Neal Eldred Crawford: A Life

My maternal grandfather Neal Eldred Crawford was born 22 June 1910 just outside of Yakima, Washington, which at the time wasn't too far removed temporally or culturally from its frontier days. His parents were Henry Elwood and Polly Ann (née Hayes) Crawford, both originally from Sullivan County, Missouri. His railroad worker father moved the family 1,800 miles (2,900 km) west to the Yakima area for employment purposes in 1907. My grandfather was the sixth youngest of eight children, six boys and two girls.

My grandfather grew up literally on the proverbial "wrong side of the tracks" in a working class neighborhood up the hill from the Northern Pacific rail yard where his father worked. He always received good grades in school despite frequent truancy and playing pranks on teachers. He had an interest in a career as a physician, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Elihu Milligan Crawford, who had a medical practice in Missouri for several decades, although this would not be the path my grandfather ultimately took.

When he was three months shy of his eleventh birthday, his ailing mother died of tuberculosis. After her death, he became a troubled young man, skipping school more often and getting involved in petty crime. His also began refusing to attend church, leading to punishment from his devout Pentecostal father. He frequently broke curfew, and years later recalled being chased by his future father-in-law Robert Neil Sanders, then a Yakima police officer. He was sentenced to serve time in a reform school, an environment that he described to his own children as one of casual brutality.

In his twenties, he earned money as a boxer, fighting in matches in Yakima and as far away as Seattle (142 miles/228 km distant). I don't know what his record was, but I understand he won more than he lost. He also found himself in even more trouble with the law, serving time in the Walla Walla State Penitentiary after conviction on charges of automobile theft and check forgery. After that experience, he never had any further trouble with the law, and began a career as a truck driver.

Then World War II began. He was drafted into the United States Army in November 1943, and Private First Class Crawford soon found himself serving in the Pacific Theater of Operations as part of the Tenth Army. His older brother Alford Preston Crawford and younger brother Millard William Crawford were also drafted during WWII. According to a letter I found that an Army buddy sent him after the war, my grandfather also found time to chase nurses.

While home in Yakima on leave in July 1944 to see his dying younger sister Olive Rachel Crawford, he was eating in a local greasy spoon when the waitress caught his eye. He asked her out, and after two weeks of dating he proposed to her. She said yes. She was, of course, my maternal grandmother Gladys Ione Sanders. They were married on 8 August in the First Baptist Church of Yakima, although by this time he was an atheist and my grandmother was raised a Christian Scientist.

With no time for a honeymoon, he returned to duty in the Pacific. In 1945, he took part in the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest battles of the conflict. His 18-year-old nephew Stanley Green (son of his older sister Gail), a United States Navy sailor, was also at Okinawa. Remaining stationed there after the Japanese surrender, my grandfather contracted a fungal infection of the lungs, causing permanent damage which contributed to his death nearly two decades later. He was 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, and his young wife would no doubt have been appalled by the monkey.

After the war, my grandparents settled for a time in San Francisco, living with my grandmother's artist aunt, Lily Jane McIntosh (née Sanders). Their firstborn child Wesly Lee Crawford was born there. My grandfather was unable to find steady work, so in 1947 they returned to Yakima to live with my grandmother's widowed mother in the house my grandmother grew up in on East Adams Street. My mother Polly Annette Crawford was born shortly thereafter. A son, Robert Elwood Crawford, and a daughter, Patricia Jean Crawford, were also born to them in Yakima, although Patricia died two weeks after her birth.

Once home in Yakima, my grandfather started a small trucking business with his older brother, Elmer Elwood Crawford. Crawford Bros. Trucking 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 between Yakima and Seattle. Realizing there was better money to be made in long-haul trucking, he moved his family to Seattle in 1952 and began working for the Los Angeles-Seattle Motor Express Company. My grandparents' final child, Neal E Crawford, was born in Seattle a year later (unable to agree on Eldred as a middle name, which would have made him a Junior, they simply gave him the letter E).

His new job meant he was only home on weekends and spent the rest of the week driving a rig between Seattle and Los Angeles, but the better income and a G.I. Bill loan allowed him to buy a house in the White Center neighborhood south of Seattle's city limits, a working class area much like the one he grew up in. The house is still there, although it hasn't been owned by my family since 1973, and so is a willow tree he planted as a sapling in the 1950s. During this time, he was also a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as was his brother-in-law William Andrew Koch, Sr. (whose wife Doris was the older sister of my grandmother).

By the mid-to-late 1950s, emphysema resulting from a combination of the previous fungal infection and smoking forced him to quit his trucking job. Looking for an alternative, he took a barbering course at Folk's Barber College on First Avenue in downtown Seattle, graduating with a diploma in "All Branches of Barbering and Barber Science."

He never practiced barbering as an occupation, as he found that breathing in particles of cut hair aggravated his emphysema. With the help of an attorney, he filed for and ultimately received disability compensation from the Veterans Administration, which ruled that his disability (emphysema) resulted from an illness acquired while on active duty. Now retired and receiving a monthly disability check, he spent more time on his favorite hobby, growing roses.

By early 1963, he needed to be admitted to a Veterans Administration hospital due to advanced emphysema. The VA hospital in Seattle had a full ward, so he was sent to the next nearest one that could accept him, 272 miles (437 km) away from home in Walla Walla, Washington, which made family visits impossible.

While in hospital he developed pneumonia, and died there on 23 March 1963 at the age of 52. His body was sent back to Seattle to be buried in the military section of Riverton Crest Cemetery in Tukwila. He was given military funeral honors, and the flag on his coffin was then presented to his widow (my grandmother passed away in 1995, and today the flag is in my mother's possession).