By Mrs. W.S. Dickson
“The fact that such a simple little thing is going to Columbia university should have made the stir it did in newspaper circles bewildered me,” was Mrs. Annie P. Crawford’s answer to a Daily News reporter when asked if she didn’t feel like the President of the United States at having become overnight such a nationally known personage.
Mrs. Crawford was a student at Columbia university this summer at the age of 71. Some of the Columbia authorities, on observing the date of her birth on the registration card, sent a member of their publicity department to interview her. She was told that the university was interested in the fact that had started to school again at her age and wanted to know the whys and wherefores of her coming. So Mrs. Crawford chatted blithely away to the woman, and had the best sort of a time. It was not until the question of her children’s names and their occupations was introduced that Mrs. Crawford had any suspicion whatever that she was being interviewed.
“Just what do you intend doing with this information?” Mrs. Crawford asked her visitor, and even then she was reassured that the college folks simply wanted the information. So, on the next Sunday morning, practically every paper in New York city carried the story of her being at Columbia with headlines in bold black type reading “71-Year Old Columbia Co-Ed Too Modest to Compare Flapper With Girl of 65” or “Lost her Job When Her Children Grew Up; Seeks New Interests,” and so on and so forth through the entire list of the New York papers, she was perhaps the most surprised person in the whole United States.
Mrs. Crawford is the wife of the late Rev. L.W. Crawford, who was for many years a beloved member of the western North Carolina conference, and is closely identified with the church and educational life of the state. She is a graduate of Greensboro college, later going to Vassar for two years. She taught for two years before her marriage, and after that her hands were filled with the task of raising to splendid manhood and womanhood her five sons and a daughter, the latter, Mrs. E.S. Wills of this city, with whom she makes her home.
For 15 years Mrs. Crawford was a member of the Woman’s Missionary council of the M.E. church, South, and the corresponding secretary of her own conference society, so that after her children were grown her time was pretty well taken up with this work, which was so dear to her heart. However, at the age of 65, she resigned, because, she said, “There was an unwritten law that when a woman reached that age, she was past her sphere of usefulness!”
Of course during all those years when she was leading such a busy life, there was not much time left for reading, and “It was at 65,” said Mrs. Crawford, “that it became necessary for me to find new interests, so I made up my mind to go to Columbia. And this was my fifth summer there, instead of my first, as the New York papers had it” each summer she has laid the basis for her winter reading and “Every year I come home loaded down with books that I feel I must read,” she continued, “but I don’t always get them all done.”
Mrs. Crawford has gone about her course of study in a most systematic manner. The first year she realized, she said, that she was deficient in European history, so she took a course in that; the next summer she took up the intellectual history of Europe, and so on until this summer she studied very seriously, taking Professor Montague’s course in radical, reactionary and conservate tendencies in present day morals, and lectures in comparative literature.
On being asked if she expected to go to Columbia again next summer Mrs. Crawford said, “No, I am planning next year to go to the University of California. I have always wanted that trip, and expect to have the dime of my life, combining that pleasure with the summer courses of study.” And she seems to think there is nothing at all unusual in a woman of her age having either the desire or the strength to go clear across the continent for a course of study!
Mrs. Crawford has a delightfully keen sense of humor, and the way she tells of the droves of interviewers that she had to dodge, and the manner in which, as she says, “I was intimidated into having my picture taken” is too funny for words. She had as many telephone calls a day as a debutante, and men waiting around every corner pleading for her to allow them to take her picture.
The way they finally got the photo that has been in papers all over the United States from Massachusetts to Texas, along with the story of her being a student, and has even appeared in the Berlin and London papers, was like this: “I came off my class in philosophy one morning, on the seventh floor of one of the buildings, and fund fur men waiting there, who told me they had been waiting four hours for me. “We want your picture, Mrs. Crawford, and we just must have it, was their plea. I had no idea of letting them take a picture of me,” Mrs. Crawford laughed, “but you should have heard their tales.” “We will get the very devil if you don’t let us have it,” one of them told her, and though she could see their point of view and knew that when they were sent out on an assignment they were expected to come back with it fulfilled, Mrs. Crawford said, “I had had all the publicity I felt that I could stand, so I remained obdurate.”
She had her lunch, went to her room, and after resting a while, started out again, when to her amazement she found, just outside her door, those same four men camping on her trail. They started all over again with their arguments, and finally told her that they would much prefer for her to pose for them, but if she insisted on not being obliging, they would have to take a snapshot, for have her picture they must and would have. “So if they were going to have the picture whether or not,” continued this delightful little lady in a whimsical manner, “woman-like, I wanted to look as well as possible. So you should have seen me filing down the stairs, followed by those four men carrying cameras. They insisted on having the picture taken in the grove on the campus, on a classic seat, with a book in my hand. That is how it all happened.” On being asked if there were any pleasant results from the publicity attendant upon all the pictures and newspaper stories, Mrs. Crawford said, “Oh, yes, I met some most interesting people on account of it; among them John Farrar, editor of the Bookman, whose autographed picture I have, with a caricature of his head in one corner, and signed with his mark. I was also invited to lunch with Christopher Morley, who referred in his lecture to the grandmother in the class, and perhaps the thing she appreciated most was whom I found a most delightful person.”
Perhaps the thing she appreciated most the present from Arthur Stillwell, builder of more railroads than any man in the United States and author himself of a number of books. One of the books he sent her was an autographed copy of his book on “Live and Grow Young,” with the notation on the fly-leaf “You have the right idea.”
She was also invited to join the Vassar club on a picnic, and has had letters from people all over the United States congratulating her on having kept her youth and vigorous mentality. Number of people of the older generation have written thanking her for having done just what they had wanted to do for many years, but had never had the courage to attempt on account of their age.
“I have avoided the middle-aged spread,” Mrs. Crawford said humorously on being asked what she did to retain her youth, “and have kept physically fit by religiously exercising for at least 10 minutes each morning when I first get up; by having plenty of fresh air; and by observing the simple rules of hygiene. And by reading and keeping abreast of the times. It is easy to keep young mentally.”
Mrs. Crawford’s latest experience in connection with the whole affair was amusing, and yet deeply pathetic. It came in the shape of a long letter written in German script, and, laughed Mrs. Crawford, “Inasmuch as I was like the Irishman when asked if he could read writing, replied that he couldn’t even read readin’, it was necessary for me to get an interpreter.” After several days of intense interest in wondering what it was all about, it came back from the interpreter, and proved to be from an old woman in Germany, who told in a piteous manner of the loss of her son; of the terrible condition of the country; of the depreciation of the German mark; and ended by asking Mrs. Crawford to send her a dollar!
From page 2 of the Greensboro Daily News, Sunday, Sept. 24, 1922
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