The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Still a strong presence
Howard still remembered 10 years after his shocking death
STORRS — When Andre Dixon begins his day Friday, Jasper Howard will be on his mind.
And it’s not because Oct. 18 marks 10 years to the day since Howard died. In fact, Dixon thinks about friend and teammate every day.
For the past decade, Howard’s life and death have served as a motivator for Dixon and other members of the 2009 UConn football team.
“It’s something that kind of stains you for life,” Dixon said this week. “I think it did for all of us.”
Howard, a Miami native, was a junior defensive back for Randy Edsall’s Huskies. UConn was 42 after beating Louisville on the afternoon of Oct. 17, a game in which Howard had 11 tackles, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery.
That night, Howard and some teammates were outside of the student union during a dance. Howard was stabbed in the abdomen during an altercation and was later pronounced dead at St. Francis Hospital in Hartford.
John Lomax of Bloomfield pleaded no contest to first degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 years in prison on March 25, 2011.
At UConn and around the football program, the legacy of Howard remains strong. There’s a monument dedicated to Howard in front of the scoreboard at Rentschler, erected in 2014 during a ceremony that included many former teammates.
Edsall was coaching Maryland when the monument was unveiled, but he helped fund the project. And he has since returned to UConn as head coach.
“That’s something that just never goes away for the people that were here, the people that were part of the program,” Edsall said about Howard’s death. “You just look back on it, how senseless that it really was, that a young man’s life was taken here on campus. In the prime of
his life, basically. It’s always something that going to stick with you.”
Members of the 2009 team were at Rentschler Field for the South Florida game two weeks ago. Among those on hand: Howard’s fiancee, Daneisha Freeman, along with her daughter Ja’Miya.
Ja’Miya was born after her father died and her curiosity about his life led her mother to publish a children’s book, “Miya’s Guardian Angel.”
Like her father, Ja’Miya is athletic — she’s an accomplished track athlete.
“She got her speed from Jazz,” Dixon said. “I know in the book it says that when she runs track, she imagines meeting her dad at the finish line. Something like that, that’s powerful. She’s running to Jazz.
“She’s athletic genetically because of Jazz. It’s just dope to see. … But when she smiles, she looks like Jazz. Jazz was one of those dudes who always had a smile on his face. That’s what we see with his daughter, too.”
Dixon operates his own personal training facility in Hartford, Dixon Sports Performance & Fitness. He pursued professional football and has dabbled in high school coaching, but his pursuit of his own business is in no small part related to the loss of his friend.
“As a person, it makes you take life a little more seriously,” Dixon said. “You’ve got to be a little more serious about life when you see something like that, somebody that was such a great person, doing such great things, and their life just comes to a halt. It makes you look at every day and take it more seriously. When you wake up, it makes you be on a mission. How fast we had to grow up and become men really quick.”
The 2009 team lost three games in a row after Howard’s death before finishing with four consecutive wins, a streak that began with an emotional doubleovertime win at Notre Dame and included a victory over South Carolina in the Papajohns.com Bowl. Dixon scored the gamewinning touchdown at Notre Dame and ran for 126 yards in the bowl game.
Howard was on the minds of the players during those games. And that hasn’t changed much over the past 10 years.
“The kids that were part of that team, it’s something that I think is still difficult for them,” Edsall said. “The only thing you can do is always remember him … understand what he meant. Because when you think about him, all it does is, it just brings a smile to your face because of the way he went about his business, how he conducted himself.”