David M. Howard [Sr.]
Assistant General Director
Latin America Mission
Cartagena, Colombia
August 10, 1966
Rev. Ernest L. Fowler was born November 24, 1907 in Pender, Nebraska, and arrived in Colombia in December 1934 with the special burden to evangelize the Indian tribes of the northern coast. His work was varied and with several different groups of Indians over a number of years. In 1965 the Latin America Mission released him from all other duties so that he could again dedicate full time to his "first love". During the past year he had been working among the Yukpa tribe (northern Motilones) of the Sierra Perija and also among the Empera (Choco area of the Upper Sinu River in Cordoba). On June 15 his entire family (except Lance, age 17, who is in the U.S.) accompanied him into the Sierra Perija to spend the summer among the Yupka Indians. This included his wife Eve, Valerie (age 15), John (age 14) and Alison (age 10). Ernest made two trips out of the Sierra subsequent to that date, returning for the second time on July 25, 1966, to the Indian territory. On this trip my son David Howard Jr. accompanied him to visit with John and his family.
On Wednesday, August 3, Ernest took his daughter, Valerie, and the Colombian girl who helps them in their home, Elvira Gonzalez (age 19) on a hike up the mountain. About 4 p.m. Eve was in the home with John, Alison, David Howard Jr., and Peter Clark (10-year-old son of Alick Clark, veteran missionary who has worked for many years in this same area with Ernest. Mr. Clark and his wife are living in Valledupar, at the foot of the Sierra.). A group of seven men heavily armed (all with rifles, three with pistols, one with machine gun), dressed in partial police uniforms, arrived at the house posing as police looking for bandits. Eve invited them to sit down and served them lemonade and bananas.
As Eve was about to fix coffee as well, the men ordered the children to line up along the wall. Then they began to move around the house and pick up items which they put in knapsacks. At pistol point they forced Eve to turn over to them all the money in the house. During this period of time they constantly threatened the children with guns, one man swinging a cocked pistol casually in front of them.
After a period of robbing and sacking the house they shut the children up in a small room which serves as a bathroom and forced Eve to turn over more goods of all sorts. At this point the robbing and sacking took on violent form, with goods being smashed and strewn all over the house. The bandits stole nearly all the food in the house, all equipment such as typewriter, tape recorders, cameras, pens, etc. They opened language files and threw the materials all over the house, mixing papers with mimeograph ink which they poured around.
As they finished the total sacking of the house, they shut Eve up in the bathroom with the children. During this period the children had been quite certain that their end had come, and Eve had felt the same way. They had huddled down on the floor to protect themselves behind the concrete wall in case the bandits machine-gunned through the door. At one point they could hear termites working in the wood of the house, which sounded like the crackling of flames beginning. They thought that the bandits were going to burn the house down over them, and they even prayed that they would be shot instead of burned alive.
The bandits then moved up to a thatch-roofed house where the boys had been sleeping in a tent, and sacked and robbed everything of value there.
At approximately 5:00 p.m. the men moved off down the mountain trail and met Ernest and the two girls (Valerie and Elvira) coming along about 500 yards from the house. Again they posed as police and asked Ernest for his shotgun (which he always carried for hunting purposes). He turned it over, asking them for a receipt. They also asked for his machete (which he used for cutting trails in the mountains). Again he asked for a receipt. Then, without warning, one of the men fired his pistol point-blank into Ernest's face, undoubtedly killing him instantly. He fell on the side and rolled over on the trail, and they shot him a second time in the back through the heart.
Then the criminals asked Valerie and Elvira where Alick Clark and Carl Lehmann were. These are the two other missionaries (both Plymouth Brethren) who are working in that area. Alick was in Valledupar and Carl had just left Colombia for a short vacation while the Fowlers lived in his house in the mountains. The bandits were obviously looking for all three men, as they knew them by name. The girls insisted that they were not around, even though the bandits threatened to shoot them if they didn't reveal their whereabouts.
When the men moved off down the trail, Eve heard the cries of Valerie and Elvira, who soon came into the house and were reunited with the others. (At first the girls thought everyone had been killed, as they found no one in the house until Eve and the others came out of the bathroom.) Eve tried to persuade some of the Indians who were nearby to go recover Ernest's body, but they refused. So David and John agreed to go. David went first and covered Ernest's face with a towel, to spare John and the others the pain of seeing their father's face in such horrible condition. Then the boys wrapped the body in a tarpaulin, laid it on a ladder, and carried it down to the house. They began immediately to dig a grave.
However, darkness overtook them very soon, and they had no lights for fear of being seen. In the gigantic ravines of the high Andes darkness descends with a blackness that cannot be penetrated. Eve and the children then decided to settle down for the night near Ernest's body, as no one wanted to return to the house. They were not sure if the bandits might return for a second attack during the night. On two occasions they heard voices, and fled into the woods to hide, thinking that it might be the bandits. The second time they decided to move on up the mountain to an Indian cluster of houses and ask to spend the night there.
About 9:30 p.m. John Fowler and an Indian chief started up the mountain to the home of Jesús Perez, a Colombian Christian who lives two hours above the Lehmanns' home in the house which Ernest and Eve built 20 years ago when they first went into this area shortly after their marriage. Jesús had prayer with them and then sent down a man immediately to Codazzi to seek help. About 5:30 a.m. Jesús himself arrived where Eve was. About 7:00 a.m. he started on down the mountain to seek help. He arrived in Codazzi (the nearest town) shortly after noontime and advised Alick Clark and the police. Alick started immediately for the Sierra, arriving at the foot of the mountains about 5:00 p.m. and went up on foot by night with five policemen, arriving at the spot of the tragedy about 11:00 p.m.
Eve and the children had been alone in the mountains from 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday (the hour of Ernest's death) until 11:00 p.m. Thursday when Alick arrived. At Jesús Perez' suggestion they had not buried the body, as he said the police should make a complete investigation and report. With practically no food to eat and nothing to do but dig the grave they passed a day and two nights of indescribable fear and sadness. Before bedding down in the open air on Thursday night they had a small funeral service among themselves, reading the "Daily Light" portion on "Bereavement" and attempting (without much success) to sing some hymns, and praying together.
On Friday morning, August 5 at 6:30 a.m., Alick Clark presided at a short ceremony at the simple grave which they had dug with hands and what tools they could get. No coffin was possible, so the body was buried in the tarpaulin.
Following this short service of committal the family got to work hastily to try to clean up the house a bit and prepare some food for the police and others. Eve had gotten a chicken from Jesús Perez, and she had thirteen mouths to feed. They tried to salvage what was left from the rubble in the house, putting the remaining items (which wasn'tt much) into a few bags that had been left. By noon time they were ready to start down the mountain.
The news of the tragedy travelled rapidly. When the news reached Valledupar about noon on Thursday, Ruth Grainger (missionary of the Evangelical Union of South America) called Wilford Hunt (of the same mission, which is, incidentally, the mission with which Ernest and Eve worked before coming to the Latin America Mission in 1951) in Santa Marta. Wilford spent the rest of the afternoon trying to contact me by phone in Medellín, where I was attending the annual assembly of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia. He finally reached me about 5:00 p.m. and said, "Dave, I'm sorry to have to tell you - but another titan of the faith has fallen." This was a true tribute to Ernie, who was a hero and titan of the faith in every sense of the term.
Immediately I called Ross Clemenger (field director of the EUSA) and Dick Boss (administrative assistant of the LAM) out of the Confederation meetings and notified them, asking Ross if he would accompany me to Valledupar and asking Dick to return to Cartagena (LAM headquarters) to stand by for help there.
On Friday a.m. Ross and I flew to Barranquilla, where we talked with the American Consul before flying on to Valledupar, arriving there at 12:30 noon. No further details had yet reached us except that Ernest had been shot. We did not know if the rest of the family was safe, wounded, or dead. By this time rumors of all sorts were circulating rapidly around the countryside, and it was difficult to know what the truth might be. After a quick lunch with Graingers, we hastily gathered up a few medical supplies, some simple food (raisins, chocolate, can of meat), and jumped in Graingers' jeep to drive to Casacará (1-1/2 hours drive) at the foot of the Sierra.
As we passed through Codazzi we consulted the police, who still had no further details except that a squad of soldiers had passed through half an hour ahead of us heading for the scened. We caught up with the soldiers at Casacará and drove with them to the end of the road at the foot of the trail into the high mountains. Still no further details were available. The fact that the family was not yet down made us think that there must have been more deaths or some wounded ones.
At the foot of the trail the army lieutenant in charge suggested we wait there, as they would no doubt be coming soon. My reaction was, "Lieutenant, you can do as you like, but I have a boy and some dear friends up in those mountains, and I'm going up." I took off immediately up the mountain trail, followed by the soldiers who decided to go along. I have done a good bit of mountain climbing in my life, but have never had a trip like this one for speed. I never thought it would be possible to climb so fast up such steep and rugged trails. The soldiers and others were soon far behind.
After about 45 minutes of climbing, wondering more and more why the folks hadn't showed up and what their condition might be, I came over a rise and met two Colombian boys with mules coming down. I was just about to ask for news from up above when I heard a shout, "Dad!!" There was David coming along behind the mules, and some yards back the rest followed one at a time. They were a haggard group, but I have never in my life seen a more welcome sight.
We gave them all chocolate and raisins, and then headed on down for Casacará, arriving there just before dark. Ross and I drove them back to Valledupar that night where they were able to eat and bathe in the Grainger home. We also reported in to the DAS (Colombian secret police) headquarters, with John Fowler and David giving detailed descriptions of the bandits to the police.
On Saturday, August 6, by special kindness of the airline, we were able to get seats in an already full plane to Barranquilla. I had the pleasure of buying them all a big steak dinner in the airport - their first square meal (aside from a hearty breakfast at Graingers) in three days. We took a car on to Cartagena that afternoon.
Eve and the children are now settled again in their home in Cartagena, and she has decided that she will remain in Colombia to carry on as much as possible the language work that Ernest had developed and also serve in the LAM as previously. Valerie and Lance will be attending Ben Lippen School in Asheville, N.C., John will be taking ninth grade by correspondence course, and Alison will study sixth grade in the George Washington School of Cartagena.
Throughout this entire ordeal Eve and the children have been miraculously sustained by the Lord and have maintained a composure which gives abundant testimony to the grace of God in their lives. The Scripture portions found in the "Daily Light" for the dates of August 3-6 were unusually appropriate to the trials through which they had to pass in those days, and God's Word provided deep and abiding strength and comfort.
Those of us who have been privileged to work closely with Ernest Fowler over the years can only thank God in all humility for the honor of having known a man of his spiritual depth. His quiet testimony, which radiated more by the way he lived than by anything he said, will continue to live among us as an example of a man who walked with God. The loss is keenly felt, but we are thankful that he is "without fault before the throne of God." He has been "faithful unto death" and therefore has been given "the crown of life."