Bill Lynch: Howard Costello, a teacher when it counted

Math whiz, Cal fan and family man will be missed by many.|

I had the honor recently of helping Don Costello compose the obituary for his father, Howard W. Costello, a math teacher and coach at Sonoma Valley High School from 1950 to 1982, who died last month at the age of 96.

I would have liked to say he was nearly 100, but Howard would have marked me wrong for rounding up that much.

He was a very important part of my student life at Sonoma Valley High School from the time I was a freshman to the day I graduated. I’m certain that is also true for the hundreds of other local students fortunate enough to have him as a teacher or coach.

He was a big man, and more than a little intimidating on the day I first walked into his algebra I class. He seemed to be a serious, no-nonsense man, strict, without being mean, intense about the subject, yet gentle with those who struggled with it.

I’d never had a teacher so capable of taking a complicated thing and breaking it down into comprehensible parts. He made math interesting, enough so that I took four years of classes with him. There was no other teacher at SVHS, with whom I had classes for all four years.

Howard was also my JV football coach. There, too, his interest and intensity was tempered by a calm, instructive style that taught us things about the game that we would appreciate as fans later in life.

And what a fan he was – a “true blue” of the University of California, Berkeley (class of 1949), where he earned his teaching credential after service in WWII.

All of us who took his math class, football fans or not, or who played football for him, knew about the Golden Bears.

During my four years at SVHS, I don’t think he missed a Bears home game. I know, because many of my teammates and I went to the games with him.

Howard had some arrangement with the UC Berkeley athletic department that we could all get into the games for free if we would serve as ushers.

It was easy duty.

Except for the Big Game with Stanford, Memorial Stadium in Berkeley was rarely more than half full. Most of the fans and students were packed in tightly on either side of 50-yard line.

We were assigned to usher the cheap seats in sections opposite the end zones which, for most games, were nearly vacant.

Still, we had better seats than the freeloaders on “Tightwad Hill,” a part of the Berkeley hills immediately behind the stadium, from which people could watch the game, albeit with binoculars.

I was a football fan, so it was a real treat to go to the Bear games with my coach and have him explain some of the nuances we were seeing as the game progressed.

The great Pappy Waldorf had already retired. Cal had only one good year during my high school years. That one year, 1958, the Golden Bears went 6-1 in the conference and went to the Rose Bowl. Joe Kapp was their quarterback.

Watching Kapp and his team in Memorial Stadium with Howard and my teammates was a season I’ll never forget.

His love of Cal Bear football was more than matched by his patience with his students, particularly when we were struggling.

As each year of math got harder, I needed more help, and Howard was always there, as patient as any person I’ve ever known, explaining over and over, as many times as I needed to understand.

He and his wife, Marge, were active participants in the community of Sonoma. Contemporaries of my parents, they could be counted upon to support worthy community causes and events.

They had one son, Don, who was a classmate of my brother Jim. Don, like his dad, is a brilliant, affable guy, a Cal Berkeley graduate too, who had a distinguished career as a judge.

When I had children of my own, I prevailed on Howard to tutor them from time to time when they were struggling with math. He always said yes.

Marge passed away in 2010. There is no doubt that she had been the love of his life and his best friend for more than 60 years. He planted roses and dedicated a bench in her memory just a short walk along the bike path by their home on Fourth Street East near Sebastiani Winery.

Dottie and I and our Lab, Annie, walked passed his home almost every day. We always looked to see if Howard was sitting on the porch and available for a brief chat. Sometimes we’d see him pulling a wagon into which he had loaded buckets of water, with which he’d water Marge’s roses.

Other times we’d see him with a rolled up mat tucked under his arm walking toward Vintage House where he was taking a yoga class.

In recent months we’ve missed seeing him and only learned recently that he died. As the news of his passing spread around Sonoma, I noted the many emails exchanged between other former students all expressing the same thing.

“He was a good man… A great man…a wonderful man… He will be missed.”

I agree with all that, and only wish I could have spent one more afternoon with him in Memorial Stadium cheering on the Golden Bears.

Don Costello has announced that there will be a celebration of Howard’s life on June 9, from 12:30 to p.m. 3:30 in the patio of the Swiss Hotel.

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