Neal Eldred Crawford: A Life

My maternal grandfather Neal Eldred Crawford would have been 98 years old today (June 22, 2008). He's the only grandparent I never met, because he died before I was born. What follows is his story.

He was born in 1910 in Yakima, Washington. His father Henry Elwood Crawford was a rail yard worker and his mother Polly Ann (née Hayes) was a homemaker. Both of his parents were from Missouri, and his family moved 1,796 miles (2,891 km) west to Yakima in 1907. He had five older siblings and two younger ones, working out to five brothers and two sisters.

He grew up literally on the wrong side of the tracks in a working class neighborhood near the rail yards. He always did well in school despite frequently skipping school or playing pranks on teachers, and he wanted to become a physician like his grandfather Elihu Milligan Crawford, M.D., although this wasn't to be.

He was ten years old when his mother died of tuberculosis. His father was a devout Pentacostalist who often physically punished him for not being devout enough. After his mother's death, my grandfather became a troubled young man, skipping school more often and getting involved in petty crime. He was eventually sentenced to serve time in a reform school, an environment that he later described as one of casual brutality.

Later on, he became a boxer who fought in many matches in Yakima and as far away as Seattle, a distance of 142 miles (228 km). I don't know what his record was, but he won most of his matches. He also had more trouble with the law, spending several years in the Washington State Penitentiary after he was convicted of car theft and check forgery. After that experience, he never had any further trouble with the law.

In 1943, he was drafted into the United States Army, and Private Crawford soon found himself serving in the Pacific Theater of Operations as part of the Tenth Army. Judging from a letter I found that an Army buddy later sent him, my grandfather also found time to chase pretty blonde nurses.

While home in Yakima on two weeks leave in late July 1944, he happened to be eating in a restaurant when the waitress caught his eye. He asked her out, and after nearly two weeks of dating he then asked her to marry him. She said yes. That waitress, of course, was my maternal grandmother Gladys Ione Sanders. They were married on August 8th in the First Baptist Church of Yakima, although by this time he was an atheist and my grandmother was a Christian Scientist.

With no time for a honeymoon, he returned to the Pacific Theater. He took part in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, along with his oldest sister's son George Green. While serving overseas, he contracted a fungal infection in his lungs that caused permanent damage that later contributed to his early death. He was finally discharged from the Army in January 1946. He regretted having to leave his jeep and pet monkey (I don't know the circumstances by which he came to have a monkey) behind in Okinawa, but there was no way to bring them home with him.

After the war, my grandparents settled for a time in San Francisco, living with my grandmother's artist aunt. Their oldest son was born there. Unable to find steady work, they returned to Yakima in 1947 to live in the house my grandmother grew up in along with her widowed mother. My mother was born shortly thereafter. They later had two more sons and a daughter, although the latter died two weeks after birth.

In Yakima, he started a small trucking business with his older brother Elmer. This didn't last long, as the two brothers soon had a heated argument that turned into a fistfight, and they went their separate ways. My grandfather then found work with a trucking firm that hauled goods from Yakima to Seattle and back again. Realizing that there was better money to be earned in long-haul trucking, he moved his family to Seattle in 1952 and began working for the Los Angeles-Seattle Motor Express Company.

His new job meant he was only home on weekends and spent the rest of the week driving between Seattle and Los Angeles, but it allowed him to buy a house in the White Center neighborhood (which is also where I grew up). During this time, he also became an active union member with the Teamsters. By the late 1950s, emphysema caused by a combination of the previous lung damage and smoking (or at least his doctor believed it was caused by that combination) forced him to retire from trucking, so he took up barbering and spent more time on his favorite hobby, growing roses.

He remained a staunch atheist, and his response when religious groups would come to the door proselytizing was to pull out a shotgun and tell them he'd start shooting after he counted to five. My mother recalls seeing them flee the yard and even hurdle the fence! Suffice it to say, they never came around again.

By early 1963, he was admitted to the Veterans Administration hospital in Walla Walla with advanced emphysema. This was difficult for both him and his family, as the hospital was 272 miles (437 km) away from home and they couldn't readily visit.

He died on March 23, 1963 at the age of 53, and his body was returned to be buried in the military section of Riverton Crest Cemetery in Tukwila, the city where I currently live. I'm in possession of the large American flag that was draped on his coffin. Although his life was cut short, it had been an interesting one. I just wish I could have met him.