Grady Eugene Crews
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 8 Jun 1933 - Benton, Columbia Co., Florida, USA 269
Christening:
Death: 2 May 1966 - Lake City, Columbia Co., Florida, USA ( at age 32) 269
Burial: in Memorial Cemetery, Lake City, Columbia Co., FL 269
Parents
Father: Leo Crews 150
Mother: Teeny Elizabeth Melton 150
Spouses and Children
1. *Elizabeth Josephine Bush 103
Marriage: 19 Jul 1952 - Lake City, Columbia County, Florida
Status: Death of Spouse
Children:
1. (Unnamed Infant) Crews
2. Allan Eugene Crews
Notes
General:
Name:Grady Eugene Crews
Titles and Terms:
Event Type:Marriage
Event Date:19 Jul 1952
Event Place:Columbia, Florida, United States
Event Place:
Gender:Male
Age:
Marital Status:
Previous Wife's Name:
Race:
Birth Date:
Birth Year (Estimated):
Birthplace:
Marriage License Date:
Father's Name:
Father's Titles and Terms:
Father's Birthplace:
Mother's Name:
Mother's Titles and Terms:
Mother's Birthplace:
Paternal Grandfather's Name:
Paternal Grandmother's Name:
Maternal Grandfather's Name:
Maternal Grandmother's Name:
Spouse's Name:Betty Jo Bush
Spouse's Titles and Terms:
Spouse's Gender:Female
Spouse's Age:
Spouse's Marital Status:
Spouse's Previous Husband's Name:
Spouse's Race:
Spouse's Birth Date:
Spouse's Birth Year (Estimated):
Spouse's Birthplace:
Spouse's Father's Name:
Spouse's Father's Titles and Terms:
Spouse's Mother's Name:
Spouse's Mother's Titles and Terms:
Spouse's Paternal Grandfather's Name:
Spouse's Paternal Grandmother's Name:
Spouse's Maternal Grandfather's Name:
Spouse's Maternal Grandmother's Name:
Note:
Page:204
Reference ID:
GS Film Number:1953985
Frame Number:
Digital Folder Number:004539416
Image Number:01040
Citing this Record:
"Florida Marriages, 1830-1993," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V65Y-KJN : 7 December 2017), Grady Eugene Crews and Betty Jo Bush, 19 Jul 1952; citing Marriage, Columbia, Florida, United States, Liberty County Clerk of Courts, Florida; FHL microfilm 1,953,985.
NameGrady Eugene Crews
GenderMale
BirthJune 8 1933
Columbia, Florida, United States
Marriage
Spouse: Elizabeth Josephine "Betty Jo" Bush
July 19 1952
Columbia, Florida, United States
Residence1935
Columbia, Columbia, Florida, United States
Residence1940
Election Precinct 2, Columbia, Florida, United States
Residence1945
Clay, Florida, United States
ResidenceApr 20 1950
Columbia, Columbia, Florida, United States
DeathMay 2 1966
Columbia, Florida, United States
Burial1966
Lake City, Columbia, Florida, United States
ParentsLeo Crews
Teenie Elizabeth Crews (born Melton)
WifeElizabeth Josephine "Betty Jo" Bush
ChildrenInfant Crews
Allan Eugene Crews
SiblingsHarry Lee Crews
Charles Crews
Gregory Leo Crews
Sex: M
AKA: Greg
Individual Information
Birth Date: 26 Sep 1964 - Lake City, Columbia Co., Florida, USA 246
Christening:
Death: 9 Feb 2023 - Bradenton, Manatee County, Florida ( at age 58)
Burial:
Parents
Father: Charles Alvin Crews 245
Mother:
Hampton Micajah Crews
Sex: M
AKA: Hamp Crews
Individual Information
Birth Date: 27 Sep 1852 - Wilmington, NC 270
Christening:
Death: 22 May 1932 - Charlton Co., GA ( at age 79) 270
Burial: in Sardis Cemetery Charlton County, Georgia 271
Parents
Father: Micajah Crews
Mother: Emaliza Robinson
Spouses and Children
1. Lusina Summerall
Marriage:
Status:
2. Bathsheba Guy
Marriage:
Status:
Children:
1. Hardy H. Crews
3. *Sallie Robinson Lowther
Marriage:
Status:
Notes
General:
Birth:Sep. 27, 1852
Death:May 22, 1932
1870 Federal Census Subdivision 100 Pierce Co, GA
McAger Crewes - age 60
Emenezer - age 48
Hamiliton - age 17
Archable - age 16
Banner - age 15
Kiziah m - age 13
Ememezer - age 11
------------------------------------------------------
1880 Federal Census District 590 Pierce Co, GA
Hampton - head - age 27
Bersheba - wife - age 30
Harding - son - age 2
Emeline Crews - mother - age 54
Bersheba Guy - mother-in-law - age 65
Harriet Crawford - great aunt - age 86
-------------------------------------------------------
1910 Federal Census Thick Branch, Charlton Co, GA
Hampton - head - age 58
Bashia - wife - age 60
-------------------------------------------------------
1920 Federal Census Thick Branch, Charlton Co, GA
Hamp - head - age 66
Sara J - wife - age 56
-------------------------------------------------------
Hampton Crews, born near Hoboken on September 12, 1852, died at his home near Uptonville Sunday evening. Last rites were held at the chapel at Sardis, Rev. W.O. Gibson, pastor officiating, Rev. Lester McDonald and Rev. I.T. Hickox assisting.
Interment was at Sardis cemetery. Mr. Crews came to Charlton County in 1898 and located on the farm where he died.
He made a splendid citizen and successful farmer and had always borne the reputation of being a straightforward and upstanding citizen.
Surviving him are his widow, Mrs. Sallie Crews; three sons, H.H. Crews, H.M. Crews and R.C. Crews; one daughter, Mrs. L.S. Conner; two brothers Bryant Crews now 86 years old and Ban Crews. He had two sisters, Mrs. K.M. Anderson and Mrs. Emily Dowling.
Hampton Micajah "Hamp" Crews Sr. married 1st Lusinah Summerall. They had two children, Harriet, born November 6, 1874 and William G., born April 24 1876. Both children died July 1879 and are buried in High Bluff Cemetery.
Hamp's 2nd wife was Basheba Guy. They married in 1878 and they had six children, Hardy H., Richard C.,
Hampton Micajah Jr., Robert B., Marion, and Mary Ann.
Hamp's 3rd wife was Sarah Jane "Sallie" Robinson.
Family links:
Parents:
Micajah Crews (1810 - 1877)
Emaliza Robinson Crews (1822 - 1896)
Spouses:
Basheba Guy Crews (1850 - 1918)*
Sarah Jane "Sallie" Robinson Crews (1862 - 1940)*
Lusinah Summerall Crews (1850 - 1878)*
Children:
Harriet Crews (1874 - 1879)*
William G. Crews (1876 - 1879)*
Hardy H. Crews (1878 - 1953)*
Richard C. Crews (1881 - 1932)*
Hampton Micajah Crews (1883 - 1957)*
Mary Ann Crews Conner (1888 - 1958)*
*Calculated relationship
Burial:
Sardis Cemetery
Folkston
Charlton County
Georgia, USA
HAMP AND SALLY CREWS
Charlton County Herald notes: October 4,1878 A massive epidemic of yellow fever sweeps through the South. In a small, unpretentious Pierce (now Brantley) County farmhouse near Hoboken, Hampton Micajah Crews, Sr. 26, one of Pierce County's more prominent farmers, wore a relieved look as he sat in a massive rocking chair in the home's sitting room. In a bedroom adjoining the sitting room, his wife Basheba Guy Crews, 28 had just given birth to their son, Hardy H. Crews.
The Hamp Crews family ultimately included four sons, Hardy, Hamp Jr. ,who married Mary Elizabeth Thomas, Richard,who married Rena Lynes, Robert and a daughter, Mary, who married Stewart Conner.
Hamp Crews, a great great grandson of a Creek Indian Princess who earlier had moved to Pierce County from Wilmington, North Carolina, and his family moved again, this time from Pierce County to the Uptonville community of Charlton County in January,1899.
In those days a person grew up quickly with scars of the nation's tragic civil war still fresh in their minds.
After Basheba died Hamp married Lusina Summerall and later married Sarah (Sally)Robinson Lowther.
Hamps son Hardy also grew up quickly. By the 1900 he had married the former Martha Thomas and the couple had two young children of their own, Nora and George.
Charlton County Herald Digest Okefenokee Press (Lois Mays) May 1932
HAMPTON CREWS DIED.
Hampton Crews, born near Hoboken on September 12, 1852, died at his home near Uptonville Sunday evening. Last rites were held at the chapel at Sardis, Rev. W.O. Gibson, pastor officiating, Rev. Lester McDonald and Rev. I.T. Hickox assisting.
Interment was at Sardis cemetery. Mr. Crews came to Charlton County in 1898 and located on the farm where he died.
He made a splendid citizen and successful farmer and had always borne the reputation of being a straightforward and upstanding citizen.
Surviving him are his widow, Mrs. Sallie Crews; three sons, H.H. Crews, H.M. Crews and R.C. Crews; one daughter, Mrs. L.S. Conner; two brothers Bryant Crews now 86 years old and Ban Crews. He had two sisters, Mrs. K.M. Anderson and Mrs. Emily Dowling.
The material from which his coffin was made was selected by Mr. Crews some time back and the men he chose made it as he had directed. It was made from heart cypress grown near Winokur.
Source : Lois and Jack Mays
Hardy H. Crews
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 4 Aug 1878 - Pierce (now Brantley) Co., GA
Christening:
Death: 1953 - ( at age 75)
Burial:
Parents
Father: Hampton Micajah Crews
Mother: Bathsheba Guy
Spouses and Children
1. *Martha Mizell Thomas
Marriage:
Status:
Children:
1. Elbert Crews
Notes
General:
Honorable Hardy H. Crews, Charlton County's veteran Tax Receiver, was born in Pierce County, now Brantley, near the town of Hoboken on August 4, 1878. He was reared to young manhood at the family homestead, being the oldest living member of a family of seven brothers and sisters. He is a son of the late H.M. Crews, Sr., better known as "Uncle Hamp" who moved to Charlton County and was for many years a widely known and highly regarded citizen of this county, residing at the old Crews home place in the Uptonville district. .
The Crews family originally migrated from South Carolina long before Charlton County was created and is now with a doubt one of the largest most widely-connected families in this section of the state, with many of its members living in the neighboring counties of Georgia and Florida, being regarded as honest, law-abiding worthy citizens who have contributed a great deal toward the development of this country from a wilderness. "Uncle Hamp" was looked upon as the leader among the large Crews clan of this area.
Moving to Charlton County in November, 1900, H.H. Crews, the subject of this sketch, has been a loyal public spirited citizen of the county since that date nearly fifty years ago.. On moving to this county he settled in the 1142nd or Traders Hill District, and has lived in that community almost continuously ever since. For many years, while his large family was growing up, Mr. Crews carried on farming operations in addition to public duties, but in recent years he has limited his farm work to a home garden.
Elected Tax Receiver of Charlton County, Mr. Crews was sworn in for his first term on January 1, 1915 and he has served faithfully and efficiently in that capacity continuously since that date or over thirty-six years. This undoubtedly constitutes a record of public service in an elected office unequalled in the history of the county. During his long term of service Mr. Crews has carried on his official duties in a quiet, courteous manner and these traits undoubtedly have accounted for his popularity and for his repeated re-election without opposition. He has had opposition only two or three times since his first election. His long service too has made him familiar with the location, value and ownership of property generally throughout the county, this knowledge having been acquired by many years of earnest application to the duties of his office.
His long years of service has made him a familiar figure at the county courthouse where he has now come to be regarded as a permanent fixture. He always has a cheerful greeting and a sincere welcome to all visitors to his office.On February 9, 1898 Mr. Crews was married to Miss Martha M. Thomas, daughter of the late B.M. Thomas, prominent and widely known citizen of Brantley County. They grew up in the same neighborhood of Pierce, now Brantley County, and she has been his constant aid and helpmeet through the years. To this union fifteen children have been born, thirteen of whom have been reared to adulthood, seven sons and six daughters. The family is now widely disbursed, several being highly respected citizens of this county. Only one unmarried daughter now remains with them at their home in the Traders Hill district, and but for the visits of grandchildren, their once-lively home would now seem lonely indeed.
Through his long years of capable, conscientious service as a public official, Mr. Crews has won, in full measure, the confidence and grateful appreciation of people of Charlton County. Although he is well along in years, in reasonably good health he continues to carry on his duties with promptness and courteousness which has marked his entire career.
Mr. and Mrs. Crews have many warm friends throughout the county who will wish for their continued good health and happiness.
Source : Lois and Jack Mays
Harley J. Crews
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 1840 - Camden County, Georgia
Christening:
Death:
Burial:
Parents
Father: Alexander Crews
Mother: Sarah Jones 220
Spouses and Children
1. *Sarah
Marriage:
Status:
Notes
General:
Descriptive Roll of Captain Lucius A. Hardee's Company, Regiment of Florida Mounted Volunteers. Mustered out of service on January 20th, 1858. NOTE: This muster is divided into nine columns as follows: (1) Name, (2) Town/County of Birth, (3) State/Kingdom of Birth, Height : (4) feet (5) inches, (6) Color: Complexion, (7) Color Eyes, (8) Color Hair, and (9) Occupation.
CREWS, Alexander, Colleton, SC; 5 '10"; light- blue-light; farmer.
Sons:
CREWS, Harley J., Camden, GA; 5' 6"; light-grey-light; farmer.
CREWS, Samuel D., Alachua, EL; 6'1"; light-grey-light; farmer.
Harriet Crews
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth Date: 5 Dec 1859
Christening:
Death: 27 Sep 1893 - ( at age 33)
Burial: in New Hope Cemetery, Zolfo Springs, Hardee, FL
Parents
Father: Benjamin L. Crews
Mother: Mary Crews
Harriet Crews
Sex: F
Individual Information
Birth Date: 1858
Christening:
Death:
Burial:
Parents
Father: John L. Crews
Mother: Maria Sears
Harrison Crews
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 9 Feb 1853 - Echols County, GA
Christening:
Death: 16 Dec 1917 - ( at age 64)
Burial: in Wayfair Cemetery, Gilchrist, FL
Parents
Father: John L. Crews
Mother: Maria Sears
Harry Eugene Crews
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 7 Jun 1935 - Bacon County, Georgia
Christening:
Death: 28 Mar 2012 - ( at age 76)
Burial:
Parents
Father: Pascal Crews
Mother:
Spouses and Children
Notes
General:
Harry Eugene Crews (7 June 1935 \endash 28 March 2012) was an American novelist, playwright, short story writer and essayist.
He was born in Bacon County, Georgia in 1935[1] and served in the Marines during the Korean War.[2] He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Harry finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where he taught Junior High English for a year.
Crews returned to Gainesville and the university to work on his master's in English Education. It was during this period that he and Sally divorced for the first time. Harry continued his studies, graduated, and \endash denied entrance into UF's Creative Writing program \endash took a teaching position at Broward Community College in the subject of English. It was here in south Florida that Harry convinced Sally to return to him, and they were re-married. A second son, Byron, was born to them in 1963. He returned to University of Florida in 1968 not as a student, but as a member of the faculty in Creative Writing. Crews formerly taught in the creative writing program at the University of Florida.[3] In 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's pool. This proved to be too heavy a burden on the family, and Harry and Sally were once again divorced.[4]
His first published novel, The Gospel Singer, appeared in 1968.[2] His novels include: A Feast of Snakes, The Hawk is Dying, Body, Scar Lover, The Knockout Artist, Karate Is A Thing of the Spirit, All We Need of Hell, The Mulching of America, Car, and Celebration. He published a memoir in 1978 titled A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews wrote essays for Esquire, Playboy, and Fame. He had a column in Esquire called "Grits" for fourteen months in the 1970s, where he covered such topics as cockfighting and dog fighting.[2] Harry had a tattoo on his right arm which said: "How do you like your blue eyed boy Mr. Death" (from the poem Buffalo Bill's by e.e. cummings) beneath a skull.[4]
The University of Georgia acquired Harry Crews's papers in August 2006. The archive includes manuscripts and typescripts of his fiction, correspondence, and notes made by Crews while on assignment.[5]
He died 28 March 2012, from complications of neuropathy.[6]
Contents [hide]
1 In Popular Culture
2 Works
2.1 Novels
2.2 Collections
2.3 Autobiography
3 References
4 Further reading
5 External links
In Popular Culture[edit]
Kim Gordon (of Sonic Youth), Lydia Lunch and Sadie Mae named their band Harry Crews after him. They released one album, Naked in Garden Hills, in 1989.
Canadian pop band Men Without Hats has a song called "Harry Crews" on their 1991 album Sideways.
"Scarlover" is the first track on Maria McKee's 1996 album Life Is Sweet. She thanks Crews in her acknowledgements.
Colorado band Drag The River has a song called "Mr. Crews" on their 2006 album It's Crazy.
Crews was the subject of the first installment of the Rough South documentary series written and directed by Gary Hawkins. The film, entitled The Rough South of Harry Crews won a regional Emmy Award and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Gold Award in 1992.
In the documentary, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2004),[7] Crews tells his grisly homespun Southern stories while walking down a rural dirt track.
Crews played a brief role in Sean Penn's The Indian Runner and dedicated his book Scar Lover to Penn.
In 2007, another documentary was released: Harry Crews \endash Survival is Triumph Enough. The personal format is loosely based on an interview with artist and filmmaker Tyler Turkle, and the themes explored include hardship, tragedy and loss throughout the Crews' life.[8]
Kansas City band Season to Risk wrote and recorded a song on their first album in 1993, entitled "Snakes", which is inspired by the Crews novel "A Feast of Snakes"
Florida Trend magazine released a posthumous interview with Harry Crews in April 2012. The interview is in Crews' own words, with quotes such as, "I've never begun a novel that I knew how it ended. I just start and try to find out what it is I think about whatever it is I am writing about." Another quote: "Listen, if you want to write about all sweetness and light and that stuff, go get a job at Hallmark." [9]
Works[edit]
Novels[edit]
The Gospel Singer, 1968
Naked in Garden Hills, 1969
This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven, 1970
Karate is a Thing of the Spirit, 1971
Car, 1972
The Hawk is Dying, 1973
The Gypsy's Curse, 1974
A Feast of Snakes, 1976
The Enthusiast, 1981
All We Need of Hell, 1987
The Knockout Artist, 1988
Body, 1990
Scar Lover, 1992
The Mulching of America, 1995
Celebration, 1998
An American Family: The Baby with the Curious Markings, 2006
Collections[edit]
Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader, 1993
The Gospel Singer & Where Does One Go When There's No Place Left to Go?, 1995
Autobiography[edit]
A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, 1978
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Elaine Woo "Harry Crews dies at 76; Southern writer with darkly comic vision", Los Angeles Times, 1 April 2012
^ Jump up to: a b c Walt Harrington, ed. (2005). "Contributors". The Beholder's Eye: A Collection of America's Finest Personal Journalism. New York: Grove Press. p. x. ISBN 0-8021-4224-9.
Jump up ^ "Department of English". University of Florida. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
^ Jump up to: a b Michael Carlson Obituary: Harry Crews, The Guardian, 10 April 2012
Jump up ^ "Harry Crews: Biographical Sketch". Retrieved 24 October 2011.
Jump up ^ Margalit Fox "Harry Crews, Writer of Dark Fiction, Is Dead at 76", New York Times, 30 March 2012
Jump up ^ Felperin, Leslie (December 17, 2003). "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus". Variety (Reed Business Information). Retrieved October 6, 2009.
Jump up ^ "Harry Crews: Survival Is Triumph Enough". IMDb. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
Jump up ^ http://www.floridatrend.com/article/111/icon-harry-crews
Further reading[edit]
Perspectives on Harry Crews. Erik Bledsoe (ed.). University Press of Mississippi, 2001. (available on google books).
External links[edit]
www.harrycrews.com
www.myspace.com/harrycrews/ Unofficial page on MySpace.
Out of the Gates, Slowly Bleeding: The Life & Times of Harry Crews
New Georgia Encyclopedia article on Crews
Works by or about Harry Crews in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Crews' new book
DVD/VOD: Harry Crews \endash Survival is Triumph Enough
http://www.harrycrews.org/Personal/Biography/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Georgia-Review/138484081088?ref=ts&sk=wall The Facebook page for The Georgia Review, his publisher and host of his archives.
Harry Crews at the Internet Movie Database
Authority control
WorldCat VIAF: 66508905 LCCN: n79078641 ISNI: 0000 0001 2137 2880 GND: 118976680
Categories: 1935 births2012 deaths20th-century American novelists21st-century American novelistsAmerican dramatists and playwrightsAmerican short story writersAmerican essayistsPeople from Bacon County, GeorgiaPeople from Gainesville, FloridaUniversity of Florida facultyUniversity of Georgia alumniWright State University facultyWriters from Florida
A LARGE & STARTLING FIGURE
The Harry Crews Online Bibliography
Brief Biography
By Damon Sauve
Harry Eugene Crews was born on June 7, 1935, in Bacon County, Georgia, to Ray and Myrtice, who worked a desperate and indigent living farming in dirt-poor southern Georgia. Ray died at 35 leaving a farm and a family Myrtice was incapable of sustaining by herself. She remarried shortly after, although that marriage carried hardship of its own. Crews wrote:
My daddy died of a heart attack when I was 21 months old and my brother was 5. Her second marriage was to a man who might have been a good husband had he not been a brutal drunk. ("Mama Pulled the Load Alone" 55) [1]
Young as he was when his mother remarried, Crews grew up calling and thinking of him as his daddy, however belligerent and hostile that home life became.
Crews suffered the first of two debilitating illnesses in 1940 at the age of 5. The first was a fever accompanied by a painful muscle contraction which caused the muscles in his legs to seize, drawing his heels up against the backs of his legs, forcing him to lie in bed for six weeks until the cramps in his legs subsided and he could be carried around the farm. Gradually, Crews's legs straightened enough so he could haul himself along a fence, working and strengthening the atrophied muscles. Later in life, Crews would ascribe the illness as a physiological manifestation of the psychological stress induced by the tumultuous home life.
It was not long after Crews was "well and whole again" (A Childhood 107) that he was strong enough to participate in games with his brother and cousins. In A Childhood, his autobiography, Crews recounts one game called "crack the whip" and one day in particular, told with the bright intensity of one purging, by fire, a memory. On that day, Myrtice had a boiler pot of water set at ground level in which pigs were momentarily dipped to blanch the hair from their skins. When the chain of linked hands was suddenly and forcefully let loose, Crews was pitched into the boiling pot of water, up to his neck. Pulled from the pot and set beside it, the children and on lookers stared at him. Crews wrote:
I reached over and touched my right hand with my left, and the whole thing came off like a wet glove. I mean the skin on the top of the wrist and the back of my hand, along with the fingernails, all just turned loose and slid down to the ground. I could see my fingernails lying in the little puddle my flesh made on the ground in front of me. (A Childhood 113)
It would take several bed-ridden months for Crews to heal, for his skin to regrow.
Used to moving from one hopeless plot to the next barren patch of land, Myrtice took her family one night away from her husband who had taken to severe drinking and to indiscriminate blasting of his shotgun in the house at all hours. They headed south to Jacksonville, Florida, a burgeoning industrial town, where Crews spent his adolescent years, reading and writing what he could.
In 1953, with his brother already fighting in Korea, Crews, only 17, volunteered with the Marines:
Being good, southern, ignorant country boys, we did the good, southern, ignorant country thing: we volunteered as quickly as possible, anxious as we were to go and spill our blood in the good, southern, ignorant country way. (Introduction, Classic Crews 12)
There were other factors motivating Crews to enlist. In an interview with Rodney Elrod, Crews said that it was expected of him as a young man to move out and find his own way. "And I wanted to go. Going in the Marine Corps was the only way I knew to get out, to leave the state" (70). Joining the service brought him into contact with the larger world, one he had read about in the few books he had managed to obtain. "I'd been so damn isolated and knew it simply because I'd gone to some trouble to get books. I knew the world was out there, and I wanted to see it" (Elrod 70). It was during his three years of enlistment that Crews began reading, broadly and comprehensively, including all the novels by Mickey Spillane and Graham Greene: [2]
As far back as I could remember, I had longed and lusted for an unlimited supply of books . . . When I got to my first duty station and walked into the base library, it was like throwing a starving man a turkey. I did my time in the Corps with a book always at hand. (Introduction, Classic Crews 12).
Discharged from the Marines, Crews returned to Bacon County to visit his family. In A Childhood, Crews wrote that in July of 1956 he stood at the edge of a tobacco field, having worked with his four cousins since sun-up, cursing the Georgia summer heat. He wrote, "I stood there feeling how much I had left this place and these people, and at the same time knowing that it would be forever impossible to leave them completely." (A Childhood 171)
Some months later, Crews enrolled at the University of Florida:
With the G.I. Bill I went to the University, not because anyone there might teach me to write fiction, but because I thought someone there might teach me how to make a living while I taught myself how to write fiction. At the end of two years, however, choking and gasping from Truth and Beauty, I gave up on school for a Triumph motorcycle. (Classic Crews 12)
Crews's road trip lasted 18 months. The essay "The Violence that Finds Us" documents parts of the trip, as does the Introduction to Classic Crews. During the road trip, Crews worked as a bartender, a short order cook, [3] and a caller at a carnival sideshow attraction (Introduction, Classic Crews 13). [4] He was jailed in a small town in Wyoming and "beaten in a fair fight by a one-legged Blackfoot Indian" in Montana (Introduction, Classic Crews 14). [5]
Interviewing Crews in 1974, Al Burt noted that "the burden of writing ambitions brought him back [to the University of Florida] in 1958" (1974). About his return to higher education, Crews wrote:
But at least I still had the good government tit to suck on. If I carried a full load of courses and maintained a C average, I got three hots and a cot and more time than I needed to read and continue my efforts to learn to write. (Introduction, Classic Crews 14) [6]
Around this time, Crews took his first creative writing class with Andrew Lytle. Lytle was the author of The Velvet Horn, twice-editor of The Sewanee Review, teacher to Flannery O'Connor and Madison Jones, and a founder of the Agrarians, the socio-literary movement which attempted to hedge the insidious advancement of industrial culture in the South. [7] A Rolling Stone article highlights one of Crews's early experiences with the taskmaster Lytle:
When Crews handed him one of his early efforts, his cantankerous teacher\emdash with barely a look at the story's first paragraph\emdash flung it back at him. "Burn it, son," he said. "Fire's a great refiner." (Hedegaard 1982) [8]
Prior to leaving Gainesville for the road, Crews had met Sally Ellis, a sophomore at the university, and they were married on January 24, 1960 (Hargraves ix). Their first child, Patrick Scott, was born on September 4, 1960 ("Fathers, Sons, Blood" Classic Crews 173). When Crews graduated from the university, the Crews family moved upstate to Jacksonville, where he taught a year of Junior High English (Burt 1974). [9]
Crews returned to Gainesville, where he entered the master's program for English Education. Absorbed by graduate studies and perpetually dedicated to the writer's muse, Crews admitted that, as a result, his family suffered:
I try to write when I'm rested, and do everything else when I'm tired. For instance, when I was married I tried to be a husband when I was tired. I got up in the morning and exhausted myself at writing, and I took care of being a husband, I took care of whatever job I had to have to feed my family while I was trying to teach myself to be a writer. (Bonetti 1983)
During graduate school, they were divorced, and Sally moved out of Florida ("Fathers, Sons, Blood" Classic Crews 176).
Crews graduated, and, denied entrance on the basis of his expressed performance as a writer to the graduate program for Creative Writing at the University of Florida, he ventured south to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he taught English at Broward Community College. Finding himself settled in South Florida, Crews persuaded Sally, "out of love and longing for my son," to join him there and remarry ("Fathers, Sons, Blood" Classic Crews 176). Their second child, Byron Jason, was born August 24, 1963 ("Fathers, Sons, Blood" Classic Crews 174).
Shortly after their reconciliation, in July of 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's swimming pool ("Fathers, Sons, Blood" Classic Crews 173). Crews was devastated by Patrick's death, burdened by guilt he attributed to inattention, both to the boy and to his family, and to preoccupation with learning to write. In "Fathers, Sons, Blood," an essay which deeply excavates his feelings, Crews wrote:
Being low-rent, though, doesn't keep guilt from being as real as an open wound. But in my case, it got worse, much worse. Part of me insisted that I had brought him to the place of death. (Classic Crews 175)
Eventually, Crews and Sally were divorced a second time:
I'm not interested in assigning blame about who was at fault in the collapse of our marriage, but I do know that I was obsessed to the point of desperation with becoming a writer and, further, I lived with the conviction that I had gotten a late start toward that difficult goal. ("Fathers, Sons, Blood" Classic Crews 176)
Crews realized, regretfully, that learning to write had cost him his family. It was equally painful, however, to realize what little reward\emdash at what great cost\emdash Crews had earned from his efforts. In an interview in 1974, Sterling Watson asked Crews about what it was like "between the time [he] began to write and the time [he] began to publish":
I used to dream when I was as old as twenty-five or twenty-six that one of my novels (of course I'd written four novels by that time which had been rejected), I used to dream while I was asleep this tremendous joy and celebration and the rest of it and then wake up literally humiliated, crushed, depressed, stricken that I was still where I was. (71)
In 1968, The Gospel Singer was published. Once again, Crews returned to Gainesville and the University of Florida, not as student of creative writing, but faculty, in the English department. 10
Reflecting on his marriage and family life, Crews said in interview with Rodney Elrod:
I came to peace with myself a long time ago about that and realized that a happy marriage and home and children and grandchildren and all the rest, that all was not meant for me. (66)
What was meant for Crews was to continue writing:
The bottom line on this for me is\emdash you do whatever you have to do to get to where you need to go. You dig that? You do whatever you have to do to get where you need to go . . . the world doesn't want you to do anything. The world wants you to work the lawn or walk the dog or paint the house\emdash anything but write, just so you bleed whatever energy you have away from writing, and if you're not careful that's exactly what you're going to end up doing. (Walsh 95)
Since The Gospel Singer, Crews has published continuously, and except for a spell of about 10 years between A Feast of Snakes and All We Need of Hell, a new novel has appeared nearly every year\emdash as of 1995, The Mulching of America marks his thirteenth novel.
Crews has also written extensively for magazines, from stories and essays in Sport and Playboy, to a column at Esquire called "Grits," which ran uninterrupted for fourteen months. His non-fiction has been collected into two books, Blood and Grits (1979) and Florida Frenzy (1982), and as well in two limited editions, 2 by Crews (1984) and Madonna at Ringside (1991), from Lord John Press.
The lull in published novels during the 1970s and 1980s can be attributed to writing non-fiction, screenplays of his novels as well as others', and an autobiography, much of which stemmed from, or despite, his work at Esquire (Nuwer 1988).
In 1978, Crews published A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. A Childhood chronicles the horrors of his upbringing, the traumas of his early adolescence, and the attempts of an older Crews to reconcile, as an adult, his past:
I thought if I wrote all that stuff down, in as great a detail as I possibly could, talking to as many people as I could and reliving it, it would be cathartic. I thought that it would in some sense relieve something. And it may have, but it didn't do what I thought it would do. It didn't work out that way. (Moore 1992)
In fact, said Crews, "Writing that book damn near killed me. It was a very, very, very, very hard book to write" (Moore 1992)
Considering that before A Childhood, Crews had published eight books in eight years, and except for the publication of his non-fiction, it would be several years until Crews published his next novel, attesting, perhaps, to the intensity and demands of that singular endeavor.
In 1993, a widely praised anthology, which included the full-text of two early out-of-print novels, A Childhood, several essays, and an introduction by Crews, was released by Poseidon Press in the U.S. and by Gorse in the U.K. Recently, in 1995, Gorse re-released a U.K.-only version of The Gospel Singer, along with a never-published novella titled, Where Does One Go When There's No Place Else to Go? According to the publisher, the first printing of that book was sold out. Gorse has future plans to reissue more of Crews's out-of-print novels.
In the early 1990s, Crews, now the department's senior faculty member, entered gradual retirement, teaching one class per semester. In the spring of 1997, Crews retired from the university to devote his time fully to writing.
Crews has been hard at work. In the fall of 1996, I visited Crews for an as yet unpublished interview. As he often does for guests, Crews read from what he was then in the midst of writing, a second autobiographical book, which he said was to be completed in a year's time. We also looked at the cover proof for his next book, Celebration, which was eventually published in January 1998. When I visited him in December 1997, Crews had been up three days working on his next novel.
Damon Sauve
December 1996
January 2003 (updated)
. . .
Notes
All citations reference material included in this bibliography. [back]
Crews often mentions Graham Greene as a major influence on the development of his narrative style\emdash a narrative line like a piece of string tied to the first page of a story, drawn straight and held taught to the last. While it is Greene's novel The End of the Affair which Crews "dissected"\emdash broke it down into "the number of characters, scenes, rooms, etc." (Walsh 94)\emdash in order to reassemble and substitute with his own characters, scenes, and rooms, it is Greene's novel The Power and the Glory which Crews marks as his favorite. Crews's interview with William J. Walsh examines the dissection of Greene's book in detail [See also Watson 1974, p. 64].
"The thing I loved about Graham Greene is that no matter what else he did, he always told a story and the story had that hard, clean narrative which I admire very much. It is the thing that is most central to the way I work. Those long, introspective, bemused wanderings over some sort of psychological landscape inside the character are alien to me, although there is some of that in Greene. There is some of that in any writer. Obviously, there are characters who think and wonder about the implications of who they are and what they've done, and where they're going and all that. But you take a book like The Power and the Glory and it's got this nice, clean, hard narrative sort of line that I admire."\emdash Bellamy 1976 [back]
In conversation, Crews has said, to paraphrase, "You can get a job anywhere in America if you can handle a grill." [back]
In response to questions asking why he writes about "freaks," Crews frequently recalls waking one morning in a carnival trailer to see a bearded lady and a man with a cleft face\emdash a married couple, who happened to be sideshow performers\emdash discuss plans for dinner and then kiss. "And I," writes Crews, "lying at the back of the trailer, was never the same again" (Introduction, Classic Crews 13). [back]
For the full story, see the essay "The Violence that Finds Us." [back]
Crews has expressed, in conversation, a similar disdain for the traditional expectations of an academic career. He has, in fact, admitted to refusing to attend or to serve on academic committees at the University of Florida. [back]
"From about 1928 to 1935, twelve writers united to challenge the foundations of modern American life . . . Their discussions at Vanderbilt University generated a set of culturally impious essays, I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930). It implored the South not to forsake 'moral, social, and economic autonomy' for the pervasive industrial model." [From Robert Gingher's study on Andrew Lytle, "An Agrarian for All Seasons" (1996 July). World & I, vol. 11, p. 258.]
Considering Lytle's influence on his student, it is no coincidence that much of the mature critical attention given to Crews's novels centers on the individual's response to "outmoded lifestyles that conflict with postmodern urban values" (Robert Covel 1994). [back]
Sterling Watson's novel The Calling is a revealing account of one young writer's encounters with an older, established author. Even more revealing is the fact that Watson was an apprentice to Crews in the early 1970s. [back]
In print and interview, Crews only dimly explicates details of these highly personal events. It is likely, therefore, that I have misconstrued dates and facts in my effort to construct a biographical narrative. I apologize for all inaccuracies and hope that future biographical endeavors will correct my errors.
Update (26 Jan 2003): Joseph Dewey's research for his entry on Crews in Scribner's American Writers series [volume XI. Jay Parini, editor. 2002: 99-117] helped to resolve a point of confusion in my original estimations for the birth dates of Crews's two sons, Patrick and Byron.
In the Classic Crews reprint of "Fathers, Sons, Blood"\emdash the text I used to infer the boys' birth dates\emdash Crews wrote that Patrick died on July 31, 1961.
However, as Dewey pointed out in correspondence with me, Crews dedicated This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven "To the memory of my boy / PATRICK SCOTT CREWS / 1960-1964," which, in fact, threw my dates off by at least three years.
After struggling to resolve the conflicting dates, I gave up and instead returned, as any researcher knows comes first, to the original source. To my surprise, I immediately found the discrepancy attributable to a single-digit error of typography: a one for a four.
In the January 1985 issue of Playboy, the first sentence of "Fathers, Sons, Blood" states: "On July 31, 1964, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I was sleeping late after writing all night when I heard my wife, Sally, scream above the yammering of children's voices." [back]
The very same departmental faculty, Crews has said in conversation, who denied him entrance into the graduate program some years earlier.
Harry Lee Crews
Sex: M
Individual Information
Birth Date: 17 Aug 1934 - Benton, Columbia County, Florida, USA 272
Christening: 1 Aug 1954 - St Johns Church, Tampa, Hillsborough Co., FL
Death: 9 Mar 2004 - Sanford, Seminole Co., Florida, USA ( at age 69) 272
Burial: in Memorial Cemetery, Lake City, Columbia Co., Florida, USA 272
Parents
Father: Leo Crews 150
Mother: Teeny Elizabeth Melton 150
Spouses and Children
1. *Gretchen Rebecca Van Duzer
Marriage: 1954 - Tampa, Hillsborough, Florida 274
Status: Divorced - 2 Feb 1971
Children:
1. Mary Elizabeth Crews