Lester Edwin Crosby 2nd. [Les]
I was born January 6, 1935 in St. Luke’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Two years later, we moved to West Palm Beach, Florida where I was to live until 1991 when we moved to South Carolina.
I went to school at Northboro Jr. High from K thru 9th grade.
Our High School was grades 10, 11, & 12. When I started High School, I bought a 1940 Ford, 2-door sedan for $ 400. The best car I have ever owned.
I met my first girlfriend in the 9th. Grade. Her name was Connie Bavitz. I have no idea whatever became of her? My second girlfriend, who later became my wife, was Pat Moree. Someone introduced us and we hit it off immediately. We went steady for most of the time we were in High School. We broke up for a time and I met girlfriend # 3. Pat McKeon. She lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, so we didn't get together very often.
In 1952 I bought a 1946 Hudson, another nice car.
Another car I had while in Palm Beach High School was a 35 Ford Roadster. We chopped the roof and it looked neat.
We used to go to the stock car races in Daytona, when the Speedway was located on the beach. They would let you park anywhere, and you stood on the beach and watched. They did have stands you could use of course. High School was fun... and we had lots of it.
We had Fraternity's when we went to school and I belonged to the "Tekes". That was short for Theta Kappa Omega. We did everything together. There was 4 frat's and 4 Sorority's as I recall. Each fraternity had their own horn signal, so there was always lots of horn blowing. Ours was one beep, two beeps, three beeps.
We went thru H.S. with a lot of interesting people. Some of which have become famous or whatever. Here's a few:
Burt Reynolds was a year behind me in the class of 1954. He was in another fraternity, so he hung out with them. Mostly football & sports people. However I did know Buddy, and he was assigned to my car when we rushed him for the Teke’s in his first year, 1952. He seems to be playing himself in all his movies.
Monte Markham (also a movie star) was a friend of mine. He rode to school with me in my car most of the time we were in school. I had about 5 people who rode in my car to school. They would all chip in for gas, which ran 19 cents a gallon then.
Dick Howser was the manager for the Kansas City Royals from 1981 till he died in 1987.
His team won the 1985 World Series. My wife Pat worked for Howser when he was just starting his Baseball School in the early 1950's.
We had a well-known preacher as well. A former President of the Southern Baptist
Convention. Adrian Rogers. He has a large church in Tennessee now. Akie as we called him, lived on 38th. Street and the alley, one block from our house.
During our senior year it was the COOL thing to do, to quit school and join the Marines.
Every Sat. night the train to Paris Island would leave at midnight. Everyone would go to the FEC station, to see off, whoever was leaving that week. The Korean War was going Hot & Heavy at that time. We used to see who would hang on to the back of the train the longest, as it was leaving the station. I was determined one night to set a new record, for hanging on the longest. Bill Logston & I were the last hangers-on, and the train was going pretty fast. I threw my car keys to my buddies, and told them to pick me up in Stuart, Florida. (the next stop, about 35 miles away). It was a harrowing ride, but was worse for Bill. He was on the side between the double tracks. When we passed another train coming the other way, I thought he was a goner. We made it ok, but that ended the contest; nobody wanted to try and beat that record.
I bought my first guitar while I was in High School, but never really learned to play till years later. I did take fiddle lessons when I was about 10 years old, but never liked the music I had to learn. Same thing with the piano, I learned to play a little, but the music available to me wasn’t interesting. In hindsight I wish I had learned more. However I taught my self to play the guitar when I discovered bluegrass and folk music. One of the highlights of my life was when Dianne & I were asked to be part of a band in the early eighties. Our band was called "The Dixie Cannonball String Band" How wonderful it was to be able to play the music I loved with a group. We were asked to play a lot of places.
Sometimes we even got paid. Our highest pay was $ 500 for a weekend and our largest audience was about 1500. What great memories. I really miss the band.
I finally graduated in 1953, then Jim Bruner and I went to the University of Florida. After one year I was called to active duty by the Navy, when my draft number came up. My friend Jim Bruner and I reported for Boot Camp at the Great Lakes Training Center, Near Chicago. From there we went to Electronics Tech. School in the same area. The school was hard and lasted 24 weeks. I was assigned to the USS Larson in Providence, Rhode Island. I reported aboard a week before Christmas, it was cold!!! My job in the Navy was Electronics Technician; I helped maintain all the electronic equipment aboard our Destroyer.
I Got Married to Pat Moree in 1954, and we bought my (our) next car, a 1947 Mercury, another gooood car. Pat had to buy it in her name, because she was 18 and I was under 21. In Illinois, a girl was legal age at 18. Pat and I were together while I was in
Electronics school, and we lived in Waukegan, Illinois. But she went back home to live while I was stationed up north in Rhode Island. Patrice our first daughter was born while I was on a Med Cruise. I was in England at the time. When we returned to the U.S. I managed to swap ships with someone and got stationed in Key West, FL. on the USS Saufley. Pat joined me in Key West where we lived at 92 Salt Pond, in a navy trailer. Key West was a really neat place back in the early fifties. The road (U S # 1) from there to Miami was almost deserted. The mosquitoes were so bad on the road that if you got out of the car, they would be so thick; you couldn't see your skin. I wish I had been blessed with a view of the future... property was real cheap back then. Bummer!! The old Merc. was burning a lot of oil now and I used to buy it by the gallon can to add along the way back and forth between WPB and Key West. About the time it was about to quit, we bought a 1955 Chevy. Our first brand new car. It cost $2,000 new and I wish I had it back today. I've had good luck with cars, seems like all my old cars turned out to be Classics.
I got out of the Navy in 1956, and went to work for Ma Bell. I worked there at AT&T for 30 years, in WPB. FL. When I got out of the Navy, I took a little time off before I looked for a job. We lived in one of the apartments in back of my parent’s house on 53rd. Street. I saw an ad in the paper for an electronics tech. and applied. It turned out to be AT&T. They hired me and I stayed there for 30 years and 2 weeks. I loved my job there, I started at $ 42 a week, but the benefits were great. I worked in every dept. we had, both inside and outside. We still used open wire circuits back then and everything used vacuum tubes. I went to every school they had and was working in the 5ESS-switching machine when I retired.
Dianne was the person in Atlanta who I worked with just about every day on the phone to input the latest Data changes into our computers. I went back to school at night at the
University of Palm Beach. I was in the Navy during the Korean Conflict and Viet Nam, so I qualified for both GI Bills. I graduated with honors from there in 1973 with a BS degree in Business Administration.
I worked nights (Midnight to 8am) for about 7 years at AT&T and got a 2nd job repairing and maintaining dictating machines for a office machine company. This really interested me because one of our customers was the Space Center at the Cape. This was when the space race was going on hot and heavy. As a repairman, I had clearance to everywhere on the base, so I saw a lot from the inside. I was able to see the rockets being assembled for launch up close. I remember the first time I went to the top of the VAB (vertical assembly building) and looked down. They even had clouds form up there. Anyway, the rocket reached all the way up there and the workers looked like ants down below. The exhaust ports were big enough to drive a car into. You felt like you were a part of history in the making in those days. It was nice to have a small part in the space program.
I was the CWA union steward for the WPB AT&T office for several years, and then became the CWA secy. - treas. for the state of Florida for many years until I retired. One of the highlights of my life occurred in 1978 when I was attending a Legislative Conference for CWA in Washington, DC. CWA of course had played an important part in the election of Jimmy Carter as President. Unexpectedly, we all were invited to the Whitehouse for lunch with Jimmy and Roselyn. After passing the FBI checks we entered the Whitehouse. We had a nice buffet lunch served by the Whitehouse Staff. Then Jimmy talked to us from the East Room. He said that they wanted to invite us to their home because they wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for all our help. Everything was real nice. I got to shake Jimmy’s hand and had my picture taken with Rosalyn. I got to go into all the rooms on that floor and I sat in all the furniture. It was really neat; I took pictures from inside the Whitehouse of the Washington Monument... We had free run of all these rooms. Someday history will recognize Jimmy Carter as one of if not the greatest President of our country. This was a great day for me. I had been in the Whitehouse 3 times before this as a visitor on tour, but it was really different being an invited guest.
We bought our first home in Gun Club estates at 4240 North Browning Drive. It cost around $ 6,000. We had 3 more children: Yvonne was born while we lived here, Mike &
Lester 3rd. were born while we lived at our next home at 1251 Palmetto Road in Haverhill. At the house in Gun Club, we were in a project and the houses were really close together. One of the guys I worked with lived in Haverhill, which was really out in the boonies at that time. His wife hated living out that far and we didn’t like living in a project. We swapped homes. Ours was a new house and his was a lot older but had 2 acres of land. I of course think we got the best deal.
I also had some Volkswagens... 1962, 1963, 1964... They ruined them when they went to the 12volt battery in 1965. They were a tough car, you could drive them anywhere. If the battery went dead, no problem, just stick your foot out the door and push it like a scooter... They would start right up. You could buy a used one any day in the paper for $100-$200. You could change engines like a tire. Great car. I drove mine to work every day and my two sons, Mike & Lester drove theirs in the yard where we built a small racetrack complete with jumps. The boys could jump their cars a good 10 feet or more.
My Dad died in 1956 and my brother died in a car wreck in 1959, his nickname was Buddy and he was 5 years younger than I. He was going to Palm Beach Jr. College at that time.
My wife Pat died in 1979 of lung cancer. Guess I'll get all the sad stuff over with in one paragraph. My Mother passed away in 1987.
I met my present wife on the phone at work. She also worked for AT&T, in Atlanta, GA. We got married about a year later (Sept. 1980) and have been married now for 22 years. I was really blessed to find such a wonderful person to spend the rest of my life with I had 4 kids and Dianne also had 4, so that’s how we wound up with so many children (8) and grandchildren (13). When I retired from Ma Bell, Dianne was still working for Southern Bell. She had to switch companies when she transferred to W.P.B. After about 6 months off I decided to get a job to kill time. I answered an ad in the paper for a Paddock Judge at the Dog Track. What an experience that was. My job was to identify all the greyhounds before each race and make sure the correct dog was racing. I had about 30 high school age boys and girls working for me as dog handlers, what a nightmare it was trying to control them. Dianne finally got 20 years in at Ma Bell and wanted to quit so I hired her as my Kennel Mistress. She had to take the dogs from the owners and put them in their cages until it was their turn to race. Also she had to clean up any messes they made. They made a lot of messes. We worked there for a year and retired for good.
We've been thru a bunch of cars since 1980, but none can hold up to the ones already mentioned. On one of our vacations in 1989, we went to the Merle Watson Music Festival in Wilkesboro, NC. It was named in honor of Doc Watson's son. Anyway on the way back home we passed thru the Blue Ridge Mtns. of South Carolina. And really liked the area. A year or so later one of the kids was moving to this area and mentioned how cheap the property was up there. Soon after, we traveled to the area looking for some property to build on some day. We were being shown property by a real estate person, and didn't really like anything he was showing. Every now and then we would pass area's that we liked, and would comment as so. Finally he took us to the place where we live now (not his listing). Soon as we saw it we knew we wanted to live here. It was right on a fair sized mountain stream, about 50' wide and clear as a bell. The creek was fed a few miles upstream from Raven Cliff Falls in Caesar’s Head State Park. And from the front yard you look at Table Rock Mtn. in Table Rock State Park. Anyway we were able to sell our home in WPB and buy this one. We moved here in the South Carolina, Blue Ridge Mountains, in 1991. And we never plan to move again!!
As I mentioned before, I retired from AT&T in 1986, Dianne retired in 1987, and we love our retirement. Dianne and I spend our time on our Hobby's and our Grandchildren. I've gone nuts on the computer lately (thus our websites) mine is at www.geocities.com/billbill35, and Dianne is deep into Scrap booking & her Cookbook. She ran out of the printed copies, so it is now published on the Internet at www.geocities.com/diacros. We still love to play music and play mostly at our church or other churches. We've been real busy lately getting ready for our bi-annual Family Reunion. It will be held at our home in South Carolina June 29, 2002.
We got interested in Civil War Re-enacting about 1993 and first joined the 49th. NC Troops, an infantry group in North Carolina. The first re-enactment we went to was in Charleston, SC. at Boone Hall Plantation. We set up a borrowed tent (very small) and thought we were ready for anything. We stayed up late around the campfire and went to bed. At 5:30 am reveille was sounded and I crawled out of the tent and got in uniform to fall - in. I thought we would break ranks and have breakfast. NOT... They told us to fill our canteens and form up again. We marched off down the dirt road. About when I thought I was tired, they gave the command "double time”. We ran down the road a long ways and stopped. They told us that the enemy was camped about a mile thru the woods, and off we went. We climbed over fences, jumped ditches, and fought briars. I thought I was surely going to die. However as we marched thru the woods, everyone in uniform, guns at the ready. I couldn’t help but think of my Great Grandfather, who did this very thing 130+ years ago, and gave his life for our beloved Southland. I cried. Somehow I made it all the way and we engaged the enemy troops and had a great battle at 7am in the deep woods. I have re-enacted many times since then, but this was a very emotional time in my life. About 3 hours later we returned to our camp. I crawled to my tent and slept for hours on the dirt floor. We had a great time and bought a lot of the stuff we would need for re-enacting there. I did learn a few months later that I wasn’t able to keep up with the infantry, so we joined the Palmetto Light Artillery and I became a cannoneer. We learned a lot of Civil War Songs and played them a lot at the re-enactments. We are also asked frequently to play at the church services at the re-enactments and other CW memorial services.
Well I guess that’s about it, I’ve rambled around a lot, but its just not easy to write your “story". I know I’ve left out a lot, but I tried to give my thoughts and memories as they went thru my mind. I wish I had something like this from my parents and grandparents. I never knew any of my grandparents. I’ve had a wonderful life and have been greatly blessed. I love you all, and hope you enjoy some of my memories.
Les Crosby
PBHS 1953
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