howeenterprise.com
Prettiest Little Town in Texas
Monday, February 16, 2015 Continued from Page #1
Mame Roberts, pictured in the June, 1940 edition of The Rotarian. board members.
or plants and trees of their choice.
"This is a fully-functional city-wide operation involving citizens rolling up their sleeves to help share in the pride of knowing that we, as Howe, have something special to hang our hats on." said Keep Howe Beautiful President Monte Walker. "I think in our meeting, there was an overwhelming sense to not only do something good for the city, but to do something extraordinary for the city that involves some equity from the citizens whether that's monetary donations to the cause or good old-fashioned sweat equity."
The organization has started a donation drive online which is located at http://www.gofundme.com/m4be3s. Donations can be made also through mail at Keep Howe Beautiful, P.O. Box 250, Howe, Texas 75459. As soon as the last freeze occurs, the group will be scheduling planting days in preparation for the big Founders Day weekend in the last week of April. With so many events taking place throughout the town that weekend, KHB thought that it would be great to have some of the beautification done in time for vendors to see part of the makeover.
New Beginnings Fellowship Church was the first group to offer their services to the project. The idea is for each yard, large, small, Mame Roberts was a former school teacher in on the corner of a busy street, or hidden in a Howe and upon retirement began her crusade back alley to dress-up their yards in zinnias for the beautification miracle that happened in
Page #2 Howe. No dollar-studded wand-waving from Washington D.C. achieved the miracle. W.P. Thompson, Mayor of Howe was a lover of flowers. He and a city councilman became a booster. They gave each of the churches $5 to start beautification funds. The churches matched the money and started to landscape their grounds. When Howe couldn't meet the requirements for Public Works and National Youth Administration projects, the citizens rolled up their sleeves and said, "Well, we'll just do it ourselves." Miss Roberts got upset while listening to a Dallas radio program that saluted Texas towns and only mentioned the big cities. She demanded recognition and was put on the air by the program director. Lynn Landrum of The Dallas Morning News heard the program and suggested in his column that Howe should look after its own welfare. This upset Roberts even further and before too long Roberts had made the proclamation to Landrum that Howe would be "The Prettiest Little Town in Texas." Roberts was successful and Landrum visited the town to smell the flowers and eat crow. Roberts will be inducted into the Howe Hall of Honor on April 24 along with 11 other key members to the history and betterment of Howe. Along with her will be the former Mayor W.P. Thompson, who helped kick-start the mission. Keep Howe Beautiful's 2015 mission is the same as Roberts' plan 77 years ago. They just want a beautiful town and for the uplifting feeling of pride that comes from a community that believes in themselves.