Howard Extract of Stony Brook: Real estate manager was star athlete, sometimes actor

In September 2016, Howard Extract of Stony Brook was the honored guest on Abraham Lincoln High School’s gridiron, a place he knew well as a member of the Brooklyn school’s Class of 1942 and one of its most decorated athletes.

Such was the impact the Brooklyn native made on the school that, 74 years since he graduated, it recognized his success in baseball, football and track on Howard Extract Day.

Last month, the standout athlete — who went on to serve in the Army during World War II, launch a decadeslong career in real estate and dabble in acting — became one of the thousands of New Yorkers to succumb to the novel coronavirus.

He died April 19 at the Long Island State Veterans Home. He was 96.

“Howard was a dandy and liked to dress well, like many sports figures,” said his daughter, Michelle Schimel, a former state assemblywoman from Port Washington. “He always had a sense of humor and loved to tell stories. As a child, I remember on summer nights, the neighbors would sit with him on park benches as he held court telling stories and jokes. He was a minor celebrity in the neighborhood because of his tremendous athletic abilities and his storytelling.”

The raw material for Extract’s stories began on the ballfields of Brooklyn. He was born on Aug. 24, 1923, to Maurice and Jennie Extract, a businessman and homemaker.

He was captain of the baseball and football teams at Lincoln, leading them to city titles for the first time in both sports, his daughter said, adding that he was also a swift sprinter who competed in Madison Square Garden’s Millrose Games. 

His name appeared regularly in the sports pages of New York City’s newspapers, with one prominent writer, Walter H. Wager, dubbing him “Vanilla,” a nickname that Schimel said “stuck throughout his scholastic career.”

He’d received as many as 15 scholarship offers from colleges but chose to play football at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he made his mark as the first freshman to play varsity football.

But war broke out after a year of college, and Extract answered his country’s call to arms and enlisted in the Army, where he served as a marksman, training other soldiers to shoot.

His military career was relatively short, though, as he was honorably discharged due to a medical episode after a year of service.

He had reached the rank of private first class and returned to New York to attend New York University on the GI Bill and played centerfielder for NYU’s baseball team.

Extract would marry and divorce but the union produced two children, Schimel and Lon Extract, who died in 2000.

His post-military career included a long tenure in real estate, where he worked as a property manager for Giller & Stein of multiunit buildings in New York City in the 1970 and 1980s. He retired 30 years ago.

Since then, he also graced the silver screen, auditioning for various roles. He appeared as an extra in the movie "Godzilla," where he, as a London gentleman in a bowler hat, gets stepped on by the monster. He also appeared in a trailer for the film.

He also auditioned to play an older lover to Samantha on the hit television series Sex and the City but, his daughter said, he was turned down because he was too fit for viewers to believe he was elderly.

“He kept in shape exercising every day, even when he became wheelchair-dependent,” Schimel said. “He did hundreds of daily leg-raises and arm exercises with weights until two weeks before his death. He always wanted to be in the best physical condition he could muster.”

The die-hard Jets and Mets fan never missed a Jets game and was one of the franchise’s first season ticket holders, his daughter said.

Besides his daughter, Howard Extract is survived by his son-in-law, David Leiman of Port Washington; a sister, Anita Laken of Chicago; six grandchildren; and two nephews.

Private funeral services were performed on April 22 at Beth David Cemetery in Elmont.

Donations may be made in his name to New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and Long Island State Veterans Home.

Correction: The Millrose Games were misidentified in a previous version of this story.