Truckin' on the Western Branch

I lived in Castle Heights and then on Forest Haven Lane. I wanted to stay in Chesapeake, but when they drew the boundaries, my street missed the Chesapeake line by 100 feet, so we moved to Green Meadow Point.

When the school opened, there was a lot of vacant land, and families of GE management moved in. Brittany Woods was developed and then Silverwood and Green Meadow Point.

The early 1970s was the beginning of drugs, Vietnam protests, and the beginning of integration. Schools were having an identity crisis, and we had terrible drug problems. Those days were the toughest. Today, schools are prepared.

I spent 38 years as a principal, and my last year we had 32 people on staff who were Western Branch graduates.

Ernest “Rabbit” Howard Estimates run as high as 4,000-plus for the number of students who have had Rabbit Howard as a teacher and/or coach, and many still keep in touch. His explanation for his popularity is simple—“I always tried to make them feel like they were something special.”

Howard’s own life could have easily ended in something other than the respect and success he earned.

I was raised by my grandmother in the Newtown section of Portsmouth. My mother couldn’t read or write, and my father jumped out of the school window in second grade. It was the Depression, and we were all poor. I used to take two buckets every afternoon and stand outside the shipyard gates collecting food from the Navy mess as sailors came out of the gate. To this day I can’t pass a Salvation Army without stopping—they carried us through the Depression. About 1937 the Salvation Army had an egg hunt in City Park in the snow. I grabbed up as many eggs as I could, but I ate them all before I got home. All us poor kids went to Fresh Air Camp on the other side of City Park for two weeks at a time to gain weight. We used to go to school barefoot in the spring. We walked or caught a ride on a freight train on the Seaboard Line to get to Harry Hunt from Newtown. Every day in the winter I used to go to Katz grocery for a bag of coal to burn in the kitchen stove. The rest of the house was freezing. The 1930s were a bad time. Everyone had victory gardens in the backyard. There were free milk and cookies at school for the poor kids and that was the highlight of my day. But I didn’t know I was poor until I got to Wilson High and there were kids from Parkview and other less poor neighborhoods.

Ernest “Rabbit” Howard. Image by Sheally

Coach “Rabbit” Howard at courtside

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