BY STEFANO ESPOSITO AND EMILY BROSIOUS
Chicago Sun-Times and Homicide Watch Chicago
Betty Howard taught at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep on the South Side, but her daily work often stretched far beyond its walls.
The beloved special education teacher, a innocent victim of gun violence Thursday evening, was also the “first lady” of New Light Holiness Church at 4740 W. Chicago Ave., where her husband of five years, the Rev. Major Howard is pastor. She worked as a case manager at the church and organized a tutoring program.
“Betty was a good woman …” her husband said Friday. “She was all about the children.”
Howard, 58, of the 2200 block of South 14th Avenue in Broadview, was shot in the head about 5:25 p.m. in the 700 block of East 79th, police said.
Family said Howard, who had two sons and two grandchildren, was shot working her second job in her Chatham real estate office.
A 58-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman were also shot and treated on the scene, police said. The man suffered a graze wound to his abdomen, and the woman sustained a graze wound to her hand.
Betty Howard grew up in Englewood and valued education, persevering until she earned her doctorate, her husband said.
“She was always interested in educating children,” said Lynne Long, Howard’s sister-in law. “She wanted to give back in that way.”
“I used to tease her that she was a professional student. …. Dr. Betty Howard — the title meant a lot,” Long said.
As a teacher at Brooks, Howard would travel to homes to teach disabled students — doing whatever it took to help some of the city’s most challenged youth, Brooks Principal D’Andre Weaver said.
Howard, who taught at Brooks for seven years, even rode school buses to help out when school aides were absent, Weaver said.
Betty Howard/ Photo from Family
“She did it willingly, every single day — making home visits, working with kids after school, before school,” Weaver said. “We truly miss her, we love her and we’re really thinking about her family at this time.”
Inside Brooks, grieving students were writing “thank you” letters to Howard.
Shortly after noon, about 25 students from Howard’s home room released green and pink balloons, the colors of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the teacher’s Chicago State sorority with whose members she remained close.
“Betty’s death is an enormous loss of someone who meant so much to others,” Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said in a statement, “especially through her work as a special education teacher serving children with unique needs who required exceptional care.”
The randomness of the crime left her family with unanswerable questions.
“It’s crazy, she wasn’t a thief, she didn’t harm anyone,” Long said, noting Howard’s brother, Orlando Long, is a police officer. “This isn’t how it was supposed to end for her.”