Despite an enduring, valiant battle against lung cancer, Howard Arthur Sachs died on February 10, 2019, at Legacy House in Ocala, Florida, at the age of 75. Born in Clifton, New Jersey, Howard was the youngest of four siblings and is predeceased by his parents, Hans and Myra Sachs, as well as his siblings, Kenneth Sachs, Patricia Sachs and Carol Schauwecker. Howard leaves behind his wife of 54 years, Dorothy Sachs, as well as his eldest son, Scott Sachs and his partner of twenty-two years, Mary Margaret Carr, of Washington D.C.; and his son, Keith Sachs and his wife Eleanor McMahon Sachs of Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Keith and Eleanor’s children, Charles Hans Sachs (12) and Greta Thompson Sachs (10), who have the fondest memories of their grandfather and will miss him dearly.
Following high school, Howard enlisted in the U.S. Army in June of 1960 and was honorably discharged in June 1963 after serving most of enlistment stationed in Germany, where he earned the Army’s Good Conduct Medal and was an Expert Rifleman. After his military service, Howard began working as a skilled production-line machinery mechanic, first with Nabisco in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and later with Union Carbide in Wayne, New Jersey, and finally with Mobil Chemical in Washington, New Jersey. He and Dorothy moved to Florida in 2002, where he lived until his death.
In October 1964 Howard had the good fortune of marrying Dorothy May Thompson of Wyckoff, New Jersey. Although initially branded a “bad boy” by Dorothy’s parents, Lawrence and Grace Thompson, Howard cultivated a loving and fond relationship with his in-laws and spent countless Thanksgivings trading holiday travel tips with Lawrence to whose house in Danbury, Connecticut, the Sachs family would often trek from New Jersey. Howard and Dorothy spent nearly 54 years together and Howard was lucky to have Dorothy at his side all that time, especially in the last years of his life, where she fought alongside of him until the end. Howard frequently acknowledged that he couldn’t have asked for a better wife and mother than Dorothy, and he loved her immensely.
Other than countless teenage girls of the 1950s and early ‘60s, there was likely no bigger Elvis fan than Howard. There was barely a time in the Sachs household when there was not some Elvis song playing in the background and there were enumerable Saturdays when Howard and the Sachs boys would be huddled in front of the TV watching, yet again, Elvis strutting his stuff in, among other titles, G.I. Blues, Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas. Howard was also a tremendous fan of the great Westerns of the ‘50s; his youth spent imagining the thrill of skillfully catching a dust covered, masked bandit alighting with the loot from a burgled stagecoach. Howard was instrumental in fomenting his sons’ passion for music, endlessly bombarding them in car rides with the day’s technologically advanced eight-track tapes of Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and, of course, Elvis.
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