Matt Howells gave the invocation and led the pledge

Matt Howells gave his new member bio.  He was invited to Rotary by Rick Voigt, and they have been friends since fourth grade.  He grew up in Olmsted Township, where his family had a grocery store: Howell's Country Market, which his parents sold when he was a senior in high school.

 

Matt had ambitions to be an attorney, and because he was going to work his way through college picked up carpentry, and framed a number of houses in Strongsville.  As he went back to school he realized that he fell in love with construction, and gravitated to that with bigger projects, joining a union, and was trained and mastered carpentry while going to school in the evenings.

 

From there he was hired as a construction manager by the Cleveland Museum, then worked for Del Monte, and after a few other projects was hired by Somera Road, where he was in charge of 10 markets in the US, including the Royalton Collection project in Strongsville.

 

He's been married for 43 years, and has three boys, one in real estate, one who works at his company as a construction superintendent, an the third is a special needs student at Strongsville Middle School.