Howard C. Katz ’63

Howie died Dec. 25, 2023, in Los Angeles following a years-long battle with cancer.

He came to Princeton from Kingswood Oxford School in West Hartford, Conn., took his meals at Court Club, and was manager of the soccer team. Howie originally planned to study architecture but majored instead in religion and philosophy and went on to teach those subjects during a 40-year career in California’s community college system.

Howie left Princeton in senior year and completed his degree at Whittier (Calif.) College. He went on to earn two post-graduate degrees in philosophy at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. During this time, he met Eleanor, a fellow grad student who became his wife of 56 years and who survives him.

Eleanor also taught philosophy in California’s Orange Coast community college system, and the two together led students five times on semesters abroad, based in Paris and Florence. Howie also joined 30 philosophy professors in a teaching mission to Chinese universities in Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan. These were happy, enriching times and came “before the illness really hit him,” Eleanor said.

Stricken with a rare form of cancer, Howie fought the illness for 25 years. He retired in 2012 from Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif., where they lived.