Almost four decades after three teenagers in Bangor, Maine, killed Portsmouth, NH native Charlie Howard, age 23, in 1984 for being gay, the city of Portsmouth is honoring him with a remembrance bench.
“Charlie was a very caring person who was always concerned about others,” Howard’s former high school teacher and former Portsmouth mayor Robert Lister told Seacoast Online back in 2019 when the application was made to install the bench.
“Though bullied,” Lister said, “Charlie always seemed to turn the other cheek. He would always convey his feeling that he was his own individual. I am convinced that had he lived, he would have been a prominent advocate for the rights of individuals.”
“He was well-known by many including former Mayor Eileen Foley, and because he has no family in the area, and because he himself is deceased since 1984, we, at the request of individuals in the community, make application to the City Council for a remembrance bench,” Lister and Portsmouth Mayor Blalock wrote in their request to the council.
According to a recent AP report printed in the Bangor Daily News:
The stone bench was installed recently in Portsmouth’s Commercial Alley with an inscription of Howard’s favorite song “I Am What I Am,” from the musical “La Cage aux Folles,” The Portsmouth Herald reported on Friday.
Over the last few years, Seacoast NH LGBT History Project raised funds for two benches in Howard’s name. In the summer, the first bench was placed at Portsmouth High School. The group also placed a headstone at Orchard Grove Cemetery in Kittery, Maine, where Howard is buried.
Posted Seacoast NH LGBT History Project on their Facebook page:
The bench in memory of Charlie Howard was installed on Commercial Alley in Portsmouth last week. Through your generous donations we now have a marker on Charlie’s grave in Kittery, a memorial bench at Portsmouth High School and now a memorial bench downtown Portsmouth. A dedication/service will be held in June for the High school bench and in July for the downtown bench. We could use help organizing both events so contact us if you are interested.
“I think the death of Charlie Howard shocked people in the Bangor area out of their complacency about matters of sexual preference and prejudice,” author Stephen King, a Maine resident, told the Bangor Daily News back in 2019 when the benches were approved for installation. “I know it did me.”
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