The Lancaster News sports editor Robert Howey has retired after 45 years.
Howey was a sidelines fixture in Lancaster as well as Chesterfield counties.
He made his decision to retire official July 6, following two weeks of much-needed vacation.
“This time off, it just felt different than in the past,” Howey said. “I need to be spending more time with my family. I’ve missed too many birthdays and too many special occasions through the years. I always knew this day would come, and, well, it’s time.”
The reason why Howey missed personal events is crystal clear to us. He loves his hometown and its people.
Howey came to work here as a general assignment reporter on May 23, 1977, following his graduation from The Citadel.
His inaugural day on the job was one to remember.
Sent to report on a Fort Lawn controversy that night, Howey found himself surrounded by a roomful of angry parents at a Chester County School District board meeting.
The board had announced that it was going to shut down Fort Lawn Elementary School at the end of the school year. The students would be attending Lewisville Elementary School in Richburg in the future and nobody was happy about it.
Why was he there? Because Fort Lawn residents were so incensed over the school board’s action that they started looking at the possibility of being annexed into Lancaster County and Robert went to get their side of it.
Howey was a news reporter for about a year.
In May 1978, he was named The Lancaster News sports editor and served in that role ever since.
A master of local sports, especially at the high school level, Howey always stepped up wherever he was needed to cover news in his beloved Lancaster.
With 44 years of experience he covered three generations — from your athletics heyday to that of your grandchildren.
That’s a lot of dirt-track races, ball games, swim meets and karate tournaments, with millions of his words describing the action.
Some of the stories were unwritten, until now. Staff memberssof The Lancaster News recently shared their favorite “Robert Recollections.”
Steel-trap memory
There are so many amusing “Robert Recollections” to share that they could fill volumes.
These include Robert’s famous and funny (not to them) late-night phone calls to coaches, our 3 a.m. Saturday meals at the Huddle House following prep football games and his ability to stamp applicable nicknames on friends in the Pigskin Picks.
And by the way, nobody ever knew what they were going to say in those “Picks” articles until they were published. Laced with inside jokes and innuendo, we thought they were hilarious.
But everything isn’t funny and the one “Robert Recollection” I choose to share is serious because of the subject.
A double murder is nothing to laugh about.
One quality about Robert that most don’t know is his ingrained ability to relate local news events to high school sports happenings. I’ve never seen anything like it and it has been a newsroom godsend many times.
Here’s the perfect example.
In early 2010, the staff of The Lancaster News launched an in-depth series on 14 cold case unsolved county murders.
I was assigned the tragic deaths of Lisa Thompson and Russell Anthony, whose bodies were found inside a burning car on College Street near the old Heath Springs High School.
But trying to come up with an exact date was a problem, until Robert piped up with his steel-trap memory.
He recalled that the Lancaster High School baseball team was deep into a state playoffs run at the time.
One of the Bruins’ pitchers, Robert said, threw a no-hitter in a playoffs game shortened because of the 10-run mercy rule.
“I think it was Dean Spencer and he was a 10th-grader that year. He graduated in ’85, so that would make it about 1983, if I remember straight,” Robert said, or something close to it.
With nothing to lose, I started looking through TLN archives, and to my amazement, Robert was spot on.
On May 11, 1983, Spencer threw a five-inning no-hitter as Lancaster topped Georgetown, 12-0, in the second round of the Class 4-A Lower State baseball playoffs.
The bodies of Thompson and Anthony were found four days later on May 15, 1983.
Thompson had been shot and Anthony’s body was found inside the locked trunk of his car, which smelled of gasoline. The car interior smelled of gasoline and two gasoline-soaked pieces of cloth were found in the backseat floorboard. Both were 19 when they died.
Robert’s help made a difference so many times. And that cannot be replaced or duplicated at a small-town newspaper. Neither can his friendship.
- Gregory A. Summers
Replacing a legend can’t be done
The term legend gets thrown around a lot these days and watered down when it is given to people for the most random of things.
But the word legend means a person whose fame or notoriety makes him a source of exaggerated or romanticized tales or exploits.
Robert Howey’s exploits are just that — of legend. His writing has gained him more awards and notoriety among the people of Lancaster County and his peers in this business than he can keep up with. But you will never hear him talk about any of that.
Although my time at The Lancaster News has been short, my interactions with Robert go back more than 20 years to my former life, when I myself was a sports reporter.
His style of reporting is timeless. He is more comfortable on the sidelines covering football games than in a crowded press box with other reporters and radio guys calling the game.
When I started in this business in 2000, it was Robert that I noticed on the sidelines with pen and notepad in hand.
He was different. He would really rather be down there beside the linebackers and running backs than fighting for space in an overcrowded press box. Honestly, he didn’t need to fight for that space. He was right where he belonged — on the field. So that’s where I stood, on the sidelines, taking notes like Robert and trying to find my way in the shark-infested waters.
Even before I was a cub reporter, Robert knew my dad, Bill Banks, a former baseball and football coach at Fort Mill High School for 35 years. Anytime a Fort Mill team my dad was coaching or helping with played a Lancaster County team, in the 1970s and ’80s, Robert was there.
When my father passed away in 2020, Robert was also there for me at his funeral. We had already been friends, but by then we were co-workers as well.
Like many sports writers, Robert thrives better at 2 a.m. than at 2 p.m. For 45 years, he has thrived under stadium lights more than sunlight. When most of Lancaster County is asleep, Robert is still hard at work, tapping away on a keyboard writing stories about your children and grandchildren.
So with Robert retiring, the question that everyone wants to know is who is going to replace him. That answer is simple. Nobody.
Someone will fill the position, but nobody can replace Robert because he has something that is a dying trend in the media, especially the newspaper business. Robert has what is known as institutional knowledge about Lancaster and local high school sports that only someone from here can have, and that is something that you can’t replace, no matter how hard you try.
No one is going to come along and be able to replace Robert because no one will know Lancaster like he does. Robert Howey is Lancaster and Lancaster is Robert Howey. The two are as intertwined as the seams of a baseball. And while that twine may sometimes fray, the one constant for 45 years when it comes to local high school sports is Robert’s byline in The Lancaster News.
Something tells me that byline will still be there from time to time. Maybe not as often, but for an old newspaperman, it is hard to put down that pen and notepad.
- Mac Banks
TLN lucky to have had Robert
It’s rare today to see someone start and finish their career in the same place. The Lancaster News, and Lancaster County, were fortunate to have been the benefactors of this for the past 45 years.
Not only is Robert Howey a remarkable, award-winning sports journalist, he is one of the nicest individuals I’ve had the pleasure to work with. While his commitment and passion for reporting sports will be missed on the pages of TLN, we wish him a happy and healthy retirement.
- Dale Morefield
TLN Publisher
