Loyd Francis Crawley

Loyd Francis Crawley, 90, of Cincinnati OH (career), Ocean Ridge, FL (retirement), and Madison, WI (memory care), passed away on December 22, 2023, of natural causes, sadly disproving his belief that he might be too stubborn to die. Loyd was born in El Paso in 1933 and was Honorable Mention in the 1934 Sears National Baby contest, and we have the medal to prove it. His father, John Max Crawley, was an engineering foreman who spent the Depression tearing bridges and large buildings down; his mother, Pearl, was a terminal patient’s nurse. They were often separated for months at a time when Max moved to take on the next job and Pearl waited for her current charge to die. As a result, during his school years Loyd lived in a dozen towns in TX, CA, AR, IN, OH, WV, and wound up in Bridgeville, PA, where he graduated high school in 1951, after playing for two years on their undefeated football team. His itinerant upbringing encouraged a lifelong love of fishing— a pursuit Loyd could do alone, or with a friend, if he made one. And fishing led to two other lifelong hobbies, collecting arrowheads and fossil hunting, both of which he found aplenty in childhood, walking through farmers’ fields to local fishing holes. He continued to find fossils throughout his working career in Cincinnati, wandering up fresh roadside cuts, and down among rocks dredged up at the building sites of new malls and fast food joints all around the Tristate area. His thirty or so absurdly heavy boxes of fossils (memorialized by one of his movers, who asked, “whatcha got in these, a buncha rocks?”) were donated in 2020 to a very grateful professor of paleontology at Florida Atlantic University.

He attended two colleges— starting at Westminster in PA (and playing on their undefeated football team), running out of money, joining the army, and finishing at Carnegie Tech on the G.I. Bill. He was juggling several part-time jobs while at Carnegie, and feared he would be expelled the first year after failing some courses. Grateful they let him finish his degree, he developed a reverence for learning, and later established several scholarships there. Had he been able to study anything, he’d have chosen archaeology or paleontology. But he took a degree in engineering, with bills for school due, and soon two stubborn children to feed, Erin Leigh and Brian Scott, raised with his beloved wife of 46 years, Linda Forth Crawley (d. 2005). In 1959 he accepted a job with Procter & Gamble, and like many of his generation, stayed there for a career, continuing his peregrinations with stints in Iowa City through 1962; Cincinnati 1962–74; Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England 1974–77; Cincinnati 1977–90; and finally Brussels, Belgium, where he retired in 1994 as Vice President, Management Systems, Europe.

He claimed a number of minor superpowers, for instance: his feet didn’t smell. This his favorite dachshund, Heidi, disproved by nightly shoving her nose as far up his house slippers as she could manage. Salt, he said, had no ill effect on him. Maybe. He salted everything he ate, and did live to age 90. He thought he could “tough out” illnesses in his recliner. A resounding no. This nearly ended his life early, 12 and 14 years ago, once with a bout of pneumonia, once with a perforated gallbladder. Luckily one friend’s wife was a nurse and recognized the pain in his voice and hustled him to the hospital. Both times. Finally he claimed he could fall without hurting himself, as he’d learned to “tuck and roll” playing football. This he proved with a frightening fall at age 86; he tucked, he rolled, stood back up, and grinned.

While his children were young he served on the 1966 State of Ohio’s “Little Hoover” Commission, helping school districts restructure supply purchasing, which led to various stints on the local school board, scout leadership, and advisory positions with city schools. While in Newcastle, Loyd and Linda’s mutual interest in history led to new collections, English antiques at first, and later Dutch pipes, Kazakh carpets, Belgian paintings, and Chinese jades and ceramics. Oh, and wine. And numberless books about the preceding. He and Linda encouraged their children to follow their inclinations, as he had been unable to, and they had satisfying if impractical careers in academia and the theater. Loyd is predeceased by his wife, many wonderful friends, and his siblings, Vaughn, Sylvia, and Kent. He is survived by many more dear friends, Brian and Katherine’s own stubborn children, Max and Zoe; Erin and Mark’s stubborn children, Jillian and Miriam; and a first beloved great-grandchild, Felix, son to Jillian and Amanda. Awareness of and delight in little Felix seems to be the last long-term memory Loyd was able to form.

He asked for no service to be held, so we’re granting that wish. (He asked us to push him into the Intracoastal waterway when “the time came”; we refused that one.) If you’d like to make a donation in his memory, please consider Carnegie Mellon.