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6 September 2006 Longwood freshman is grandson of late Farmville mayor,
The answer is yes. Patrick, a freshman from Chesapeake, is the grandson of the businessman who was mayor from 1972 to 1998 and died in September 2003. “I’m delighted that he’s coming to Longwood,” his grandmother, Jane Crute of Farmville, said during the summer. Patrick, both of whose parents are Longwood graduates, has been accepted into the Honors Program. Interestingly, his mother, Patricia Whitehurst Crute, took German for three semesters under Dr. Geoff Orth, now director of the Honors Program. “All teachers dread the day someone will walk into their class and say ‘You taught my mom,’ and that day has now arrived for me,” Dr. Orth said with a laugh. After Patrick submitted the mandatory essay for admittance to the Honors Program in May, Dr. Orth e-mailed him and asked “Are you related to the late Mayor Crute? If so, I taught your mother.” Patrick e-mailed him back to confirm that he was his grandson. Since then his mother has also corresponded via e-mail with her former German professor. Patrick is majoring in physics in Longwood’s cooperative physics/pre-engineering program, in which he’ll earn a bachelor’s degree in three years, then pick up a master’s degree at the University of Virginia after two more years. He wants to be a civil engineer. It was probably inevitable that he would end up at Longwood. In addition to his parents, his grandmother attended Longwood for two years before getting married, his father’s older sister is a Longwood graduate (bachelor’s and master’s degrees), his father’s other sister went to Longwood for two years, his mother’s sister is an alumna, and a great-great aunt also was a Longwood graduate. “All roads lead through Farmville,” joked Patrick’s mother, a 1980 graduate (B.A. in English) who met her husband, Joseph David Crute Jr. (B.S. in history, ’81), who goes by David, at Longwood. She has taught on and off for 19 years (“all the way from pre-school up to college writing labs”), now is a substitute teacher in the Chesapeake school system, and plans to return to teaching middle or high school English. Her husband, who retired as a major from the Army in 2001 after a 20-year career, is a computer systems engineer for General Dynamics. An only child, Patrick was born in Savannah, Ga., when his father was stationed at nearby Fort Stewart, and he moved to Northern Virginia when he was 2. He lived on-base at Fort Belvoir and later in Alexandria before moving to Chesapeake after his father, originally in ordnance and later in information systems, retired from the Army. Patrick graduated from the same Chesapeake high school as his mother, Western Branch, and is one of only about 50 freshmen accepted into the Honors Program out of a freshman class of 990. At last year’s Heart of Virginia Festival, Patrick and his parents attended the dedication of the Mayor Crute Kiosk near the corner of Main and Fourth streets. The kiosk, in front of the former State Theatre, which also was renamed in the late mayor’s honor, is across the street from the office supply company that he and his wife ran for nearly 40 years. Patrick’s grandmother, Jane Crute, who grew up in Cumberland village, attended Longwood from 1942 to 1944, then left to get married (her first husband died in 1948 and she married J. David Crute in 1952). A daughter from the first marriage, Sandra Gee of Victoria, received her bachelor’s degree at Longwood in 1973 and her master’s degree there in 1982. She retired in June after teaching at Central of Lunenburg High School for 33 years. The second marriage produced Joseph David Crute Jr. and his sister, Karen Dickson, now a nurse with the Virginia Beach schools, who attended Longwood for two years before transferring to U.Va. Patrick’s great-great aunt (Jane Crute’s aunt) was the late Courtney Godsey Blankenship of Cumberland County, who graduated from Longwood in 1931. She taught in Ettrick for many years. Patricia Crute’s sister, Pamela Baldwin, a 3rd-grade teacher in the Chesapeake schools, is a 1977 Longwood graduate. |
Before he is through at Longwood University, Patrick Crute will probably be asked more than once whether he is related to the late J. David Crute, the longest-serving mayor in Farmville’s history.