Frederick Howden Jr., Priest and Chaplain of the Armed Forces

Today the Church commemorates Frederick “Ted” Howden Jr., an Episcopal priest and military chaplain who remained with his soldiers through defeat, imprisonment, and death.

Ted Howden grew up in the missionary life of the Church. He was twelve when his father became bishop of the Missionary District of New Mexico and Southwest Texas. His father ordained him deacon at Saint Clement’s Church in El Paso on June 10, 1928, and priest at the same church on January 13, 1929. Ted then served scattered congregations across New Mexico, traveling long distances to bring them the sacraments and pastoral care.

In 1941, Howden was a captain in the New Mexico State Guard and chaplain to the 200th Coast Artillery. The regiment was composed largely of Hispanic, Latino, and Native American soldiers. It was federalized and sent to the Philippines in September of that year.

Howden walked over the hills from battery to battery, held services in the open air, listened to the men, and distributed whatever comforts he could find: candy, soap, and cigarettes.

Japanese forces took Bataan in April 1942 and Corregidor in May. Howden and the surviving soldiers captured on Bataan became prisoners of war and were forced to endure the Bataan Death March, during which thousands died from killing, exhaustion, wounds, hunger, and thirst. Those who survived entered prison camps in which disease and starvation continued the work of the march.

Howden passed through several camps with his men. Captivity left him little to give, yet he shared even that. Again and again he surrendered part of his own food to prisoners whom he judged to be in greater need. The chaplain who had once carried the sacraments between distant New Mexico congregations now carried prayer and companionship among starving prisoners.

By late 1942, Howden was suffering from dysentery and pellagra brought on by starvation. He died on December 11 in a prison camp on Mindanao. His men buried him in a small cemetery in the jungle, about a mile from the camp. His family did not learn of his death until the following June. In 1948, his remains were brought home and reinterred in Albuquerque.

The Diocese of the Rio Grande kept Howden’s memory before the wider Church, especially among veterans and their families. They remembered a priest who did not stand apart from the suffering entrusted to him. He stayed, prayed, and gave away the food by which he might have lived.

Howden’s priesthood reached its last expression in captivity, where almost every ordinary means of ministry had been taken from him. The presence of the shepherd remained. May Christ make us faithful in the places we would not choose and teach us to recognize what we can still give when little remains.