My time in Kentucky is one I'll cherish for life, and I will always remember Uncle Dick's guidance, the ways he would crack up at the insanity of the world, our after-dinner walks, and our willingness to race in 5Ks all over the city. He worked with occupational education at Louisville, as well as at other campuses across the country throughout his life and he was a bright orange carrot that dangled the intellectual side of higher education my way. He was a shining light for me as a young man and I'm forever thankful that he passed my name to colleagues on his campus, who took me under their wings. Uncle Dick always found a way to fill a room with laughter.
I remember, too, when I first started running Dr. Crosby came to visit us in Syracuse, New York. He thought it would be a great idea if the two of us went together so we set out for a short jog...one that turned into an hour run. I was just starting out as a runner, and when we got home to my parents we both jumped into the pool exhausted (and hot) from the sprint. As we swam off the run, he admitted that he normally didn't go at such a fast pace. I confessed, well I've never ran that far. We were simply trying to impress one another and about did one another in.
I am remembering too, the comedy of his stories and how his Jerry-Lewis ways always made for an incredible tale. For years, I used to wonder how the two of us were not blood-related, because we seemed to get ourselves in wild predicaments too crazy to make up (I wondered, too, if there might have been some wild affair that neither him or my mom talked about - because my ridiculous life seemed to parallel his own...especially with the way situations would unravel).
Uncle Dick had two stories that I loved hearing over and over again. The first was when he was a keynote at a national conference, but chose to hit the bathroom before he had to speak. When he stood up, however, he hit his head on the coat hanger on the back of the door, cut his head, and knocked himself cold...passing out on the floor. He was found there until they found him.
Another was the time Uncle Dick was on his bike picking up dinner at Kroger's when they had a too-good-to-be-true sale on chicken. He decided to buy as many packages as he could (the sale was too good to miss), but balancing several bags of sale-item chicken was too difficult. They kept falling out of the bags. Looking around, he saw several bushes in the opening of his subdivision. Without batting an eye, he hid the chicken in the bushes so he could go home and get his station wagon so he'd be able to drive the poultry properly to his fridge. When he returned to retrieve the meant, however, the police were already there. Several neighbors called and report a crazy-man storing packages of chicken in the bushes.
His stories were always hilarious. The two of us used to laugh to the chagrin of my Aunt Bobbie, too, as we passed gas post dinner on evening walks, saying things like, "Our engines are working. You can hear them pushing us along." Then there were the giant cookies Bobbie would make, allowing us one for an evening snack, even though the two of us would strategize ways to sneak just one more.
After retirement, my relatives went to Vegas, before moving to Texas, and then eventually settling in north-east California to be nearer my cousin Patrick and to help him raise grandchildren. Last spring, Chitunga and I visited them, as I knew it would likely be the last time I would see them in person. They were in a nursing home and we sat on the back patio of their complex, catching up, laughing, sharing the love we had for one another in our lives, and discussing aging. "You got old," Bobbie kept saying. Like my father and their mother had, my Aunt Bobbie has dementia...she's still an energizer bunny with the biggest heart in the universe, but she's forgetful and can't help herself from trying to take care of everything.
Our families are on different ends of the nation and I hate not being out West to be able to hug Patrick and Bobbie...to share Crandall love from the East coast. He had a tremendous career as an academic, many friends, and a passion for sports and news. We would watch 20/20, 60-Minutes, and Dateline on the regular, and you'd think it was pure comedy from the one-liners Uncle Dick would drop in horror of the world we live in. Today's world is incomprehensible to great minds of his generation.
I feel blessed that we got to spend as much time as we did together. I loved the years I was able to help them maintain their Kentucky home, help them to pack, and send them a bon voyage into their retired future. I know my parents have even more memories of him from their younger years, as well as my Uncle Milford, the eldest, in Long Island. He and Uncle Dick went to high school together, too.
And I'm channeling the years he cared for his mother in their home and the sadness that came when she passed many moons ago. This is the way of family and life, and it's never easy to process.
Last night, at the farmer's market, I bought two HUGE chocolate chip cookies in honor of Uncle Dick (also got vegetables to grill, so Aunt Bobbie wouldn't curse me out). I ate one of the cookies in honor of the sage. Dr. Richard Crosby was one of a kind...a good husband, a great uncle, an outstanding dad, and a loving grandfather. He was also one-of-a-kind to those he taught, especially in his program at Fort Knox, outside of Louisville, with military students he established as part of his scholarly life.
May his memory fill all of us on earth with the joy that was at his core. May there also be an afterlife for him to eat as much as he wants, to make jokes, and to rest in peace.
Love always. Always love, Uncle Dick. I'll continue to look up to you.
