Many of us wouldn’t know Carl Howell from Adam. Many of us had never seen Carl Howell. Or if we had seen him, we would have never known it. Maybe we stood right next to him in the grocery line, at the pharmacy, at the bank and didn’t have a clue we were standing right next to a man who would sacrifice his life for this community.
Sure, many in the community knew the Carson City Sheriff’s deputy who was killed in the line of duty early Saturday morning. For he was part of this community like the rest of us. We’re sure there are some people in this community who knew Carl Howell, but didn’t even know he was a sheriff’s deputy. They probably just knew him as an ordinary guy. As in the words of The Rev. Bob Richards, Carl Howell was like all of us, “ordinary people who do extraordinary things.”
And sure, there were certainly those in this community who knew Carl Howell as the sheriff’s deputy. So it comes as no surprise to us, the outpouring of love and support from the people of Carson City for Deputy Howell, his family and the sheriff’s office. For he was one of us.
Carson City has grown to about 55,000 residents, but it remains a close-knit community. The dictionary definition of community is: “a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.”
But Carson City is more than that. The people here have a special bond that’s seen every day and it has especially been seen since Saturday.
Many of us didn’t know Carl Howell. Actually, we all knew Carl Howell. And we’ll miss him. Thank you for your service to our country and our community.
