[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 132 (Monday, September 28, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1832-E1833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             CONGRATULATIONS TO OUTSTANDING ST. PAUL FAMILY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BRUCE F. VENTO

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, September 28, 1998

  Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit for the record the 
following article from the Sunday, August 23, 1998 edition of the St. 
Paul Pioneer Press in recognition of the Crutchfield family of St. 
Paul, for their outstanding and tireless efforts in community service. 
My congratulations to the Crutchfields and their many admirable 
achievements.
  This recognition is well deserved and is a small reward for the 
service that Dr. Charles Crutchfield and his wonderful wife, Pat 
Crutchfield, have performed. They have remained in a community of 
modest means, while actively involved in their church, educational and 
social life, attempting to help give back to their community their love 
and labor to make St. Paul a better place to extend hope and the 
opportunity to grow to succeed to make a difference. Through their 
example and sacrifice, they have walked the walk. The Crutchfields' 
reward has been the great success of their children and the extended 
family and community they have embraced and their payment our love, 
affection and heartfelt thanks.
  Thanks to the Crutchfields of St. Paul. They make us proud--very 
proud.

            [From the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Aug. 23, 1998]

                         An Outstanding Family

                            (By Pat Burson)

       In St. Paul, the Crutchfield name is synonymous with 
     family, education, community and success.
       Those attributes made the family of Dr. Charles E. 
     Crutchfield, a nationally recognized obstetrician and 
     gynecologist, and his wife of 22 years, Pat, a tireless 
     community fund-raiser and volunteer, a natural choice to 
     receive the 1998 Family of the Year award from the St. Paul 
     Urban League, said president Willie Mae Wilson.
       ``It's an outstanding family,'' she said.
       Pat Crutchfield said she was shocked and humbled to learn 
     that her family had been selected.
       ``I was embarrassed,'' she added. ``I never look at what we 
     do, getting recognized for it. You just do it. I just feel 
     like I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Not anything 
     special.''
       They're just being modest, said neighbor Dick Mangram, who 
     has known the Crutchfields for about 30 years.
       Mangram, executive director of Hallie Q. Brown/Martin 
     Luther King Community Center, also served on the St. Paul 
     Urban League's board with Pat Crutchfield from 1982 to 1987.
       ``They're not the kind of people that will go around and 
     toot their own horn,'' he said. ``They're just good people. 
     What you see is what you get. They're really proud to be 
     right here in the city.''
       Charles Crutchfield was the first private black 
     obstetrician/gynecologist in Minnesota. He entered private 
     practice with his mentor, Dr. Joseph Goldsmith, in 1969. In 
     addition to having a main office in the Fort Road Medical 
     Center on West Seventh Street near downtown St. Paul, he and 
     his partner, Dr. Rainer Rocheleau, also have offices in Apple 
     Valley, Inver Grove Heights and White Bear Lake. Crutchfield 
     has performed more than 3,000 operations and delivered almost 
     6,000 babies.
       One of those deliveries earned him national media attention 
     in December 1982, after he walked three miles in a blizzard 
     to deliver a baby by emergency Caesarean section.
       Crutchfield was honored in January by the Washington-based 
     National Medical Association for his numerous contributions 
     to the organization. He also has served as president of the 
     Minnesota Association of Black Physicians.
       In addition to the other medical and community 
     organizations he is involved with, Crutchfield also is a 
     physician and safety official for amateur boxing in 
     Minnesota. He's an avid softball player and has even had his 
     own team that his wife calls the ``Crutchbangers.''
       A Chicago native, Pat Wilson Crutchfield moved with her 
     family to the Twin Cities at age 4. Community service is part 
     of the wellknown family's legacy. Her youngest brother, Steve 
     Wilson, is president of Rondo Ave. Inc., which puts on the 
     annual Rondo Days Parade. She had a Catholic education, 
     attending St. Peter Claver Elementary School, Archbishop 
     Murray High School and the College of St. Catherine.
       Through United Hospital's ``First Steps'' program, Pat 
     Crutchfield has helped many teen mothers cope with the 
     challenges and the uncertainties they face. She wrote a 
     popular weekly social column, ``Pat's Tidbits,'' for the St. 
     Paul Recorder and the Minneapolis Spokesman from 1990 to 
     1996. The column chronicled the births, deaths, reunions, 
     club events, parties and other activities of Twin Cities 
     African-Americans.
       The couple met in June 1974 at Model Cities Health Center, 
     a community clinic at 430 N. Dale St., where both were 
     volunteers. She was 29 and single, a business services 
     instructor and communications specialist at Northwestern Bell 
     Telephone Co., now US West. He was six years her senior, 
     separated and the father of three young sons. They were 
     married Jan. 30, 1976.
       On their honeymoon, the couple sketched a design of their 
     dream home. The result is the three-story house on Aurora 
     Avenue in St. Paul's Summit-University neighborhood, where 
     they still live.
       Their longevity in the area endears them to many who know 
     them, including Steve Wilson.
       ``A lot of doctors, when they make it, the first thing they 
     do is move to the suburbs,'' he said. ``People ask 
     (Crutchfield), `Why do you stay?' And his answer has always 
     been, `Why would I leave?' ''
       The front yard is decorated with Pat Crutchfield's flower 
     beds of canna lilies, peonies, pansies, roses and day lilies. 
     Out back is Charles Crutchfield's pride and joy: his 
     vegetable garden, with its assortment of greens, from collard 
     to ruffled kale. He also has an orchard of apple, cherry, 
     plum, pear and peach trees, wild strawberries and vines 
     bearing seedless grapes
       Things haven't always been rosy. In 1983, a jury found 
     Charles Crutchfield was not at fault for the cerebral palsy 
     of a child he delivered. The girls' parents had brought a 
     civil lawsuit against Crutchfield for malpractice.
       In 1984, Crutchfield was accused of rape in a civil lawsuit 
     brought by Renee Reed, a woman he treated at a free clinic 
     years before. She was seeking monetary damages for a 1982 
     sexual encounter the doctor said was consensual, part of a 
     three-year affair. He, in turn, sued Reed's father and her 
     spiritual adviser, claiming the men were attempting to 
     extort money from him with the rape allegation. Reed was 
     awarded $21,500 by the judge in the case. Her father won 
     $5,000 when the extortion claim was denied.
       Charles Crutchfield said his attorney told him the only 
     reason he had to pay anything

[[Page E1833]]

     was because the judge felt he should at least cover part of 
     the court costs and because he had admitted having the 
     affair.
       ``This was strictly civil and had no criminal 
     implications,'' Crutchfield added. ``I was hurt, but my wife 
     and I moved on with our lives, our family and our service to 
     the community.''
       Added Pat Crutchfield: ``It was one of our storms that we 
     weathered, and it did bring us closer. It strengthened our 
     marriage, our relationship.''
       Now they are facing a serious challenge involving the 
     health of the family matriarch. Pat Crutchfield was diagnosed 
     in 1992 with scleroderma, a fairly rare disease affecting the 
     blood vessels and connective tissue. She has changed her 
     hairstyle and wears long-sleeved blouses to cover areas where 
     her skin has become hardened, a symptom of the disease.
       The condition dramatically altered her role as family 
     caretaker.
       ``I've never had a health problem. I've always been the 
     doer for my family,'' she explained. ``The biggest thing is 
     that my family has had to care for me.
       ``They've had to take more responsibility, which has 
     probably been good. It has changed us around as far as 
     commitments that we make. We've had a couple of trips that 
     we've had to cancel, or I've just stayed home. I just wasn't 
     able.
       ``It beats me down,'' she conceded, though she refuses to 
     allow it overtake her. ``I stay down for a while, and then I 
     jump up and keep stepping.''
       The Crutchfields say her illness has forced family members 
     to rethink and reorder some of their priorities.
       ``The disease has made us appreciate what is important and 
     what is not important,'' Charles Crutchfield said. ``And all 
     I do is support her and tell her she's the best.''
       And its effect on the family?
       ``It disrupted the family,'' he conceded. ``It cracked it. 
     It didn't break it.''
       Those who know Pat Crutchfield say the disease has left its 
     mark on her body but cannot quench her spirit. One of them is 
     childhood friend Dee Dee Ray. The women have known one 
     another since grade school.
       ``Pat has such faith, and she always looks on the bright 
     side,'' Ray said, ``She's a very religious person. I've seen 
     her make many, many novenas . . . . She doesn't give up hope. 
     She just keeps going.''
       Even with their busy schedules and numerous commitments, 
     the Crutchfields still have time for each other, whether it's 
     visiting, talking on the phone or during harvesting, canning, 
     preserving and freezing the homegrown bounty from their 
     vegetable gardens and orchards.
       Sunday dinners, birthdays and holidays are special times in 
     their home, as is fight night, when about 40 to 50 of their 
     closest friends come over to watch boxing and eat Charles 
     Crutchfield's famous chili.
       He learned about growing food while growing up in Jasper, 
     Ala., a small, segregated coal-mining town. His father was a 
     barber whose business was the oldest owned by an African-
     American in that town. Wanting their son to have a chance to 
     fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor, his parents sent him 
     to live with an aunt in Minneapolis in 1955. He is a graduate 
     of North High School and the University of Minnesota School 
     of Medicine.
       The Crutchfields have instilled their value of education in 
     their children. Since their children were small, they have 
     always told them to ``work hard, get good grades and always 
     do your best.''
       It appears to have sunk in. Crutchfield's three sons with 
     former wife, Dr. Susan Crutchfield-Mitsch, a family 
     physician, are all in either the legal or medical profession. 
     Charles III, 37, is a dermatologist, Carleton, 33 is an 
     attorney and Chris, 28, also is an attorney and a staff 
     assistant to state Rep. Andy Dawkins of St. Paul. Charles and 
     Pat Crutchfields' daughter Raushana, 21, is a junior and 
     psychology major at Virginia Union University in Richmond, 
     Va., and son Rashad, 18, will be a senior at Concordia 
     Academy in Roseville.
       Rashad said he knows he's part of a very special family.
       When asked if he'll be the next Crutchfield doctor or 
     lawyer, he smiled. No, he said. Right now, he's leaning 
     toward attending a college that specializes in film, theater 
     arts or graphic design.
       ``I'm not that much for blood and guts, except in slasher 
     films,'' he said.
       `` `Crutchfield.' I do see power in that name,'' he said 
     proudly. ``We're an African-American family that's just 
     trying to find a way through life, trying to succeed.''

     

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