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It was a tragedy that devastated the family. Howard’s mother had to be hospitalized, and he and his brother and sister were “passed around,” as he terms it, to other family members as they grew up. Although the death of his father was traumatic, however, Howard also considers it a galvanizing event that would shape the course of his life. “It gave us an early view of what it’s like to have somebody wrongfully taken in a manner that’s preventable and needless,” he says. “That’s gone a long way in guiding my career.”