OTSEGO COUNTY — On July 26, the Vanderbilt Area School community will gather to honor the life of a local veteran with terminal cancer with a dedication plaque at a local baseball field.
The plaque honoring First Sergeant Lawrence “Gator” Howard Jr., a highly decorated U.S. Army veteran and Gaylord resident, will be installed at 11 a.m. July 26 at 855 Grant St. in Vanderbilt, recognizing his decades of military service.
Mark Evans, founder of Hunters for Life — a nonprofit organization that partners with individuals and groups who share its commitment to making outdoor activities available to all, spearheaded the project after learning of Howard Jr.’s service and terminal diagnosis.
“What we do is, anybody in the country who for some reason can’t get out and enjoy the outdoors on their own, we find a volunteer to take them out year-round and that’s how we found this veteran,” Evans said. “We’ve taken him (Howard Jr.) out on several hunts. He’s fought esophagus cancer, had it three times and this time it came back, and there’s nothing they could do for him.”
Evans knew he wanted to do something to honor Howard Jr. after his years of dedication to the military and his fight with cancer.
“He’s had a feeding tube in since December and he’s on hospice,” he said. “I was challenged with ‘What to do? What do you do for somebody who’s dying? What do you give them?’ So what I looked for was not physical stuff because he can’t take that with him, so I looked for a memory.”
Evans then connected with another veteran, a baseball coach in Vanderbilt who coached travel baseball, and found a baseball field in Vanderbilt which had been abandoned for 8- 10 years. Through the players and volunteers, they recently brought it back to life.
He felt it would be a good place to install an engraved plaque honoring Howard Jr. and all veterans in the community.
“They needed a flagpole,” Evans said. “It’s in center field, so the flag pole is going to signify them bringing something back to life. We have a nice piece of granite saying thank you from the school to all of the veterans. Gator will be the first one to raise that flag. Anybody who wants to show up to say hello, shake his hand. That’d be great.”
Howard Jr. served in the U.S. Army for 27 years, including with the 101st Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment. Known to friends as “Gator,” a nickname rooted in his upbringing in Kissimmee, Florida, where he hunted alligators, Howard built a distinguished military career spanning multiple conflicts.
His deployments included two years in Vietnam from 1972 to 1973 and another two years in Desert Storm from 1991 to 1992.
During his service, Howard Jr. completed 369 parachute jumps from various aircraft and earned designations such as Jump Master with Wreath, Air Assault Wings, and the Combat Infantry Badge with two stars.
Howard Jr.’s commendations include the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts and numerous other honors related to deployments and combat service.
Evans said honoring veterans helps keep their stories alive for future generations to learn from.
“The cool thing about the guy is he’s very humble,” Evans said. “He joined the army when he was 16, spent 27 years in the service — and two years in Desert Storm. He jumped out of almost 400 planes. We’re just going to have a little celebration while he’s still alive. We are thanking an amazing person, the guy is so humble, you would never know he was in the last years of his life. He’s 69 now, he’s dying of cancer, he’s got no kids. He just got married here 10 years ago. The army is all he knew.
“We will have some of the players there, the coach and his wife will be there just to show these young kids that the world was not created just for them. It’s nothing fancy. It’s just a ball field in the middle of nowhere. The biggest thing is this just everybody can be there to shake his hand and appreciate what he did. I’m not looking for any glory. It’s all about him. I just ask if anybody wants to, just stop by and say hello.”