Dad was born on June 25, 1928. He used to say that everyone celebrated his half-birthday (December 25th). He was born in Gerber, California, so he also liked to say that he was a Gerber baby! His parents were Dee Lawrence McCroskey and Ethel Vieda Smith McCroskey (affectionately known in our branch of the family as Monner). He was the oldest of 5 children. The other 4 were Evelyn, Leonard (Uncle Mac), Lois Ann (Sannie), and Doug.
A tent revival came to Gerber, California with a preacher named Nels Thompson. Monner went to hear him. Grandpa went to try to cause trouble but ended up getting saved. He became a minister and moved his family up to Eugene, Oregon, and then to a storefront in Portland, Oregon. They lived above the store and had services below until the new Thompson Brethren meeting hall was built on Interstate Avenue. Grandpa was the head minister there and their home was attached to the meeting hall. There was a print shop below where Grandpa published a monthly magazine for all the meetings (there weren’t many of them) and also printed gospel tracts for the members to hand out.
Dad learned how to read at 4 and finished both 1st and 2nd grade in one year before he had even turned 6. Dad and his family moved up to Portland when he was 7, and the first time my mother laid eyes on him, she walked up and kissed him! He did well in school and when he was in high school, he attended Benson Polytechnic High School, an all-boys school at the time, and took printing so that he could help in his dad’s print shop. He was the editor of the school paper and he recruited Jim Elliot as an assistant editor. Jim was one of 5 missionaries who were later killed by the Auca Indians in Ecuador in 1956, the year I was born. If I had been born a boy, Dad would have named me after Jim. Dad was at the top of his class in high school and was offered a scholarship to any college he wanted, but he turned it down so he could continue working with his dad.
Mom (Donna Judd) and Dad became sweethearts in high school, and as soon as Dad was able to find a home for them, he married her. They had 3 daughters, Sherill, me, and Lauryn in that order. Before Lauryn was born, Dad was finally encouraged to go to college. He went to Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, a community college. He was at the top of his class there and before he graduated, he was told that if he got his master’s degree in teaching, they’d have a job waiting for him.
He went on to Portland State University studying English, the subject he wanted to be able to teach. While he attended both colleges, he was also working full-time to support his family. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English, he went on to work on his master’s degree in teaching. A year into the 2-year program, he went back to Clark College to tell them he was almost ready for that job they had promised him, and they told him that things had changed due to the space program and now there was a glut of teachers. People with PhDs were now being hired. Dad dropped out of the master’s program and continued as a printer for the rest of his career.
All that time Dad was working full-time, going to school, and studying late into the evening took a toll on my parent’s marriage. In 1971, the year I started high school, they got a divorce. That was a tough time for Dad, but eventually, he met a woman at church named Sandra Strilcov and they got married in December of 1972. Sandy was a school teacher all of her career. She worked her way up to a position as an ESL teacher working with children from other countries, and when she was semi-retired, she started writing curricula for other teachers in the Portland Public School District.
Sandy and Dad took people into their home who needed a place to stay. The first one I remember was a young Mexican woman named Emma Oliver. I was still living at home so she and I were like roommates while we attended Portland Community College. She had become in need when the Mexican peso was devalued and the money she had saved for going to college was no longer enough.
When my son was a toddler, Dad and Sandy took in a Philippine woman who had come over as a mail-order bride, and when she got pregnant, her husband left her. Her name was Delia and her baby’s name was Grace. Grace was born with a heart defect, so immigration didn’t deport them back to the Philippines until she got stronger. Grace was the first girl my son, Jamey, ever kissed!
Besides taking people into their home, Dad and Sandy also did a lot of traveling. Once for a month, they volunteered in Serbocroatia (when it was still one) where there had been a war and the buildings were all full of bullet holes. They also went to China and took a boat down the Yangtze River. I don’t know all the places they went or all the people they took in.
When Dad retired, he started volunteering for a refugee organization. Dad taught over 170 refugees to drive and get their Oregon driver’s license including a young Ethiopian woman who later came to live with me. He also learned of a refugee woman whose family was abusing her because she couldn’t speak or read English, so he taught her and then helped her get a library card so that she could check out some simple books to read. It opened a whole new world for her! Dad also worked with her husband, trying to teach him the proper way to speak to his wife.
Sandy got breast cancer and was cured of it once, but then it came back in a metastasized form and she was put on hospice. She died in 2008, the year Mark and I got married. Her ashes were spread in the ocean on the day Mark and I had originally planned to be our wedding day, August 8, 2008.
Dad was very lonely after Sandy died. Sherill called him every day, but he really wanted to get married again. He joined E-Harmony and eventually met Elaine. She was a widow and they started dating long distance (she lived in Salem, Oregon). In October 2010, they got married. They also took people into their home and enjoyed traveling together until Dad got sick.
Sherill was undergoing chemo for multiple myeloma. Once a week, she had to go to oncology for another infusion, and every week, Dad went and sat with her and talked with her. Multiple myeloma isn’t supposed to be genetic, but Dad ended up getting it. He liked to joke that he probably caught it in oncology from all the times he visited with her there. Sherill was near the end of her 14-year battle with multiple myeloma when Dad got it. She died in 2018.
Dad was on medication that was keeping the multiple myeloma at bay, but not before he had shrunk considerably in the torso. This made it difficult for him to walk very far. He had been such a good walker and so fast that I couldn’t keep up with him before he got sick. Now he was limited in being able to travel long distances or walk much when he got there.
For much of Dad’s life, he had been involved in ministry of one sort or another. He spent several years as a church elder. He taught Sunday school classes and Bible studies, led home groups, and sometimes preached. In the last few years, he wanted to continue ministering, but nothing seemed to work out for him. He began to feel like a has-been which is unfortunate because of how much he had contributed over the years. He should have just been able to take things easy at his age, but he still felt the need to do something useful.
Last fall, Dad decided to take some mail across the street to the mailbox and he tripped on a crack and fell. Elaine was napping and didn’t know he’d gone out. No one drove past or saw him out their windows. He lay there for a while and finally decided he had to get himself up, so he managed to pull himself up on the mailbox and get back to his house, but he had broken some bones in his neck and from that time on, he had to wear a neck brace.
Then in February, he began having hallucinations. One night, he got out of bed thinking he was going to escort some guests out to their car. He went outside in his pajamas and then couldn’t figure out how to get back into his house. He wandered around the neighborhood for a while until a neighbor brought him home, and then Elaine took him to the ER. He ended up being admitted to the hospital for a few days while they did various tests, and that’s when they discovered that on top of his multiple myeloma, Dad had acute myeloid leukemia. We were told it’s very rare for a myeloma to turn into a myeloid form of cancer. Leave it to Dad to come up with something rare! They referred Dad to hospice on February 21st and I flew up to help Dad and Elaine on the 22nd. Dad was released from the hospital on the 23rd, and that’s when I started spending a lot of time with him, actually getting to know him better than I had since I first left home as a young woman.
I flew back to Tucson on March 20th and Lauryn and her family went up to spend a week with Dad on the 21st. They had a miraculous day with him on the 22rd and then he had a bad fall on the morning of the 23rd. He passed away late on the 25th of March, 2024. He will be greatly missed by all who loved him, but I believe he has been reunited with his parents and Sandy and Sherill. He is also healthy and enjoying being in the presence of God.
I love you, Dad!