ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601110032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GALVESTON, TEXAS
SOURCE: ALLAN TURNER HOUSTON CHRONICLE
JOHN WAYNE, he's not. But Gene Howard uses the American icon's persona to spread his gospel for love of country.
Hotel Galvez was in the Christmas spirit. The tree was trimmed, the holly hung. Chatter and laughter filled the lobby. All that was needed to complete the scene was a surprise visit by jolly old St. Nick.
Jingle-jangle-jingle. The sound of sleigh bells drifted through the fog-filled Gulf Coast night.
The hotel door swung wide and in walked - John Wayne? Well, Pilgrim, don't be surprised.
The movie legend and superpatriot may have died 16 years ago, but his spirit lives on in Gene Howard, a John Wayne impersonator from Bryan, Texas. A Baptist minister, Howard, 56, walks the Wayne walk and talks the Wayne talk for God and country. And you'd better believe it.
On this night, he had come to Galveston - spurs a-jingle, Winchester and six-shooter at his side - to deliver a patriotic speech to a group of volunteer firefighters from the nearby Amoco chemical plant. The fact that much of the message was delivered in verse seemed to bother the macho crowd not at all.
Howard lurched toward the crowd in a John Wayne swagger, growling the words of his own 1992 poem, ``Son Do You See Old Glory Flying Up There'':
``So if you're thinking to disgrace or burn Old Glory,
You'd better think twice and remember this story,
Because even though that flag gives you the right,
You might do well to get out of my sight.
Awww, you might be big, and you might be fast,
But Old Glory flying on that there mast,
Represents someone's blood spilled on the ground ...
And son I'll always be big enough to take you down.''
``I write my poetry from the heart,'' Howard said later at his Bryan home.
``When the Lord wants me to write something, when the time is right, it just starts to flow.''
He disdains political correctness and - even though his most controversial poems are reserved for sympathetic audiences - he generally speaks his mind and lets the chips fall where they may. Many of his public appearances - even those secular in nature - include an appeal that his audience find Christ.
Howard, who already traveled the nation conducting audio-visual seminars for churches, now travels even more with his John Wayne performances.
Since he began his Wayne work about eight years ago, he has crisscrossed the country countless times, spending as many as 200 days on the road annually.
But Howard hasn't always been John Wayne. In fact, for years, Howard didn't even care for the actor's movies. Nor has his life always been one of religion and traditional values.
Howard's early years were spent in a cramped trailer house beside a gravel pit near Sealy, Texas, where his father worked as a truck driver.
``I didn't have a good attitude at school,'' he said. ``I never took a book home to study. I think I graduated second from the bottom of my class.''
Howard joined the Air Force and later worked as a window dresser for a department store, a jack-of-all-trades for a telephone company, a commercial artist for a space industry contractor and as a chemical plant technician.
The last job with its polluted environment and long hours left Howard in the hospital with heart palpitations.
``I told the Lord that I've done everything I wanted to do. Now it was time I did what he wanted me to do,'' Howard said. The next day he received an offer of a job as an insurance salesman.
``I had always thought of insurance salesmen as being pretty low-life. But what are you going to do when you pray for guidance and the next day you get a job offer?''
The insurance job led Howard into the sphere of a ``banty rooster Baptist preacher'' who urged Howard to become more active in church. It was through his work in a Christian youth program that Howard decided to enter the ministry full time.
Howard was well established as a minister when he developed his John Wayne persona.
``I always had said things like, `Pardners, let's draw your pens,' but they had always been one-liners,'' Howard said. ``But after a while, I started thinking, `Here's something God can use.'''
Howard said he is eager to move into other creative endeavors. He wants to create an art education program for Christian schools and home-schoolers. He also hopes to create a Christian-oriented animation studio that eschews the violence that mars many contemporary cartoons.
For the moment, though, the Wayne performances - and selling copies of his poems and photos - take priority.
``People used to say I kind of looked like John Wayne,'' Howard said. ``Then they started saying that I definitely resembled John Wayne. And finally it got to them saying that I look a lot like John Wayne.''
Howard admitted he likes to appear at the Alamo in San Antonio in full John Wayne attire or, better yet, at the John Wayne statue at the Orange County airport in California. Then he greets startled onlookers and signs autographs with his own name.
Still, at times, the notoriety gets tiresome.
``I was in a restaurant once and this woman walked up to me and said, `I know you're really John Wayne come back from the dead,''' Howard said. ``I told her she was wrong, and she insisted on seeing my driver's license.
``Then she said, `I know you had that fake driver's license made up just to fool people.' There wasn't anything I could do to convince her.
``I just don't think her elevator went all the way to the top floor.''
LENGTH: Long : 103 linesby CNB