George Ellis Crow

• General Notes
  • 10/1/1997
    
    George Ellis Crow was born at the home of his grandparents Ellis Arthur "Dusty" and Lillian "Lilly" Renfrow at 206 S. Williams St., Columbia, Missouri.  The doctor who delivered him was Dr. Smith. The bed that he and his mother Ruth went through this ordeal in, is now in the possession of his daughter Ruth Crow Samuel, and is being slept in by his granddaughters Emily and Lindsey Samuel. The bed was given to their grandmother when she was a teenager.  The house that this blessed event took place in was raised in about 1974 to make room for a parking lot for Boone County Hospital.
    He spent most of his life moving to one place and then another. This was the way of his father, and then became the way of life for him while serving a career in the US Navy.  Some of my first memories are when I attended the first two  years of school at Robert E. Lee school in Columbia.  From there we went to Jefferson City, Missouri and I attended Morrow Heights School.  From here we started moving again, and I went to school in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri,Water Valley, Mississippi, Greensboro, North Carolina and back to Columbia, This was when my dad went to war during WW2 and my mom and I lived at 1514 Bass Ave. in Columbia.  I went to the 4th grade at Robert E. Lee school and then we moved to 303 Westmount putting me in Grant School for the 5th and 6th grade.  My dad came home shortly after that,  and we moved to 1020 Bond St. Moberly, Missouri where I attended West Park School and finished my primary education graduating from Moberly High School in 1952. In the summer of 1951 I had met a girl at the lake in Moberly. Her Name was Beverly June Ferris and in November 1954 after I had joined the Navy we were married and started our short 10 year life together in San Diego, California.  She is and has been deeply missed by this writer.
    
    2/1/2007 Added by his daughter, Vicki Crow Doctor
    
    My father, George, did many things in his life.  But above all, without a doubt, he was a loving father and grandfather to five children, and 12 grandchildren.  Two more grandchildren and three great grand-children came into this world after his death.
    
    His Navy career spanned almost twenty years.  He spent his early years as an Aviation Ordinanceman (AO) on the USS Pine Island and the USS Constellation.  After the untimely death of his first wife, Beverly, he went on to be an Instructor and  Company Commander at Great Lakes Naval Base in North Chicago, Illinois.  In the late 1960's and early 1970's he was an Anti-Submarine Warfare Technician assigned to Patrol Squadron VP-56.  While on ASW duties, my dad also was voluntarily in charge of in-flight meal preparations.  He loved to cook and prepare big meals, so he was right at home doing this.  He cooked for several VIP's while in flight and even wrote a cookbook of his in-flight recipes (one I remember enjoying as a child was "shit on a shingle" AKA "SOS").  Before transitioning to civilian life in 1971,  my Dad attended a Club Management School Training Program.   He went on to a long career in the food service industry, working as regional food sales managers for ARA and Lady Baltimore.  After his retirement...his joy in life was watching his children start families and watching his grandchildren grow.   He was a frequent and welcome visitor to all of his children's houses.  He also worked in time to study his family history.  All of the information contained in this family tree is the result of his work and research on our family tree.  He loved to travel and see the places his ancestors lived, imagine their lives and what they might have been like.   Along with the information detailed in this family tree, he gathered documents, family photos, maps, pictures of old homesteads and, most of all, a connection to a huge "family" that he never knew he had.  In fact, after discovering his great grandfather's brother had traveled ot Ecuador, South America and started a family in the late 1800's, my dad went looking for our south american cousins, found them, traveled to ecuador and developed wonderful relationships with this new family.  A relationship that continues to today...as I keep in touch with some of them.
    
    My Dad passed away on December 9, 2002 after a short six month battle with cancer.  He died at Boone Hospital Center, in a building adjacent to the parking lot (that he spoke about above) where the house once stood that he was born in.  And he is and has been very missed by his daughter, Vicki.