Ernest Crow

Earnest W. Crow was born on January 6,1920 in Wichita Kansas. He was born at Wesley hospital in Wichita. His parents H. Earnest Crow and Lena Whitaker raised him to be a very good man. He had a brother named James F. Crow who was older and was born in 1916. He grew up in Wichita, Kansas on Hiram Street. Dr. Crow went to Franklin Elementary and North High school. While at Allison he played in the school band. In high school he was active in athletics and also met his future wife. His wife's name was Birtie. 

As he was growing up, he was very busy. When he was at Allison Middle School there were about 100 kids in his grade. Another thing he had to do was to walk or ride a bike to school. It was about a half mile. He would chase his friend across the train track and they would get their knees skinned. He thought it was fun, and it gave him something to do. The desk they had were not the same as nowadays. They had ink well which were used to dip a tip in. 

He says that he was a fortunate person because he was able to read books because his father was a principal of a school. He read lots of National Geographic magazines and looked at the pictures like we do now, but he read other books as well. He always read the textbooks because that was one more reading source he could use. The civics books and the math books were fun to read. His favorite book when he was a kid was " As I Remember". A man named Zencer wrote it. He had a much tougher schooling than we do today. If one misbehaved, he or she would receive a whack on the behind. 

When he was out of school he would have to mow the lawn. Now back in those days there weren't power gas lawn mowers and he had to cut the lawn using a manual lawn mower that took lots of energy. That was not his favorite chore. He started out in the country and they didn't have any cows, so he didn't have any cows to milk. But he says that most kids that did have many chores. 

Through his days, he had many friends. He said he could classify some of them as very good friends. His best friend, Edward, was a guy who loved baseball and classical music. He played the French horn and was quite good. That was his hobby because he always played it like he was conducting a concert. In middle school he wore a different style of clothes and they were called bellbottom pants. They were big pants and he put a big triangular shaped wedge at the bottom. "Everyone wore them even though they looked hideous", he said, "But we wore them and that was it." 

Church and religious events were very important and he still attends every day. Church was included in the Wichita School system when he was a child. Every week he would go to church in the afternoon and when that was over he could go home. That made that day very special. 

While he was in the lower and middle school he played in the band. He played the piano when he was younger and when he became middle school age he decided to play the baritone horn. After he started that he became involved in the trombone and all of high school and college he played this in the band. In college he played in a dance band which helped pay for his tuition at Friends. Also it was an easy way to make some money. 

Earnest said that he had a heater in his classroom when he was in seventh grade. You might not think he would have one but it was a central heater. During school there were many objects in the room and they helped make the kids learn. HE said that he had lots of Geography books in the room that helped give off an atmosphere of learning. 

Back when Earnest was in high school he had many sports team. The team had two so it was a little easier to make the team. Sophomores were the youngest in high school because 9th grade was in intermediate schools. It was an intramural league and they classified your skill level as your weight. So if you weighed very little you were not on the good team. If you weighed a lot early in your days you were soon the good team quickly. Most people only were on the good team for a little while because their weight wasn't heavy enough. He remembered that if you were on the team as an eighth grader you were kind of considered a puny wimp. 

Once he was in high school he found his future wife. Her name was Bertie and she they became married. They both went to parties in college and when there wasn't a party they would chip in a little study time. Enough that they could each have a profession and do the job they wanted to do. By the ninth grade in high school he new what profession he want to be in. It was medicine because when he was in the ninth grade he had an illness called the ionone fever that was carried by milk. He got the unusual fever at the church camp. He drank some bad milk that had bacteria. So he went and milked a cow and got some milk. Since the milk had all sorts of bacteria in it he got sick and sicker. By the time he was not sick anymore he had almost missed a semester of school. But the final way he decided to be a physician was that the doctor he had took great care for him. Also h said that the doctor had a good smell on him so that help decide that he wanted to be a doctor. 

While he was growing up he had no radio or television. He wasn't bored not having one but he just found something other to do. So he had one thing to do at night that was worse by far than television. It was egging houses and playing other practical jokes on people. He also in college played a joke on the teacher and put a bunch of hydrogen colphy gas and put it in his room. This made a horrible smell that lasted for a long time. It smelled up the whole entire building and made a guilty feeling in his mind. He said it was a bad thing to do but he did it. Also in normal school he never got in a fight but if you did all you had to do was stay after school. 

Celebration with his family was a pretty big event. When he was a child he celebrated July 4th by shooting off firecrackers and by lighting sparklers. They shot off ladyfingers. And they shot off cherry bombs. That is all the things they did back then because they didn't have the kind of fireworks as they do now. 

When he was a kid they had a cool fad. They brought big knives to school. If you had the big knife you were considered the big man. If you brought a knife to school you wouldn't get in trouble like now days. He said the days have changed and he never really had a problem with people pulling them on other people. They played a game called mumble peg which was you would throw a knife blade into the ground. He wasn't very good at this game. He has had lots of jobs within his medical career. One job he had was being a teacher in medical school teaching residence. Another he has had was being a cardiologist. He has been a cardiologist since 1944. He started his own private practice in 1949-50 then 52-59then from 60-73. After that in 1974 he taught at medical school from 1973-74 and then restarted teaching in 1988 to 1990. He was one of the first cardiologists that came into Wichita. Earnest is a very accomplished man. He worked many days as a doctor and many nights. He is still active in the community and still gives out good advice. One of his favorite things is classical music. Now he is on the board of Larksfield and helps out by caring for the residents. The End