Joreece G. “Jody” Crumbaugh, 96, of LeRoy, Illinois, passed away at 10:05 A.M., Saturday, August 26, 2017 at Heartland Health Care Center, Normal, Illinois.
Funeral services will be held at 12:00 P.M., Thursday, August 31, 2017 at Calvert-Belangee-Bruce Funeral Home, LeRoy, Illinois. Pastor Eric Swanson will officiate. Burial will be in Oak Grove Cemetery, LeRoy, Illinois. Visitation will be from 10:30 A.M. to 12:00 P.M., Thursday, August 31, 2017 at the funeral home.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the LeRoy Education Advancement Foundation (academics only) or the Oak Grove Cemetery Association.
Born Joreece G. Johnston on September 25, 1920 in Normal, IL to William and Gertrude MaGirl Johnston, the fifth of five children (Mildred “Tidge”, Kenneth, Glenn and Vernon “Bun”). There is no explanation for the name “Joreece”; she claimed that her older sister chose it and her parents (apparently having no preferences of their own) went along with it. She went by Jody most of her life, but was not a stickler for spelling (there is a street named for her in LeRoy spelled “Jodi”).
Jody was a child of the Depression; her father died when she was a child and the family moved from a large brick house on Broadway to a smaller frame house on Prospect in Normal.
She attended University High School where she met her future husband, Wendell S. Crumbaugh. She graduated from Illinois State University in 1942 with a BA in Education; she was a member of Sigma Tau Delta (English) and Theta Alpha Phi (Speech). Her fondest wish was to pursue a career in journalism, but there were jobs for teachers, and not for journalists. She taught school in Staunton, Illinois after graduating and briefly worked at an advertising agency.
She married Wendell Crumbaugh on December 9, 1944 in her mother’s living room and they moved to a small farmhouse in DeWitt County without indoor plumbing (ironically her father had owned a plumbing company). Wendell soon hand dug the basement under that house and installed plumbing.
Jody was a substitute teacher, a housewife, and a volunteer in LeRoy for over 65 years.
Wendell loved Jody, and Jody loved Wendell. They were true partners until his death on August 21, 2001. Each of them deferred to the other (and rarely to anybody else!).
Jody loved to cook for other people; it was her means of artistic expression and she was good at it. She could list the names of other women in LeRoy whose cooking she admired like a patron of the arts could list her favorite Impressionist painters. As a child of the Depression she kept enough canned goods in the house to outlast a Biblical flood, folded and re-used her aluminum foil, and thought they stopped making “real” music when Rock and Roll became popular.
Jody was a member of the Longfellow Club for more than 50 years, Garden Club from more than 10 years, Child Study Club from its inception through 1975, as well as Junior Mother’s Club and Women’s Club.
She is survived by her children, Steven (Bonnie), David (Mary Jo Bollero) and Carol Vance (William); seven grandchildren, John; Daniel; Susan; Ann; Brian; Lindsey, and Katie Crumbaugh; two step-grandchildren, Jason and Rachel Carr; two nieces, Patsy Carlson and Peggy Kay Strauchman; and five great-grandchildren, Max and Grace Crumbaugh, Kate Orzolek, Ramiel Dunn and Pirie Crumbaugh.
Jody was independent, often opinionated and occasionally stubborn, but always capable of spontaneous acts of kindness. She was the last leaf on the tree and she will be missed.
