Howard Pine made his mark on Lawrence with a green thumb and firecracker heart.

The Lawrence garden center entrepreneur died Monday at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. He was 88.

Pine started his fireworks stand in 1948, and it has continued every summer since  most recently at the TeePee Junction.

“He always wanted to have all the fireworks he could get, and that’s the way he did it,” said his son Jim, 58, Lawrence. “He used to buy so many of them, he said, ‘Why don’t I just buy what I want and resell them?'”

The Pine family fireworks stand started on a card table; last summer the family sold a semi-truck load of firecrackers, Jim Pine said.

Pine was born in 1913 in Lawrence, and his love of fireworks started at a young age, said his son Marvin, 60, Lawrence.

“He always liked fireworks, never did quit liking ’em  that was always his explanation to us,” Marvin said.

Pine’s entrepreneurial spirit extended beyond the fireworks stand.

Although he worked at Sunflower Army Ammunitions Plant during World War II, in maintenance at Kansas University after the war and as a carpenter in the 1950s, Pine always used his green thumb to turn a profit on the side. He raised a few acres of produce such as tomatoes, beans, corn and strawberries and sold them to local restaurants and grocery stores.

But it got to where he was buying so many seedlings  Pine sometimes planted as many as 1,000 tomato plants  that he started to tinker with raising the plants himself.

“He just started raising more than what he needed, and there was always somebody who wanted to buy them,” Jim said.

In 1962, he opened Howard Pine’s Garden Center and Green Houses, 1320 N. Third St., as a permanent home for his seedling business. Pine initially focused on vegetable seedlings, but at the urging of his wife, Leta, they expanded into flowers.

The business bloomed.

“People are always coming out, especially to buy the flowers,” Marvin said. “That’s their biggest attraction. They sell a lot more flowers than vegetables. In the old days, that wasn’t the case.”

Pine was good with plants because of his agricultural background. His father and grandfathers were farmers in Douglas County  part of the extensive Pine family that have called Lawrence home since just after the town was founded.

Though his son Gerald now runs the greenhouse, Pine was still helping out there on Saturday.

Pine’s friendly advice on gardening and dedication to the fireworks stand will be missed.

“It’ll be difficult; it’ll be different,” Marvin said of the family fireworks stand. “But it would certainly be something that Dad would expect us to keep doing.”

Services are pending and will be announced by Rumsey-Yost Funeral Home.