Carl Leiter

    This month Kokomo lost a very special citizen.  Here is an excerpt from the short biography we have for him on our Howard County Memory Project:

Historical research and writing have been Carl Leiter’s serious hobbies  since the early 1950s and his articles have appeared in the Kokomo Tribune, the Kokomo Morning Times, and other newspapers published in Howard County. 

Carl Leiter, a native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, attended Indiana Central College until he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in July 1942. Carl mustered out of the Navy in December 1945 and returned to college under the G.I. Bill. He graduated from Manchester College in 1950, and earned a Master of Arts degree in History from Ball State College in 1954. Carl taught Social Studies at Howard School from 1950 to 1952; and in the Kokomo-Center Schools from 1952 to 1984 at Central, Elwood Haynes, Maple Crest, and Kokomo High School.

Carl married Martha McKain in 1943, and they lived in Kokomo and were both retired from Kokomo-Center Schools; they were members of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Carl passed away May 26, 2015.   The Leiters have three children: Richard is a psychometrist with the Connersville Public Schools, Susie Killingbeck is a teacher in the Kokomo School System, and David has been employed in California since his graduation from Indiana University. The Leiters also have six grandchildren living in Indiana and in California, and three great-grandchildren.

      Mr. Leiter donated all of his newspaper articles to the Genealogy Local History Department so we could publish them on our Howard County Memory Project website.  In addition to digitizing all of the articles, hard copies were made and put in a notebook, which we currently have available for viewing in the Genealogy Department.  These historical articles are full of fascinating trivia about not only Howard County and Kokomo local history, but about our country's early days, and about individual sports icons.  We are very grateful to Mr. Leiter for his gift of writing, and for his generosity in allowing us to open his history up to a wider audience, through our website.  If you have not viewed his collection, please take a moment to check it out.  I guarantee you will learn something!  It is Carl Leiter's Local History collection on the Howard County Memory Project.

   Our thoughts and sincere sympathies are with the Carl Leiter family at this time.  We will continue his legacy of loving history by preserving and  sharing his collection on our Memory Project.  

                                                              - Melanie