Local events

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many parks and flower gardens. They spent money. On weekends, many drove out from Dallas and other cities to look at the work of a country town.

Then one day a representative of an oil company stopped in Howe. He decided his company needed a big station in the enterprising town that had shooed away the ghosts of only a few short months ago. He purchased an old building, a vacant reminder that Howe once had had one of the biggest banks in the county.

Members of the planning board were interested. They approved when the oilman told his plans to convert the building into a large modern service station.

“Of course,” he added, “the grounds will be landscaped in keeping with your beautification program. We will try our best to make it a beauty spot.”

Not long afterward another man purchased two tumble-down vacant buildings, which had been eyesores in the improved business section. He also planned to erect a modern service station, and he likewise, told the planning board the premises would be landscaped and beautified in every way possible.

The commercial possibilities of beautification hadn’t entered the minds of the Howe folk while they were developing their parks and gardens and improving their homes and business places. All they had in mind was the making of a beautiful and pleasant place in which to live. But they have learned that it pays.

If Howe can “put over” such a project, what town can’t? This village, too small to even support a service club, is proof that individual effort and self-reliance are not dead—just slumbering—waiting for a Miss Roberts—or a Rotary Club, perhaps—to come along and galvanize sentiment into action.

Miss Roberts, by the way, has retired as a teacher to write a “Know Your Neighbors” column in the Howe Messenger. She has sent to all country towns in Texas a challenge to race with Howe for the title of “The Prettiest Little Town in Texas.” She even told them how to do it.

“What can we do about our little towns?” she asked. “Every little town—your little town, my little town—has its part to play in State and national affairs. We are important. With a united effort, we can make the place in which we live clean, wholesome, attractive. We can make the crowded city dweller homesick to come back to us and real living. We can bring new life, new business, new beauty, to the little towns.’

Howe did it.

Miss Mame Roberts was selected as one of the 12 charter members of the Howe Hall of Honor in 2015. Even 44 years after her death, and 80 years after her heroic transformation of Howe, Texas, she is still one of the most revered figures in the city’s history.

Texas Historical Marker in honor of Miss Mame Roberts is located in Summit Gardens.