@HuskerlandBob Sez: The following was previously published in our local newspaper, The Central City Republican-Nonpareil, as a tribute to my friend, and employee, Jeff Hower. Not many of you in this arena know Jeff but some do, and many others know or know of his son, Seth, who is a starter on both the Nebraska Christian football and basketball teams.

Even in death my friend Jeff Hower was right on deadline.

In a shocking turn of events Hower died last Wednesday - press day for the R-N - after a tough stretch of road these past few months, especially in his final two weeks. So young, only 48 years old.

How do I know he was 48? Back right after the first of the year Hower and I were sitting in my office and I told him I had the flu over Christmas, and how at age 61 it had really knocked me for a loop. He told me he, too, had the flu over the holidays and, at age 48, it had also knocked him for a loop. And now he had a nagging cough he wished would go away.

Basically four months later he was dead, an ending no novelist could have dreamed up, not even a published author like Hower. Twice over, actually, Hower was a published author twice over.

I will leave it for others to address his faith, church work, his early life and professional life outside of what he did for your local newspaper, but this all started when I first met Jeff Hower back when he and his brother Jody worked out at Herk’s Welding, circa sometime in the mid-90s. Over the course of the next 20, 25 years or so he kept coming in and out of my life until becoming a permanent fixture about 10 years ago.

Jeff Hower became the news reporter for The Republican-Nonpareil.

Hower loved to write, anyway, and about a decade ago he’d had his first published work hit the newsstand, an article he’d written for the Grand Island Independent. He was all kinds of pumped up about that and called me to say, if we ever needed something written...

Funny he should say that. We’d just had our news reporter leave unexpectedly, school was about to start and we were in a tight spot, newspaper-wise. Hower said he could pitch in, just tell him what we needed done. I told him it all needed done, and he pitched in.

Neither of us knew exactly where this adventure was going to take us, but in the short term Hower was, more than I knew at the time, living a dream. He loved creating the written word, loved telling stories, loved being around people, and he was good at it from the start. No doubt about it, Hower was a born story teller and it came across in his written words.

As time went by he wrote sports for a spell, took some time off somewhere in the middle, and then was at his best in what turned out to be the home stretch of his newspaper career.

Over the past decade the writings of Jeff Hower have informed and amused many of you, most of you if you are reading this now, and his journalist pride and joy was his weekly column, I’m Just Sayin’. Pretty catching name for a column, no? It is...and so much better than the other half dozen ideas he threw at me the day he was deciding what to call his little corner of the newspapering world. Let’s just say I’m Just Sayin’ was a clear cut winner when it came to the naming rights. (wink)

Over the years Hower addressed a multitude of topics in his column, ranging from family matters, to military commendation, to Go Big Red. And one thing about it, the boy could type. He had to in order to get around all that he had to say each week - his was an avalanche of words, always strung together in his own trademark, warm and funny sort of way.

As our news reporter Hower wrote a multitude of feature stories, shining the light on so many people and events in our community, and he also did the dirty work, dealing with the hard news that sometimes is especially hard to deliver in a small town. Hower never flinched in those instances, doing his job because he knew he owed it to his readers.

We have had several of you either in our office or address us in person over the past week, offering condolences to our newspaper staff for our loss. Think about that. Some of that speaks to the smallness, the closeness, of our staff, but much more of it is Hower was family to us in this office, and you people know that. His death truly represents losing one of our own.

By the time you read this his funeral services will be over and done with, and life will be moving on, painfully on, for those closest to Hower. His wife Daurice was by his side through thick and thin - she was some sort of cub reporter herself, often swinging by to snap the occasional photo when Jeff was unavailable - and our heart goes out to her and the kids, Alexis and Seth.

For those of you who were his loyal readers - and if you are reading this I assume you are - you remember the pride he expressed when Alexis was about to join the National Guard. A patriot heart, Hower was very happy, and very nervous, about his only daughter taking that heroic path in life.

As for Seth, well, Hower lived and breathed every game, every play of Seth’s career. From the early days of Little League baseball - when his teammate Shane Stahn, age 7, told me their first baseman, Seth, was the team’s “power hitter” - to his current day standing as a three-sport high school varsity athlete, Jeff was Seth’s biggest fan. Oh, he tried to be coy, tried to downplay the good things Seth was accomplishing in his career, then last winter the kid goes and scored 27 against Heartland and Pops takes me through every point, basket by basket. As a fellow dad, it was fun to sit back and listen.

Speaking of Seth and his games, Daurice has a request, especially of you men out there. When you have some time on a Friday night this football or basketball season she hopes you, and me, will take time to go to one of Seth’s games. You know, to basically serve as a surrogate for his father, who never missed.

Only thing is he won’t be there anymore for Seth’s games, or his first grandchild, and he will be missed. RIP, Hower, you’ll always remain front page news.