NEIGHBORnwork
Joe Howard: The Big Tree Man Interview by Ashley O’Connor Photos by Donna Will
Joe Howard began working for the Montgomery County Forestry Board in 1978; 40 years later, he’s as passionate as ever about preserving the beautiful trees in our area. I spoke with him to find out more about his extensive career as an educator and forestry board member. Q: Tell us about your background. A: I’m from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a little town called Easton. That’s where a famous tree called the Wye Oak resided in Wye Mills, MD. It was a national champion white oak that is Maryland’s state tree, and it’s the biggest oak they’d ever found. It is a magnificent tree. I went to college for my undergraduate degree at Salisbury, which is now Salisbury University, but back in the 20
WASHINGTON GARDENER DECEMBER 2018
’50s when I went there, it was called Salisbury State Teachers College. It just prepared teachers, so I got my degree from Salisbury and then I started teaching in Montgomery County, in elementary school and one year in junior high school. After three years, I got my master’s degree in educational administration at the University of Maryland, College Park. I went back to Talbot County and was teaching at a little school, and I was also the principal of the school. There were just five of us teachers, and I was also a part-time bus driver there. The reason I bring that up is because the school bus I drove—on the Eastern Shore, the individual drivers own the school bus. Especially in the spring, I used to tell the kids, “Boys and girls, if we get all of our work done this morn-
ing, we can take a fieldtrip.” Basically, what I did when we took these little fieldtrips was I would take them to some of the famous estates down on the Eastern Shore. Back in the ’50s, Talbot County had six national champion trees, including the Wye Oak, and every year, we’d go see the Wye Oak and some of these other magnificent trees. That’s how I kind of got into it. I was only down there for four years, but in that time, I became president of the teachers association, so I was very active in trying to improve the situation for teachers. I came back to Montgomery County in 1960. While I was there, I got a program started called the outdoor education program, where we tried to identify things in the curriculum that we could teach better outdoors than indoors. Other schools got very interested in participating in the outdoor education program; in just a couple years, we had nearly a dozen schools involved. I was spending as much time helping other schools get started in outdoor education as I was being principal. The program was expanding very quickly and I said, ‘I feel like I’m doing two half-a** jobs and want to do one half-a** job.’ I actually took sabbatical leave that year and went to Michigan State University on a fellowship to get a doctorate, I got all the work done except the dissertation. In the meantime, I was trying to get an outdoor education center built here in the county. I always thought that was kind of my dissertation and we actually succeeded in doing this in 1973, (opened in 1974): the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rock Creek Regional Park. Q: What got you interested in working with trees? A: When I was a kid growing up back in the ’30s, sometimes on a Sunday, Dad would pile all us kids into the car and he’d take us to see different local attractions. One place he always took us was to see the Wye Oak, so I’ve always felt that was what got me interested in the first place. Q: What’s it like working for the Montgomery County Forestry Board?
