Bremerton Central Lions Foundation Auction, Sponsorship Tribute:

Howard B. “Sam” Young was born in 1932 and spent 30 years in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a Master Chief Yeoman. I met Sam in 1974 when he oversaw the administration office of Commander Submarine Group 7 at the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. I was secretary of the base bowling league and needed a heavy duty printer to print the weekly league sheets for all 16 teams, and COMSUBGRU 7 had the best printer on the base. Master Chief Young allowed me to use their printer each week and we would wave at each other on my way in and out as I walked by the open door of his office. That was the only contact we had in Japan.

Six years later we – along with our Japanese wives - happened to show up at the same moment at the Lions Club newspaper dumpster in East Bremerton, and despite our limited history, we looked familiar to each other, and simultaneously said “Yeah, I know you!”

The following year I sponsored Sam into the Bremerton Central Lions Club. Sam had a long, productive and enjoyable career with the Lions. For many years he served as the custodian of the club’s paraphernalia in our cabinet at the Elks club. He also served in many of the activities associated with Bremerton’s Sister City of Kure in Japan. In the meantime, my wife Itsuko and I had many years of fun with Sam and Masako and family in and around Bremerton.

Apart from the Lions, Sam was busy. In the 1980s he was the Coordinator at the Bremerton office carrying out the goals of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), enacted by Congress in 1973. The program offered work to those with low incomes and the long term unemployed, as well as summer jobs to low income high school students. The intent was to impart a marketable skill that would allow participants to move to an unsubsidized job. Congress eventually discontinued that program.

Having obtained a master’s degree, in the early 1990s Sam obtained a corporate position in Sendai, Japan, where he oversaw programs teaching English to Japanese corporate employees. While there, he also taught English to a number of personal students. After a few years, he endured some heart issues and after recovering, they decided it was time to retire and they returned to Bremerton in 1996.

Sam was good at many things, but foremost he was an educator and a thinker. Verbally he was very plain-spoken, but when putting words on paper, streams of consciousness flowed early and often. Anyone that received snail mail from Sam would say that his letters were “complete,” to say the least.

One of Sam's poems to his wife: