Howard Stephens Jr. grew up winning. State high school singles and doubles champion at Country Day. Ranked No. 21 nationally as a junior. At Yale he captained the tennis team. Back home he was ranked No. 1 in the St. Louis district three times and as high as No. 2 in the Missouri Valley. 

In 1938 he led the Yale-Harvard team against Oxford-Cambridge and won the deciding match to capture the Prentiss Cup. His brother McLeod did the same in 1940. They are the only pair of brothers to lead Yale-Harvard to successive international victories. 

Then the war came. Howard earned the Bronze Star holding a strategic position in Belgium until reinforcements arrived, helping slow the Nazi advance through the Ardennes. 

He was twenty-eight years old when he died in the Battle of the Bulge. 

(1995)