo(Libya), Bardia (Libya), Sallum (Egypt), Marsa Matruh (Egypt), El Dabaa (Egypt), and El Alamein (Egypt). Howe participated in the evacuation of Marsa Matruh on June 25 and 26, when the AFS volunteers took patients from the 58th General Hospital to Alexandria. In the summer of 1942, Howe was sent to the Qattara Depression in Egypt with the British Eighth Army.
Howe was promoted to lieutenant on August 29, 1942, and then shortly after taking part in the Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October–11 November 1942) he took charge of 11 Company, which was later rechristened as 567 Ambulance Car Company. On November 27, 1942, Howe was promoted to captain, and after serving in Sfax, Tunisia, in the spring of 1943, he was promoted to major on May 1, 1943.
On September 27, 1943, Howe embarked for Sicily from Tripoli. Howe and his full company of 120 ambulances plus 60 support vehicles and more than 200 men crossed the Mediterranean in tank landing ships (LSTs) for a beach in Taranto, Italy. After brief service in Italy and the Sangro River fighting along the Italian east coast,, Howe was medically discharged from AFS in December 1943.
When Howe returned to the United States he served as a liaison for AFS in Washington and taught mathematics at the Hotchkiss School from 1944 to 1946. He finished his B.A. at Yale in 1947, went on to teach again at the Hotchkiss School in 1948, and in 1950 he spent a year at Oxford University’s Lincoln College in England. After returning from England,Howe held several administrative positions at Yale where, in 1956, he was named dean of admissions and student appointments. Howe sparked the idea of permitting women into the college’s undergraduate program – 13 years before it came to fruition (which finally occurred in 1969). At about this time, Howe became a fellow at Yale’s Davenport College, and also served on the Board of Trustees of the Hampton Institute (including serving as chair from 1957 to 1971.)
Howe continued to be involved with AFS after the end of World War II. He was active in the meetings that ultimately created the AFS student exchange programs in 1946, and was named a director in 1947 and a vice president in 1948. While in England in 1950, he served as a representative of the AFS student exchange programs, helping and counseling small groups of students who returned after studying abroad.
After Stephen Galatti’s death in 1964, Howe was made the chairperson of a committee to find the new AFS president. While he was on his way to Oxford University, where he was scheduled to work, he was surprised to receive a message from AFS asking him to become the new president, instead. Art accepted, and while at Oxford for four months he worked concurrently on AFS business, traveling throughout parts of Western Europe to establish AFS selection committees. He officially began his tenure as president in 1965.
One of Howe’s early tasks as president was to modify the structure of the AFS Board of Trustees to encourage broader involvement. He asked the AFS veterans of World Wars I and II to surrender their sole ownership of AFS as voting members, while maintaining their fundamental influence over AFS.
Howe worked on program and organizational growth during his tenure. He developed the AFS Multinational Program during his presidency, which allowed AFS partners around the world to organize hosting and sending activities; before, the AFS programs were limited to exchanges only to and from the United States. Howe also began AFS Educator Program, through which secondary school leaders experienced a three-week immersion in the school system of a foreign country. When Howe resigned from AFS in 1971, thirty-eight national offices were in operation for AFS worldwide.
Howe continued serving on the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees, and was elected a life trustee in 1966. He worked on various committees, including the AFS Veterans Committee, which ultimately helped obtain veterans benefits for many AFS World War I and II ambulance drivers under United States PL 95-202. He continued to stay active with AFS, including speaking at events (such as at the Franco-American Museum at the Château de Blérancourt in France on July 7, 1989) and attending various AFS World War II drivers reunions. He also served as one of the organizers of the 1997 AFS Old Timers Dinner at the United Nations in New York.
Howe received many honors and awards throughout his life, including an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Hampton Institute in 1965 and the Hotchkiss Alumni Award (the school’s highest honor, given annually in recognition to outstanding service to others)in 1969. For his service during World War II, he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire on June 13, 1944, and received the 1939-1945 Star, the African Star with 8th Army Clasp, and the Italy Star.
On June 17, 1944, Arthur Howe, Jr. married Margaret “Peggy” Burke, who also served as an active volunteer with AFS. Together they had two daughters and three sons: Louise (who passed away as a toddler), Margaret, Samuel, Arthur III, and Thomas.
Arthur Howe, Jr. passed away on December 16, 2014. Margaret BurkeHowe passed away on May 15, 2016. They were married for more than seventy years.
Subjects (links to similar collections)Ambulance drivers
Ambulances
American Field Service (American Ambulance Field Service)
American Field Service, Ambulance Car Company, 567
American Field Service--ME 2
American Field Service--Middle East Units (ME)
El Alamein, Battle of, Egypt, 1942
Field, Dorothy
Galatti, Stephen
Howe, Arthur Jr., 1921-2014
Howe, Margaret B. (Margaret Burke), 1922-2016
Middle East Forces (MEF)
World War, 1939-1945
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Africa
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Italy
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Tunisia
Yale University
Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative Information
