Black History Today, created by Marcus Harden in honor of Black History Month, pays tribute to the living legacy of Black history in our community and beyond and recognizes the people shaping the future.
Presented in collaboration with the South Seattle Emerald.

By Marcus Harden

In today's day and age, sports are a microcosm of society. Basketball, football and baseball, amongst others, are the gladiator games of our times.

The heroes and heroines of sport often transcend the games they play, becoming the voices and the purveyors of their platform to not just entertain but to provide inspiration, hope and voice for social and political issues.

At the forefront of many of these are the coaches that lead, guide and hold their players accountable, serving as mentors – and in some spaces parental figures – to many of those athletes, regardless of age.

Ron Howard is the rare infusion of both voices, the athlete-turned-coach who has been a source of light in every role and in every context.

Born in Oakland, Calif., Howard’s journey would move him to the eastern side of Washington State, where he became a multi-sport student-athlete at Pasco High School, finding great success in three different sports. Howard was an all-conference tight end on the football team, a first-team All-American basketball player, and a state champion in the triple jump.

He would leverage this success into a scholarship offer to play basketball (an athlete ahead of his time) at Seattle University, where he started for two years.

Howard moved on from Seattle University with degree in hand, but then managed to do what many would never have dreamed possible: he signed as an undrafted free agent with the world-famous Dallas Cowboys and made the team, having never played a down of college football!

Howard would continue to make history on the gridiron throughout his career. After two seasons in Dallas, he was chosen in the 1976 expansion draft by his hometown Seattle Seahawks and became the first starting tight end in franchise history, posting records in his three years with the team that would last for nearly 30 years.

Howard would leave athletics behind as a player in 1980, and he then spent 10 years as a skycraper ironworker, revealing a bit more of his complexity. In the meantime, he also began engaging in his true passion of teaching, learning and giving back to young people.

Howard started student-teaching with Seattle Public Schools in the early ‘90s, moving on before long to a role as Assistant Principal at Aki Kurose Middle School. He also began coaching football, serving as the tight ends coach and one of the offensive coordinators at Rainier Beach High School. There’s not a young person in the South (Souf!) End who attended SouthShore or Rainier Beach during that era and beyond who has not been affected by Coach Howard’s presence. 

Speaking from personal experience, Coach Howard’s accountable but loveable approach, the constant time he takes to offer wisdom, his sacrifice for community while showing what it means to be a family man, for so many young men – for so many of us who were looking for role models, powerful Black men, father figures – Coach Howard filled that void, knowingly or not, and continues to do so to this day. Already a member of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association Hall of Fame as well as the Pasco High School Hall of Fame, Coach Howard was recently inducted into the Rainier Beach High School Hall of Fame, where he rightfully belongs.

Coach Howard would probably tell you his proudest moments are as a father, a grandfather and a husband. For so many of us whose lives he touched, our proudest moments have been made possible in part by Coach Howard’s strong and gracious example.

Coach Howard is a living legend, an innovator, a man before his time who still somehow seems timeless. His Hall of Fame accolades are equalled only by his Hall of Fame heart. The community is better for his presence as he is, indeed, Black History Today!