HOWARD, William FullerJul 13, 1930 - Nov 21, 2016William F. Howard, age 86, died Monday, November 21, 2016 in Austin, Texas. There will be a memorial service held on Saturday, November 26 at 2:00 at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home at 3125 N. Lamar in Austin. Bill Howard was born on July 13, 1930 in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was the only child of Isabel Fuller Howard and Harold Spink Howard. As a boy, he built and designed gadgets in the covered warehouse next door to his childhood home, and he had his own business selling eggs. He loved the outdoors and participated in Boy Scouts, earning the rank of Eagle Scout, and his enjoyment of the outdoors continued with hunting and camping throughout his life. Bill attended the New Mexico Military Institute (NMMI) for high school, and got a head start on his military service in ROTC. He went to the University of Oklahoma and graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. He belonged to the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. While in college, he met the beautiful Caroline Clarke, a champion ice-skater and sailor. Bill and Caroline were married in 1953. Bill joined the Army as a lieutenant and was promptly shipped to France. He and Caroline lived on the economy in France for two years, while Bill helped build air force landing fields and dig wells for military bases in France and Spain. He returned from military service and entered Harvard Business School in 1955. At the end of their first year in Cambridge, their son, William Clarke Howard, was born. After graduation, Bill worked for the H.B. Zachry Company and the family lived in San Antonio, Sweetwater, and El Paso. Projects he worked on included building a portion of IH-10, a sewage treatment plant in Sweetwater and a runway of the El Paso Airport. A second son, Jeffrey Stephen Howard was born in 1958. The family moved to Austin in 1960, where Bill became the plant manager for Capitol Aggregates, a supplier of sand and gravel for civil and construction projects. In this role, Bill was personally involved in the dredging of the Colorado River to make Town Lake in downtown Austin (now known as Ladybird Lake). After leaving Capitol Aggregates, Bill designed, built and managed SuperRock, a lightweight aggregate plant near Corsicana, Texas. Bill's last business was Grentek, a sheet metal fabrication company for the needs of local high-tech industry. In Austin, Bill was a member of several civic groups including the Chamber of Commerce, the Admirals Club and Boy Scouts, serving as leader of Troop 59 at St. Matthew's Church. Bill remained an avid outdoorsman and sports enthusiast. He was part of the "Nine-Tenths" Club, cheering for UT football (except when they played one's own university), a founding member of the Austin Yacht Club, a competitive sailor for decades, a pilot, and a hunter. After attending a sail-racing school in Rhode Island, the family bought the sailboat "Starshine" from the school, and he and Clarke sailed the boat from there to Galveston, bringing it overland to Lake Travis. He enjoyed yearly hunts in south Texas, with friends and his favorite companion, the smiling Labrador retriever, Rock. Caroline passed away in April of 1989 after a long battle with cancer. Three years later, Bill married Dr. Barbara Alford (Bobbie). They enjoyed their semi-retirement years together renovating their new home, backpacking, sailing and travelling, most notably taking a wedding trip to Tanzania and Botswana. Bill was preceded in death by Caroline and his son Jeff. Survivors include Bill's wife, Bobbie; son, Clarke and his wife Rosemary; grandchildren Cameron, Christian, Catherine and Rebecca Howard; stepdaughter Elizabeth Alford and her husband Michael Young, and their children, James and Clara Young; niece Caroline Young and her husband Rick of Oklahoma City; and nephew Bill Payne and his wife Wendy of Dallas. The family would like to express a huge heartfelt thanks to the wonderful caregivers from Nurses Case Management; Yomi Alimi, Angela Dean, Bettina Howard, Mary Brown, and Patrick Agwuegbulum. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to a scholarship fund for young sailors at the Austin Yacht Club. Obituary and memorial guestbook available online at www.wcfish.com