When Howell Crosby was a teenager in the 1970s, he spent three Fat Tuesdays crammed inside the Rex organization’s Boeuf Gras float, pulling the string that made the knife-wielding butcher figure move.
He said it was fun inside that box. He was paid, too — $5 for each of the first two years, then $7.50 – but nobody saw him.
When Tatum Lady Reiss reigns as Rex’s consort on Tuesday, she will wear a glittering crown and wield a bejeweled scepter as she beams and ackn…
As an adult, Crosby rode on a float in the Rex parade and, later on a horse as a lieutenant. In the latter role, he was out in public for the 4.2-mile route, resplendent in a green tunic and matching cape and plumage. But he was masked, so nobody knew who he was except family and friends who knew where to look.
Come Tuesday, there will be no way to miss Crosby because he will be Rex, king of Carnival, perched atop the king’s float at the head of the procession.
By occupying Rex’s throne, Crosby “definitely traded up this year,” said Dr. Stephen Hales, Rex 2017 and a longtime friend.
“I still have to pinch myself. I still can’t believe it,” Crosby, 65, said in an interview.
He and his wife, Katherine Andry “Katie” Crosby, were seated in the den in their home near Tulane University. Katie Crosby, the chair of Fidelity Bank’s board, served king cake and handed out little bags of M&M’s in Carnival colors of purple, green and gold; her husband, wearing a Rex tie, medal and socks, occasionally took notes in a black leather notebook bearing the Rex organization’s golden logo.
Years of service to krewe and community
Being crowned Rex is regarded as the culmination of years of service to the krewe and the community at large.
Crosby qualifies in both categories. A general partner in the Chaffe McCall law firm, he has been the krewe’s legal counsel, a duty that has included incorporating the Pro Bono Publico Foundation after Hurricane Katrina to help revitalize New Orleans area schools.
Rex 2025 Howell Crosby remembers his job as a youth, working the controls inside the parade’s Boeuf Gras float. Today that float is recalled with decor on the mantel, foreground, of his home in New Orleans.
That organization, funded by Rex members’ donations, has awarded about $15 million in grants, Rex spokesman Ben Dupuy said.
Crosby also has been in charge of getting bands to play in the Rex parade and organizing the annual Lundi Gras riverfront ceremony in which Rex formally meets King Zulu the night before Mardi Gras.
In the community, Crosby briefly served on the New Orleans City Council when he was appointed in 2000 to fill Suzanne Haik Terrell’s unexpired term after she was elected state elections commissioner. He also has led the board of the Crescent City Farmers Market, and he has sat on numerous boards, including the New Orleans Industrial Development Board, the Human Relations Commission, the Young Leadership Council board, the Louisiana Children’s Museum board, the City Park Improvement Association board and the Metairie Park Country Day School board.
The Boeuf Gras rolls in the Rex parade down St. Charles Ave. on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. (Staff Photo by David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune)
In all of Crosby’s activities, “he is a person who pushes himself and doesn’t do it by squashing others,” said Christian “Christy” Brown, Rex 2015 and a longtime friend. “He has an incredible drive and has a profound impact in whatever he does.”
A connector of people
Crosby’s drive to succeed at many things has been obvious for years, Katie Crosby said, pointing out that he was a running back on Country Day School’s football team before moving on to rugby.
“The Howell that I know is a connector of people for the good,” said Mark Romig, senior adviser at New Orleans & Company. “He makes good happen.”
In one such connection after Hurricane Katrina, longtime friend and Carnival chronicler Arthur Hardy told Crosby that Hardy and fellow Warren Easton High School grads were worried about the school’s fate.
It happened that Crosby’s network included actress Sandra Bullock, a friend since he’d done legal work for her when she was filming in Mississippi in 1996. Bullock was looking for a way to help the city after Katrina; Crosby put her in touch with Hardy, and she wound up donating band instruments and uniforms to the school, awarding scholarships and making other gifts.
Crosby shrugs off any credit, a gesture that led Hardy to describe him as “Mr. Understatement.”
“The energy was there,” Crosby said. “I just stood back and watched it take off.”
A passion for service
Crosby attributes his passion for service to his grandfather Robert Howell Crosby, whom he described as a strong-willed man who started exerting his influence over his grandson while the lad was in the cradle.
The fifth of eight children, he was named Edward Howell Crosby, but when “(my grandfather) got to me, he said, ‘He’s going to be called Howell.’ It was a decree.”
Crosby was born in Picayune, Mississippi, into a family that has run the company that has become Crosby Land & Resources, one of the biggest timberland businesses in the United States. Relatives established the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune to protect the region’s biological diversity and to display for the public native plant species.
“My grandfather instilled in his children and grandchildren a commitment to do service to the community,” Crosby said. “We do the same thing with our children and grandchildren; it’s important.”
Playing music, building dollhouses
After visiting New Orleans regularly for Mardi Gras, the Crosbys moved to New Orleans in 1970. Howell Crosby earned a bachelor’s degree at Tulane University, where he went on to earn a law degree and a master’s degree in business administration.
The Crosbys have three children and seven grandchildren, with an eighth due in June. When Howell Crosby isn’t tending to Rex duties or civic obligations, he plays the banjo, raises chickens in his backyard and has built eight dollhouses for his grandchildren.
Those buildings show off his attention to detail. A firehouse has its own fire pole, and the police station has a holding cell. For the firehouse, he attached by hand every tile on the mansard roof, and he sanded wood for the police station to make it look old.
Both Crosbys work full-time. As Fat Tuesday nears, they are spending more of their at-home time with the details of reigning, which include making list upon list to cover such matters as invitations and notes.
“Every night, we think, are we finished with lists yet?” Katie Crosby said. “We think we’re close.”
They can’t get away from Mardi Gras at their home. Den shelves are crowded with books about Carnival, and miniparades march across horizontal surfaces in the living and dining rooms. In the middle of the procession across the dining-room table is Katie Crosby’s grandmother’s epergne, a table centerpiece overflowing with beads and topped with a coronet.
Surrounded by all the Rex history and mementos, Crosby said it sometimes hits him that he has been chosen to be this year’s public face of the Rex organization and that its legacy, for one day, is in his hands.
Heady stuff. But, he said, “I try to keep my feet on the ground.”
