Born: Humansville, Mo., in southwest Missouri.

Family: Two sisters, an older sister in Holden, Mo., and a younger sister in Peoria, Ill.; wife, Donna Jean; and daughters Suzy, Lee’s Summit, Mo., Patty, Lenexa, and Peggy, Waldport, Ore. Howard and Donna Jean’s second-oldest daughter, Jean Ann, is deceased.

Occupation: Circulation clerk at Tonganoxie Public Library. Fields has been on staff the last 10 years. Before that, he volunteered about three years at the library.

Interesting fact: Fields served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.

Digging deeper: Fields grew up in Humansville, Mo., and graduated from Humansville High School in 1947. From there, he went to community college in Bolivar, Mo., and then earned a degree in business administration at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo.

He then went into the Army and served from 1951-53. He took basic training in California and then ended up in Milan, Tenn., where he spent much of his time doing audits at a shell-loading plant there.

Fields worked in the accounting department at Farmland Industries for 10 years and then Hallmark Cards for 10 years. Both jobs were in Kansas City, Mo. Halfway through his time at Farmland, Fields started working with computers. He worked exclusively in the computing department at Hallmark before moving to Houston where he worked for an oil-field equipment manufacturing plant for 20 years. He then retired and moved back to this area with his family.

“My wife wanted four seasons in the year, so we came back to the Midwest,” Fields said.

He said his family had friends who had moved to the Tonganoxie area, which helped them make the decision to move to Tonganoxie upon returning to the Kansas City metro area.

“I’m at the front desk and I greet people and I enjoy that, meeting the patrons who come in,” Fields said of his duties at the Tonganoxie Public Library.

That allows him to meet a wide range of patrons.

“Yes, all the way from grade school to senior citizens,” Fields said.