Alumni Profiles

Finding a purpose

By Randy Dillinger

Valentine’s Day 2001 began like any other for Jeff Howard as he prepared to go to work at Lake Park High School in Roselle, Ill., where he was the assistant boys basketball coach and an assistant teacher in the special education department.

Nina went to wake the couple’s 2-month-old son, Jordan. But this morning, Jordan did not respond. He was not breathing.

The routine morning was suddenly shattered. The couple called 911 and did as they were instructed until paramedics arrived. They rushed to the hospital, but their son had died. Probable cause: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

The leading cause of death in infants one month to one year of age, SIDS is a disease from which African American infants are two to three times more likely to die than white infants, according to the National Institutes of Health. p>

Jeff and Nina donated part of Jordan’s organs to SIDS research, in the hopes that they could be part of the search for a cure. Then came a period of disbelief and shock, followed by a darker period of intense grief and despair.

The couple relocated to Dixon, Ill., to be closer to Nina’s family. During those difficult days and months, Jeff found himself second-guessing everything he had done and had become in life. Every day was a struggle. “I was just prepared to rot away,” he recalls. “Nothing and no one mattered to me.”

But Jeff was a survivor, a quality borne of necessity in his childhood, when at the age of 7 he, along with five siblings, was removed from his home in Anderson, Ind., and placed in Bronnenberg Children’s Home. The experience left Jeff with a sense that he didn’t belong to anyone.

“As I look back on that part of my life,” he explains, “the biggest challenge was telling myself, ‘Hey, I’m somebody. I can be somebody. I’m okay,’ because I felt like I was nothing.”

At the children’s home, Jeff met AU students who worked at the youth home and who would take the children to the campus. He was impressed with the Christian environment as well as the friendliness that existed between people of different ethnic backgrounds, and he decided to attend AU.

Jeff became a star basketball player for the Ravens. He netted 1,615 career points (No. 6 all-time). He is the fourth highest single season scorer at AU (635 points in 1986), and is No. 8 in career steals, with 104. He was a two-time All-Conference player in the Hoosier-Buckeye Conference, a two-time Team MVP, and an NAIA All-American in 1986.

“Jeff was a good athlete and a very hard worker,” recalls Barrett Bates, former director of Intercollegiate Athletics at AU and head basketball coach during the years Jeff played. “There were times when we clashed, but he had the type of personality that never held a grudge. I always admired him for that.”

Jeff walked with the graduating class of 1987, and immediately began working at the youth home where he had spent much of his childhood, offering encouragement and support to boys and girls who were in similar circumstances that he had faced years before.

Jeff’s love for basketball continued beyond his AU experience. He spent three years with the semi-professional Minnesota Rockets, and in 1994 he founded Basketball Unlimited Corp., an organization through which he has offered youth basketball programs for children. Jeff sponsored children at camps, provided tutoring, and offered other after school activities for children. For his efforts, Jeff was honored as Volunteer of the Year by St. Paul, Minn., mayor Norm Coleman. In 2000, Jeff had the opportunity to coach an Illinois team at the Junior Olympics in Orlando, Fla.
But all the success and recognition Jeff achieved faded in the wake of his son’s death. He relied heavily on the support of family and friends, and eventually came to a point of greater understanding and acceptance.

“In the end I realized that God doesn’t give you a cross that you can’t bear,” he says. “Everything happens for a reason. There’s a purpose to every day. The challenge for me was to find what that purpose was.”

Several months after his son’s death, Jeff was ready to return to the ball court and the classroom, and began teaching and coaching at Ashton/Franklin Center High School in Ashton/Franklin Grove, Ill. In his first two seasons, the basketball team has played in regional, conference, and conference tournament championship games. In 2002-03, Jeff was named Co-Coach of the Year in the team’s conference.

In many respects, Jeff’s life today looks a lot like his life before Feb. 14, 2001, but under the surface is the heart of a man transformed — broken by the wounds of loss, then gently restored by the hand of God. So complete has God’s restoration been that on Dec. 13, 2003, just five days after his son would have turned 3, Jeff was blessed with a baby daughter, Hope Elizabeth.

The birth of his daughter is a gift that Jeff does not take for granted. “Every day that I wake up and my daughter wakes up and her mother wakes up — when that happens, I’ve already had a good day!”