Kay Crossman Turner, descendant of one of Garland’s most storied families, an indefatigable Garland Owl, and a passionate teacher of middle schoolers, passed away suddenly on Saturday, October 22, 2022, at age 75. Servant-hearted, a lover of animals, a faithful friend, and a devoted mother, sister, and grandmother, she was the proud standard-bearer of her heritage and was an ardent communicator of the Crossman family’s contributions to the community.
Kay was born on June 2, 1947 in Dallas, the older of two daughters born to Curtis Delbert Crossman Jr. and his wife, Isabelle Campbell Crossman. She was the great-granddaughter of George Wilson Crossman, one of Garland’s most colorful early leaders, who served as mayor, school-board secretary, postmaster, and founder of the Crossman Insurance Agency that operated for years on the then-east side of the Garland Square. His son, Curtis Delbert Crossman, married to Delma Guyon (Dixie) Tucker Crossman, daughter of another prominent area family, inherited the agency and operated it for years, along with Kay’s father.
She attended Williams Elementary, Bussey Junior High, and Garland High School, where she was a member of the legendary Class of 1965, the last GHS senior class to graduate together before a second high school in town, South Garland, opened and divided the pool of graduating seniors in the next class. At GHS she was a Dashing Deb drill-team member during the “glory days” when the Garland Owls football team won two legendary back-to-back state football championships, in 1963 and 1964, in a history-making two-year run. The Dashing Debs and Owl players were thrown together as a result of the Debs’ performing at football games, and in the process Kay was assigned to paint spirit posters and provide encouragement to fullback Clifton Turner, an Owl standout on offense on that trailblazing team.
However, the two did not become a couple until they were students at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. She majored in history at the University of North Texas, where she received her bachelor’s degree. She then received her master’s in education at University of North Texas at Stephen F. Austin State University. On graduation she took her first job at Bussey. She and Clifton were married August 17, 1968, and made their home in Garland, Their only child, daughter Rhonda, was born in 1972; Kay was described as an excellent and caring mother.
She taught middle-school history for 39 years at various schools and retired from Coyle Middle School.
After Clifton passed away in 2009, she became a substitute at Coyle Middle School and Rowlett High School in the Garland school district. She was greatly loved by her students, giving them rides, buying them meals when they were short of funds, and keeping up with their life progress after they graduated. Her love for education was evident by her dedication in supporting Open Heavens ministry in Guatemala. She wanted to help these children be able to further their education beyond what is required in this country.
Kay had been one of the Sunday-morning money-counters at Garland’s First United Methodist Church, carrying on a long family tradition begun with George W. Crossman, who was church treasurer there. Her father and grandfather both were on the FUMC Board of Stewards.
She was a passionate GHS alumnus, serving as secretary/treasurer of the GHS Alumni Association and attending Owl football games.
But the main passion of her life was her involvement with her only grandchild, Lillian, who called her “GK”. She bragged incessantly on Lillian’s theater interest and never missed a performance for Lillian’s theater or dance. She took Lillian on two overseas trips because her own grandparents had taken her on a trip for her high-school graduation.
She loved animals, especially her dogs Lilly and Barney and was an avid supporter of American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA).
In more recent years, Kay began to dig further into Crossman family history. She had framed in her home the 1832 indenture papers from British-born George Crossman, the father of the illustrious Garland figure George W. Crossman. The first George indentured himself for seven years as a ship-builder. The Crossmans left their home in England in 1840 as part of the great English migration of families due to lucrative sheep-raising, ship-building, and other industries in South America. George W. was born in the British embassy in Chile, where his mother Elizabeth Smith’s father was stationed. George W.’s father died at sea in 1865, and she married Samuel W. Proctor, a schoolteacher from Vermont, in Chile. At 14 George W. came to the U.S. with his mother, stepfather, and siblings. He ultimately received his high-school education in Illinois, graduated from Valparaiso University, and was thought to be Garland’s first college-educated citizen.
The Proctors in about 1880 ultimately migrated down from Illinois and became early settlers in Duck Creek, one of the two predecessor communities to Garland. Crossman started out living in Roanoke (Denton County) and Richardson but ultimately made his way to Duck Creek. He served as Garland postmaster during the Theodore Roosevelt and William Hoard Taft administrations. Besides being mayor, he as secretary of the school board and as active in the Crossman Insurance Agency, when ill health forced him to retire. His obituary in 1942 stated, “He has been closely identified with the development of Garland and its religious and social life for the last 60 years.”
She also had in her possession “the Crossman diaries”, four hand-written diaries kept by George W. Crossman when he was a young man in the late 1800s, showing his coming-of-age as well as a first-person slice of Americana in that day and his first interactions with Duck Creek. Interestingly, George was a teacher in his early career, the profession Kay ultimately entered.
Kay became one of the founding directors of Friends of Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street nonprofit, which works for the betterment of Garland through historic preservation, community development, and improvement of Garland’s 11th Street as well as the wider downtown area. She also served as its treasurer. In 2019 she portrayed her great-grandmother, Ella Sparks Crossman, in an original musical drama “Becoming Garland Avenue” produced by Friends of Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street and performed before a sell-out crowd on the Plaza Theatre stage in downtown Garland.
One of her prized possessions was a framed needlepoint picture that showed the family home of George and Ella Crossman, an elaborate two-story Victorian at the corner of Glenbrook and Avenue D, immediately south of First Baptist Church of Garland. The dwelling was razed in 1968. Kay and her sister, Vicki Crossman Shipley, also led an unsuccessful fight to preserve the “Crossman Block”, the portion of the former Square that included the insurance offices, before it was razed by the City of Garland on April 10, 2016.
However, the City of Garland gave 1,050 of the vintage bricks from that felled building to Friends of Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street. Kay had a deep sense of pride as those bricks were apportioned out and creatively reused to form the borders of commemorative flower beds in various highly visible spots on 11th Street, her grandparents’ neighborhood (Travis College Hill) that went on to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Kay supplied vital background information that made a huge contribution to research necessary for Travis College Hill’s receipt of the National Register listing as well as for its Texas Historical Marker. She loved to prowl through local cemeteries to try to uncover more family data on her high-profile ancestors.
She walked White Rock Lake weekly, traveled to Europe many times, tended to her indoor and outdoor plants, season tickets sto the Texas Rangers games for many years, and attending Jimmy Buffett concerts when she could get tickets.
She is survived by her daughter, Rhonda Turner Williams of Nacogdoches, and her husband, Tim; her granddaughter, Lillian Williams; sister Vicki Crossman Shipley and her husband, Robert, of Fairfield; nephew Kyle Shipley and his wife, Arianne, and their three children Gramm, Knox, and Maddox; nephew Bubba Shipley and his wife, Emily, and their daughter Izzy; niece Misty Shipley and her husband, JJ Akin; and niece Amy Riley her daughter, Sarah Terry.
Graveside services will be at 1 p.m. Saturday, November 5, at Rest Haven Cemetery in Rockwall, TX, with Robert Shipley officiating. The family requests that donations in her memory be made to ASPCA and the Kay Crossman Turner Memorial Fund established by Friends of Garland’s Historic Magic 11th Street 501 (c)(3).