<\/p>\n
NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) – A beloved local musician in New Bern, known for bringing joy to others through his guitar and kindness, has passed away. <\/p>\n
New Bern Mayor Jeffrey Odham announced that \u201cMusic Man\u201d Howard Matthews died in a tribute post. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur hearts are heavy as we mourn the passing of New Bern\u2019s \u201cMusic Man\u201d Howard Matthews. If you\u2019ve ever been downtown, you\u2019ve likely seen, and heard, Howard strumming and singing while sitting on a park bench,” Odham said in a Facebook post. <\/p>\n
Matthews was loved by the entire New Bern community. Back in March,<\/a> Matthews was on his way to play his guitar at Baker\u2019s Kitchen when he was assaulted by a man on the street. New Bern police were nearby and\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0the man. <\/p>\n Community members rallied behind Matthews as a meal train was started, as well as multiple GoFundMe pages.<\/p>\n Now that same community is taking to social media to remember the beloved musician.<\/p>\n \u201cHis smile was infectious and will be missed. Rest in peace,\u201d Odham said.<\/p>\n Copyright 2025 WITN. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.witn.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) – A beloved local musician in New Bern, known for bringing joy to others through his guitar and kindness, has passed away. New Bern Mayor Jeffrey Odham announced that \u201cMusic Man\u201d Howard Matthews died in a tribute post. \u201cOur hearts are heavy as we mourn the passing of New Bern\u2019s \u201cMusic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[305421,340293,407706,424347,370632,391629],"class_list":["post-2198017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-dead","tag-howard","tag-matthews","tag-music-man","tag-new-bern","tag-witn"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2198017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198018,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198017\/revisions\/2198018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}