Naturalist was silly and serious

Co-founder's love of birds drove Counter Culture's philosophy on coffee growing

CHAPEL HILL -- It might sound like an oxymoron to describe someone as a quiet zealot, but those are fitting words for Fred Houk.

Ardent environmentalist. Avid birder. Promoter of positive social change. Idealistic businessman. Those are apt descriptions, too.

But the soft-spoken co-founder of made-in-the-shade Counter Culture Coffee, a high-end specialty roaster, was not a strident sermonizer. His bully pulpit was the life he lived.

"He had a very quiet, yet commanding presence," said Cindy Chang, 29, a Counter Culture worker who considered Houk a mentor and father figure. "He definitely was certain of his beliefs, and though he did not shout them from the rooftop, he had a way of letting you know what he thought and was doing."

Now his work will be left to others. The native of Lakeland, Fla., died Sept. 23, a week after his 56th birthday, at his home in the woods several miles west of Chapel Hill.

Starting out

Houk came to the Triangle in 1969 as a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill freshman. With family roots in Franklin and connections to David Lowry Swain, a former governor and UNC president, he enrolled with high expectations.

The Vietnam War raged, campus war protests bloomed, and an idealistic activist was born.

During his salad days, Houk took time off from college to gain state residency and lower his tuition bills. He drove a bulldozer for Nello Teer and helped build Jordan Lake. As a Chapel Hill Transit bus driver, he helped start the E-Z Rider program for disabled and elderly passengers.

By 1974, he was back in school and in a health class where he met the woman he would marry.

"We started talking," recalled Virginia Stewart Houk. "He was extremely witty. Just talking to him a short time, you knew he was brilliant."

Those conversations led to regular breakfast dates, and then a lifetime of breakfasts together.

After graduating from UNC-CH in 1977 with highest honors, Houk went to law school with a plan to change the world. Although enthralled with the theory of law, he was disillusioned by the practice.

Around that time, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, a chronic illness that causes intestinal problems and often leads to severe complications.

For the birds

After getting a UNC-CH law degree in the early 1980s, Houk never took the State Bar exam. Unable to fulfill his dreams of practicing international law, he pursued other interests that led him to the wine and coffee industry.

"He started out in the wine end of the business. He had just an incredible palate in being able to distinguish flavors and match wine with food," his wife said. "The coffee was part of this, and he realized there was something missing in the restaurant scene, certainly in the South, in terms of having good coffee. That piqued his interest in coffee."

As a birder, Houk knew about the destruction big coffee farms caused in rain forests.

So when he and Brett Smith founded Counter Culture Coffee, a Durham-based roaster, they imported and roasted only coffees cultivated on environmentally responsible farms meeting the pair's strict shade-grown criteria. To that end, the two launched the company's Sanctuary brand, 100 percent shade-grown coffee marketed as "bird-friendly."

Houk's fascination with birds dates back to his college days, when Emory, a parrot, became a part of his life.

His interests broadened to the habits and calls of the migratory birds and songbirds flitting through the woods around his home. Last summer, the Houks went through 125 pounds of sugar filling hummingbird feeders on their porch.

"He was just completely devoted to the hummingbirds," his wife said.

Slapstick humored him

Houk had a lighter side, too. He relished Savoyard performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operas. He was a diehard Tar Heels fan.

He loved the circus. The clowns and their blatant absurdity tickled him.

With no children of his own, Houk would seek out his friends' children for a date at the circus.

"It was really important to him to take a child so he could experience the circus through their eyes," said Ben Barker, an owner of Magnolia Grill restaurant in Durham. "It was really cool to see."

That love of slapstick always bubbled beneath Houk's earnestness. His home answering machine still bears the message that he and his wife are outside throwing cream pies at each other and cannot get to the phone.

"Fred had this great juxtaposition between his quiet demeanor and kind of that frenzy of the circus that was a part of his mind and humor," said Scott Swartzwelder, a longtime friend and Duke professor of psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience. "He could come across as very serious. But you knew just beneath the surface, there was juggling going on, lions jumping through hoops, and he would say something really funny and off the wall."

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Houk is survived by his wife; his parents, Frederick J. and Dorothy F. Houk of Orlando, Fla.; two brothers and a sister.

Memorial contributions may be made to Fred Houk Memorial, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 1120 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C., 20036.