Sarah Catharine Crawford believed the old adage that actions speak louder than words. Whether it was family, church, community or country, she didn’t see the point in talking – just doing.
“It was important to her that your contributions be tangible,” said her daughter, Betsy Crawford, 62, of Arizona. “When we were older, she was more apt to tell us she loved us with words. But, for her generation, you were supposed to KNOW she did because of the things she did for you.”
Mrs. Crawford died April 20 at age 99 of complications from heart disease.
She had been a longtime reference librarian at Jefferson College and was the wife of Episcopalian minister the Rev. Chandler Crawford.
She grew up in Pennsylvania and went to college at Mt. Holyoke.
“She wanted to double major in economics and German,” her daughter said. “The college had a program where you could spend your junior year in the country you were studying. But this was 1935, and my grandfather said there was no way she was going to Germany, with the Nazis in power. So she just did economics.”
She went to work after graduation as a jewelry buyer for Jordan Marsh in Boston.
On a group date with her roommate, she met a young Bowdoin College theology student named Chandler Crawford, and the two dated for several years.
The morning after the Pearl Harbor attack, young Cathy marched down and joined the U.S. Navy. Her fiance did the same, but not before the two were married in early 1942.
“In their wedding picture, my mom is in her uniform and my dad in a tux,” Betsy said with a laugh. “She joined earlier than he did, so she always outranked him. We used to rib him about that all the time.”
She was stationed at Bayonne Harbor in New Jersey as chief of supply; he was sent to be a chaplain on a blimp base in California.
“When the Germans surrendered, my mom was released from her commission,” Betsy said. “She joined my dad at the base. She told how, when the troops came home from the Pacific, she got to go out in the gondolas of the blimps and welcome them home.”
After the war, the Crawfords used their GI benefits to get more education. Mrs. Crawford took classes for her librarian certification. Her husband went to divinity school, then took a position at a church in Ohio.
“That’s where they adopted Bruce in 1951 and me in 1952,” Betsy said.
The Crawfords had different parenting styles.
“She was the strict one,” their daughter said. “He was more relaxed; he didn’t care if you picked up your toys. But my mom worried because, if people came by the rectory to see my dad, she wanted things neat and tidy and shipshape.”
The family moved to Hannibal in about 1955, where they adopted son Brian.
“Mom was a public school librarian there,” Betsy said. “My dad was minister at the (Hannibal) Episcopal church until about 1970, when we moved to De Soto.”
The family had always lived in a church rectory, but in De Soto they had a place of their own. They bought an 85-acre farm on Hwy. E.
“They knew they would retire fairly soon,” Betsy said. “They thought it was a good idea to get a place, get it paid off, so they’d have a place to live when he was no longer the minister.”
Mrs. Crawford quickly found the librarian job.
“She loved working at the college,” Betsy said. “They didn’t have Google then, of course. If a faculty member was doing research or a student doing a paper, she would pull all their information and they could come in and pick it up.”
Mrs. Crawford helped get the De Soto library started. She and her husband were regular swimmers at the Jefferson College pool.
“They loved De Soto, and they really felt a part of the community,” Betsy said.
Both retired in the mid-1980s, and settled into life on the farm, where they tended a 2-acre garden.
“She was really incredible. I honestly don’t know how she did all the things she did,” Betsy said. “Being a minister’s wife, with the entertaining you’re expected to do; being the mom of three kids; being the support to her husband; then her own career.”
But she kept her humor through it all.
“She didn’t really take herself too seriously,” Betsy said. “I think that was one of her secrets to a long life.”
After her husband died in 2005, Mrs. Crawford kept busy with activities like a gourmet cooking group and playing cards with friends. In recent years, she spent the winter in Arizona with her daughter.
“She’d come out after Christmas, and we’d go to the symphony, the theater,” Betsy said. “She could sit on the porch and enjoy green grass and flowers in the middle of the winter.”
Mrs. Crawford enjoyed good overall health, but suffered from heart problems.
“In October she got pneumonia,” Betsy said. “With her heart function so weak, she could never really clear those extra fluids. She had arthritis in her hips, which limited her mobility – and a sedentary life didn’t help her heart.”
Betsy said her mother would want to be remembered as someone who enjoyed helping people.
“She had a strong sense of duty. She was a terrific person, my mom.”
“Life Story,” posted each Saturday on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.