Memorials › Billy Joe Crowe
Billy Joe Crowe
14 Jul 1942 – 14 Feb 2020
| Birth | 14 Jul 1942 |
| Death | 14 Feb 2020 |
| Cemetery | New Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery Somerville , Morgan County , Alabama , USA |
| Added by | Suitcases and Trunks on 18 Mar 2020 |
| FaG | https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208118785 |
Bio
GOLD CROW YDNA Familytreedna.com "On behalf of Priscilla, Donna, and my children, Aaron, Sarah, and Johnston, I would like to begin by thanking everyone who braved this weather to be here today and for all those who have sent their condolences. We have received so many calls, emails, texts, and thoughts and prayers, and they have been both comforting during this difficult time and have been a reminder of the impact that my father had on so many others. I also want to take a moment to thank the caring staff at Barton House Memory Care in Nashville. The dignity that they, along with Ascend Hospice, helped provide Daddy in his last days is a gift that I can never repay. For these past eighteen months, as I watched my father slowly fade, I have been thinking about, dreading really, standing before all of you while attempting to celebrate the life of someone that we all knew in such very different ways. I, of course, Googled "eulogies" and was encouraged to keep it short, light, and hopeful. I have done my best to follow this advice. Maybe it's true that we only come to appreciate something when faced with its absence, and every visit with my father at Barton House triggered a strange jumble of random memories of Daddy that, like a poorly edited black and white film tragically fails to accurately represent or honor all that he meant to me. I remember being too small to reach the car's gas pedals, and moving into his lap when we turned onto Berry Road so I could "drive" the rest of the way to so many Sunday's spent with a multitude of aunts, uncles, cousins around a heaping table prepared, metaphorically, from five loaves and two fishes; the difference being that my Mamaw pulled off her miracle every week. It was here that we all learned that "ride-or-die" world-view so central to my Daddy, specifically, and to the whole Crowe-clan, more generally. While our paths do not cross as frequently, know that, like Daddy, I have never taken for granted the strength of our family bonds. I was stronger knowing that Daddy was there for me, whenever needed, and for this I am thankful to him and to all of you.I remember a day, sometime in that sweet spot between spring and full summer, when bedroom windows were opened an inch or two at night to allow the attic fan to pull cool night air into the house. And my father, on an early Saturday morning, passive-aggressively mowing the grass back and forth outside my window to make me get my lazy ass up and out of bed. The day was never wasted by my Daddy. I remember hauling, what had to be, 1000's of tons of sod, brick, sand (my god, the sand I hauled), or lumber over the years as he used these raw materials to transform his meticulously drawn sketches and columns of measurements, laid out on pieces of graph paper, into the beautiful spaces that I was fortunate to grow up in. You have your own memories and at the heart of all of them, like mine, are likely common themes of "fierce loyalty," "hard work," "dependability," and "generosity." Hold on to these for they are the raw materials that my father has gifted us along with a charge to create something beautiful and special for ourselves and for those caught, for however long, in the orbit of our lives. I do not wonder where my dad is now. I need only look into the loving faces of those here today to find him. He left so much of his gentle spirit behind in simple lessons of grit and perseverance that he taught me and the others close to him. Richard Bach wrote in Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, "Here is a test to find out if your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't." While my father's mission on Earth is complete, I know that, were he here today, he would scold us to put this grieving behind us, get up off our asses, and get to work! There is still so much left for all us to do, and the day is wasting." Written by his son Keith Crowe
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