If you were to assemble an ideal boss, you would want one who knew his job, let you do yours by making sure you had everything you needed to succeed, was kind to co-workers and patient and fair with customers.

Being a good Christian who led by example, wouldn’t hurt, either.

Put all this together, and you would end up with someone like Edgar E. “Bud” Howell. Howell, 86, retired Building Official in Haines City, Florida, passed away in March, leaving a legacy of consensus-building, solid code skills and many, many friends and peers who learned from him how to be good public servants – and good people.

“He was wonderful, brilliant, sharp as a tack,” said Linda Harrigan, Howell’s former secretary at Haines City. “But number one,” she added tearing up at the memory of her boss and friend, “he was a Christian. He was the best boss I ever had.”

Martha Greer, Building Permit Tech in Haines City, said Howell never hovered over them. “He just let us do our jobs. He always called us ‘his girls.’ He remembered holidays, took us to lunch. And he was so thoughtful. When he moved … he gave me his organ, his TV, his bedroom set. He was very generous.”

Sabrina Jackson, an Account Specialist from Haines City, said Howell was one of the most humble men she ever met. And she and the others could tell he was hopelessly in love with his wife, Wanda. The way they acted around each other, she said, “was genuine. You could not put on an act like that.”

Howell, very simply, was a good man who didn’t get flustered, said Medard Kopczynski , Assistant City Manager for the City of Keene, New Hampshire. “It would be like if you took the best parts of Andy Griffith and the character he played on TV, (fictional Mayberry Sheriff) Andy Taylor,” Kopczynski said. “He was very smart; very people-oriented.”

Howell was among the group in Boynton Beach, Florida, who interviewed Kopczynski for the Building Inspector position in 1983. “He seemed like a very nice man,” Kopczynski said. “He was genuinely concerned about the city and the people.

“He also was very supportive. He liked to see his people prosper. And he was very supportive of training. Unlikely as it seems these days, he would take half his staff to (SBCCI) conferences.”

Kopczynski said Howell, who became a mentor and a father figure, was extremely involved in code development, especially with regard to wind speed protection in hurricane-prone areas. Through SBCCI and as president of the Building Officials Association of Florida, Howell and others including , Bob Palchanis, Charley O’Melia and Dominic Sims, now Chief Executive Officer of the International Code Council, helped pave the way for work on the Florida Building Code several years later.

Howell was at the forefront of changing codes in Florida he believed did not adequately address wind speed concerns, Kopczynski said. But, as to his nature, Howell did so in a conciliatory manner. “He was calm in the middle of a storm,” Kopczynski said. “He could bring people together and come up with a sound resolution.”

Kopczynski left Boynton Beach in 1989, as did Howell during one of several retirements. He said Howell was beginning to have some health problems and wanted to take it easy. But Howell found he needed something to do, so he took the job of Building Official in Haines City.

Kopczynski believes Howell probably thought it would be an easy job in a town the size at that time of about 13,000 in central Florida. “But he had the fortune to catch Haines City on the upswing,” Kopczynski said chuckling.

Harrigan said Howell did a lot to clean up the dead spots around the city, including an old, abandoned hotel dating back to 1900. Howell was solid on the codes and wanted to make sure his staff was as well. But she and her co-workers remember how devoted he was to his wife.

Greer said Howell’s wife had a shop in town, and she would pop in to his office now and then. But often, she would call for him.

“She would say just, ‘Is he there?’ Greer said laughing. “We didn’t even have to ask who it was.”

Howell was devastated when his wife died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004, two years after he retired from Haines City, Kopczynski said. “He would say, ‘I don’t know why God took my wife. I was the one who was ill,’” Kopczynski said.

But he never lost his faith, Harrigan said. After his wife died, she said, “he continued to pray to the Lord.”

That’s because his faith was solid, Jackson said.

“He told me, ‘I can go any time, and I’ll be OK. I’ve made my peace Hann God.’

“He’s going to be missed. He was one of the good guys.”