Abstract
Born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1917, Howard Ennes died at 97 years at his home in Fort Bragg, on the Northern California coast, survived and surrounded by most of his four children, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.
He fought for social justice and public health throughout his career and even into his 97th year, when he led an active chapter of Occupy Wall Street. As a young man in Washington, D.C., he became active in the American Youth Congress where he met Eleanor Roosevelt, who was an inspiration throughout his life. In 1942, while attending George Washington University, Howard met and married his first wife, Sylvia Bahar, who died in 1965.
Howard joined the U.S. Public Health Service after college. During World War II, he served in the Navy Medical Department and worked in VD prevention. After the war, he obtained his MPH degree from Yale, and then he served as director of health education in Buffalo, New York, and also as executive editor of Public Health Reports for the Surgeon General’s office. The family moved to New York in 1953 where he established the Bureau of Health Education at the Equitable Life Assurance Society and became vice-president with oversight of corporate social responsibility and health and community service in 1969.
Howard was deeply and widely involved with national and international health education organizations during these years, bringing resources of the insurance industry to the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) and to international health issues, along with his contemporary at MetLife, Clarence Pearson (see Allegrante & Auld, 2016). Howard was a Distinguished Fellow and President of the SOPHE in 1957 and served as President of the International Union for Health Education from 1962 to 1965, organizing and hosting in Philadelphia the first of its two triennial International Conferences convened in the United States (as shown in photo). He also presided at the Sixth International Conference on Health and Education in Madrid and provided staffing for the President’s Committee on Health Education in the early 1970s. Indeed, he was the assigned staff person on federal, state, and local governments for the President’s Committee. He worked with Senator Kennedy’s staff in crafting the Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Act of 1975, which led to the creation of the Office of Health Information and Health Promotion (now Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Bureau of Health Education, now the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
Howard married Marion Dusoir in 1969. In 1977, he retired from Equitable (at age 60). They moved to Columbia County, New York, and became involved in that community. Howard served as editor of Marion’s weekly nature newspaper column. And following Marion’s death in 2002, Howard lovingly assembled and published an illustrated collection of her columns, titled Nature’s Way.
Howard and Marion moved to Fort Bragg, California, in 1996, and became active in the Alliance for Democracy and Occupy Mendocino. He was celebrated as a “Local Peacemaker” in 2007. His 95th birthday was celebrated as a fund-raiser for the Redwood Coast Senior Center. He continued to support Occupy Mendocino and other progressive efforts and arts organizations on the Mendocino Coast until his health limited his participation.
In December 2015, family members and community friends gathered at the Mendocino community senior center to share stories, sing the old protest songs, and celebrate Howard’s life, with donations directed toward local health, human rights, and arts organizations. We were honored to eulogize him at the 2015 SOPHE annual meeting in Portland.