Lawrence Kelly Houghteling

Lawrence Kelly Houghteling

Lawrence Kelly Houghteling (born James Lawrence Houghteling) of Ruxton, MD, aged 80 and 1 month, died at Greater Baltimore Medical Center the morning of August 3, surrounded by loving family. He was predeceased by his father, James Houghteling, his mother, Fiora Mariotti Houghteling, and his brother, Peter Houghteling. He is survived by his sons, Samuel Houghteling, of Fort Collins, CO, and Jack Houghteling, of New York, NY, his partner, Nikia Leopold, of Ruxton, MD, his daughters-in-law, Kelly Houghteling of Fort Collins, CO, and Abigayle Dolmseth of New York, NY, a brother, Robert Houghteling, of Oakland, CA, a sister, Nan Wicker, of Myrtle Beach, SC, the mother of his sons, Regina Kelly Houghteling, of Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, two beloved granddaughters, Sophie and Willa, as well as friends and family stretching from Dartmouth, MA to Taos, NM and far beyond.

Born at Walter Reed in Washington, DC, Larry lived in a number of places throughout his childhood: a time-and-again homebase on Kalorama Road, where resided his grandmother, Laura Delano Houghteling, a first cousin of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his grandfather, James Lawrence Houghteling, who served in a number of roles in the Roosevelt administration; on Buzzards Bay, MA, where his family had a home and ancestral roots; in Garches, France, where his father Jim worked for the United States government in the years following World War II; in Cambridge and Newton, MA; in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA; in Bucks County, PA, where he attended high school; and, lastly, in New Haven, CT, where he began his undergraduate studies at Yale University, returning two decades later to finish his degree with his young son and wife.

It was in New Haven, in the early sixties, where he’d create, further and make decisions about the key components that would come to define his life (conflicting and, yet, reconciliatory, digesting and combining them as he did into a final, sundry matrimony): a contagious curiosity and intellectuality; candor; independence; a propensity – which can only be described as deeply American – for change and movement; a desire for the many textures and tenors of friendship; an ardor for baseball, driving, visual art, song and books (the latter for which he’d extend car rides four and six hours at a time, and in the process render the business model of every used bookstore between New York and Boston viable); a search for communal meaning, national and local; a healthy, is-this-or-is-this-not-over-the-line pugnacity; a love of (and pride for) family; and, perhaps most finally, a care and compassion – complete and three-dimensional – for all that the north, south, east and west of his brain could come to see and conjure about the world.

Later in life he’d find the candor, friendship and independence he’d so been searching for in San Francisco and Taos, NM and as a reporter, disc jockey, executive director of an art institute, commune resident, carpenter, editor and writer; he’d create and rediscover family after moving back to the east coast – to Hastings-on-Hudson with Regina, Sam and Jack and in Massachusetts with his family; he’d find quarrel – the right kind, he hoped and thought – as the virtual world burgeoned and post-colonial wars and authoritarian know-nothingness lent way to a wide and blunt expression of thought and feeling (his email archive, as Harrison Ford would say, belongs in a museum); he’d find communal meaning as a teacher of all subjects but science at Children’s Village in Dobbs Ferry, NY and in East Harlem; and he’d find much of that deep sense of compassion (of everything) late in life as a caretaker – and as a brother, son, partner and friend – first with Peter in the Berkshires, then with Fiora in Newton and, finally, with Niki in Baltimore.

He will always be remembered. He will always be appreciated. But, most acutely, he will always be missed.

Memorial plans will be scheduled for the fall and the beginning of 2025.