Photo by Tom Jenz
Howard Eddie
Howard Eddie
When I met Howard Eddie at a Downtown cafe, he was dressed in a slick gray vest over a classic blue dress shirt with a rose-colored tie. A goblet of red wine sat at his elbow. Here was success, I thought. But achieving success can sometimes mean driving a road littered with orange barrels. In other words, learning experiences.
As Eddie later told me, “Success takes levels. It’s not instant, and if success was instant, it would not be sustainable because it wouldn’t have the foundation of these levels. My own journey has never been an easy one. A college dropout, ex-criminal, ex-drug dealer, victim and survivor of family dysfunction.”
At 52, Eddie is now a jack of several skilled trades and a jack of good causes, too. The very first so-called ‘jack of all trades’ was in fact William Shakespeare. Good company for anyone. But Eddie had a broken beginning before molding himself into a modern Renaissance man.
Howard, you’ve had a difficult life journey. Tell me about your upbringing, your family, mother and dad, neighborhoods, and how you got through your younger years.
I was born in New York City in Harlem. My family lived in the Foster Projects, the King Towers, on 115th Street. I grew up in those projects. It was beautiful. We didn’t even know we were poor. The older guys were everybody’s brother, and the mothers were everybody’s mother. My own mother worked for the Internal Revenue Service, and my dad managed an arcade on Times Square.
From my understanding, the underground economy in the Harlem projects in the 1980s revolved around drugs, namely cocaine.
Yes. By the time I was 12, crack cocaine was all over the projects, and it was a very scary thing. My mother was from South Carolina, and in 1983, we moved to a small town named Huger, not far from Charleston, to escape crime and drugs. But I later found out it was much worse in South Carolina. When crack cocaine hit Charleston, I was graduating from high school in 1989. I went to South Carolina State College to study Electrical Engineering. Student loans and grants paid my way, but pocket money was scarce. It was the best time of my life for those few years.
During that time, I was selling drugs to make good money. Friends and family members were also dealing drugs. But then something happened that changed me. A friend and I stopped at a gas station. I was wearing big pants and a hoodie. The clerk stared at me, we argued, and then we had a physical fight. My friend ran out. I followed, and later we got pulled over, and I get accused of armed robbery, which did not happen. I ended up taking the Alford, which is a plea deal where I did not admit guilt but was still judged guilty. My sentence was two years probation. That incident destroyed my college career. I was studying to be an electrical engineer.
How did your life change after you quit college?
My father did not want me to quit formal education, but I was young and dumb. I was doing well dealing drugs. My God, I sold a lot of drugs, made decent money. I smoked lots of weed and enjoyed the excess of the street life. Luckily, I never turned out to be an addict. I quit selling drugs in 1999 when my child was born. I had gone to college for electrical engineering, and I got a tech job at Bayer Corporation, makers of aspirin. I did well there, and I moved onto Kinder Morgan in quality control sampling coal. They do energy infrastructure work. Then, I got a job as an engineering technician at the Naval Weapons station in South Carolina working with UEC Electronics, where I discovered that I had a gift for quickly understanding schematics and blueprints.
After that, I became a freelance engineering technician for different companies including Raytheon. I’ve worked on everything from locomotives, to planes, trains, and automobiles. I’ve traveled the country for 20 years flying into various cities, staying in hotels. It’s certainly been an experience.
How did you end up as a Milwaukee resident?
I came to Milwaukee in 2017 as a contractor with DRS Naval Power Systems that builds air missile defense systems for nuclear submarines. I worked on this assignment for 18 months. I liked Milwaukee. So I moved out of my hotel room and got an apartment downtown. I was lovin' city life, and then I met a woman and fell in love. I decided to move here permanently, and I’ve been here ever since.
After my Naval Power Systems contract ran out, I was hired on a contract by GE Healthcare in Pewaukee, and that’s when I fell in love with the medical industry. I was installing and maintaining diagnostic imaging devices such as MRI or CT equipment, arthroscopic surgical imaging devices, and radiology equipment. I was responsible for the testing and evaluating 550 RF coils recalled globally to Milwaukee for repair. I did that job for two years or so, then went to work full-time at Signature MRI as the Imaging Engineer for the whole Midwest region. I cover eight hospitals in the Wisconsin and Chicago area. I fix imaging device problems and do design upgrades.
I read that you are one of only 4% of African American imaging engineers in the country. Why aren’t more Black people working in this important tech field?
I think it’s because Black men shy away from the technical side of healthcare. As for me, I have a technical mind, and I love what I do.
You are also a versatile talent. You have delved into the music business as owner & CEO of H Eddie Enterprise. I understand your company caters musical events. Describe your music business and its services.
Yes, I started doing events back in 2015 in Charleston, SC. I create the live shows, hire the bands, book the venues, hire the staff, and I put the show on. I pay the band members, book the hotels and flights, and I do 100% of each show’s production myself.
What genres of music acts do you promote?
I’ve stuck to old school R&B. The rap genre is too volatile. My audiences are like me. Middle-aged and some retired. They want to put their nice linen on, take the wife to dinner, see a good show, and go home. They don’t want to get sweaty and get to partying. Last year, I booked Grammy Award winner, Howard Hewitt from the group Shalamar, an American R&B and soul music vocal group. He performed at the Marcus Center of Performing Arts. I’ve also booked artists such as Peter Jericho, an Afrobeats Chicago artist, as well as Milwaukee’s Christopher’s Project. The music business is my passion, you might say. My tech job is a means.
You are an advocate of mentoring, helping youth get a positive start in life. You are a professional development mentor in the Milwaukee public schools and also for 100 Black Men of Greater Milwaukee. Young Black men in Wisconsin face tough challenges. Unemployment, crime, and poverty are pretty high, while the graduation rate is well below national average. How do you find young people to mentor? And what do you do as a mentor?
I’ve discovered that the greatest gift is time, not money. I’ve been told that my years on the street was a waste of time, but I don’t see it that way. What I learned from those bad times gave me the experience to help mentor the youth of today. At 100 Black Men, we get emails from mothers asking for help with their sons. First, I give the boys the resources they need to be a better person. I teach them the principles of manhood: personal hygiene, financial and social media literacy, conflict resolution, learning how to walk away from a fight and even learning to tie a tie.
Let’s say I’m a teenage Black boy, and there is no dad in my family. I come to you looking for guidance. What do you tell me?
First, I have to earn your trust. I’d tell you I’m here to help you, make you the best you can be. I’d find out your triggers, and I’d tell you mine.
What might be those triggers for a teen boy?
Most of them revolve around fear and ignorance. You might be more worried about what kids say about you on social media than going outside and getting shot on the street. You need to learn how to live without fearing outside opinions. That involves self-respect. If there is no dad in your home, your mom might be smothering you with love, keeping you from things you need to see to grow up. I’d assure you that I can help because whatever you’re going through, I’ve been there. I give you a card with my phone number and email and ask you to reach out to me anytime if you need to talk.
You are committed to community engagement. You are an active member of both the 100 Black Men of Milwaukee, where you serve as VP of Development, as well as a member of The Milwaukee Urban league, where you serve as Co-Chair of Advocacy with your partner Rhonda Stovall. How do you see your role in the Milwaukee community?
I want to serve the people, be inclusive. When I leave this earth, I want to have made a difference with somebody. I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but my goal is now to teach the youth through my mistakes as lessons of things to do differently when confronted by the troubling situations I faced.
I get the sense that conflicts among inner city Blacks aren’t getting much better. Too much everyday violence and disruption.
It’s heartbreaking. Every day, you wake up and hear about some violent incident that will break your heart. And there is still mistrust of the police. There are a lot of good people from nonprofits and governments that have their own agendas. We need to realize we all have the same goal—save the kids, save the people. At the 100 Black Men of Milwaukee, we try to work with police and align our goals. Soon, we will have the “National Night Out” with the police department [Aug. 9 at Johnsons Park.]
In a letter to me, you said you wished to share a moral you’ve learned. Here is that moral: “It is CRITICAL that you never allow people to define you. YOU define YOU. You never surrender to situations. You learn from them.” So how has that moral been manifested in your own life?
As a young man, I’d been in trouble with the law and made mistakes, and I was judged by people in my community that I would be this way for the rest of my life. If you let people dictate your digression in life, you will live your life based on their negative opinions. I’m saying, “Cut those chains.” If I hadn’t cut those chains, I’d be a bum now, a sad story of a wasted life.
