Friday, July 28, 2006
One sewage plant with his name: $10,000
Ogal Preston “Pres” Crews was known for his wittiness and “eccentric” sense of humor.
It was a wish he jokingly made to friends.
But it’s coming true.
Ogal Preston “Pres” Crews, who died June 24 at the age of 64, will have his name on Fincastle’s new sewage treatment plant.
“Pres thought it was the fun thing to do, and he wanted to give something to the town,” said Sally Eads, executor of Crews’ estate and one of the newest members on the Fincastle Town Council. “ Fincastle was his family.”
Single and with no children, Crews had left the bulk of his estate to his alma mater, Emory & Henry College.
But $10,000 was set aside for Fincastle if the town agreed to put his name on the waste water treatment plant under construction.
Less than a month after his death, Fincastle accepted his bequest.
Crews often talked about Fincastle’s sewage plant, especially during discussions on the town’s growth, Eads said.
He didn’t specify how the bequest should be spent, only that his name be on the new plant.
Such acts were typical of Crews, who died after a short battle with lung and bone cancer, Eads said . The estate also will pay for and erect a plaque bearing Crews’ name when the plant is completed, she said.
“He was comfortable but frugal,” Eads said of Crews, who liked to cook and filled his kitchen with cookbooks, spices and numerous pieces of cookware.
“It was so Preston, so very Preston,” Phebe Cress said of her college classmate and friend. Cress is also on the Fincastle Town Council.
“Preston had a very eccentric sense of humor,” Cress continued. “He was humorous, witty … very sharp .” He wanted his name at the plant “just because,” she said.
Crews, a Pennsylvania native, earned scholarships to Emory & Henry, then did graduate work at the University of South Carolina, including some studies at Oxford University.
He started visiting Cress and her husband, Jake, and Taylor Alderman, a college friend in Roanoke, about 25 years ago and developed “an incredible number of friends” in the area, Cress said.
Crews often lunched with a group of Botetourt County employees at the restaurant in the Old Mill Grocery.
Maj. G.W. Guilliams with the Botetourt County Sheriff’s Office, said the lunches were stimulating because Crews often quoted or read from items he saw on the Internet, especially ones that poked fun at the Bush administration.
“He was very politically minded and comical,” Guilliams said. “He had a weird sense of humor.”
Crews taught history at Emory & Henry, the Florence Regional Campus of the University of South Carolina, and Francis Marion College in the Navy’s afloat college before taking a job as an IRS quality control computer specialist in Washington, D.C.
He started visiting friends in Fincastle because he was anxious to get out of the city, Cress said.
Crews retired in early 2002 and moved to Lewisburg, Pa., to help his 93-year-old mother.
After her death and facing “2 feet of snow on the ground and more coming,” Crews moved south to Fincastle, Eads said.
Putting Crews’ name on the plant doesn’t take away from the work many others have done to improve the town’s water and sewage plants, Eads said.
In fact, his bequest likely will be used to improve sidewalks in the historic town, home to the Botetourt County governmental and judicial offices. The $10,000 nearly doubles the amount of money Fincastle had appropriated for sidewalk work and “will go a long ways toward improving ” them, Eads said.
She also sees the bequest as seed money for getting federal and state grants for the job.
If the town had rejected Crews’ request , the $10,000 would have returned to his estate, which is being divided by Emory & Henry, several friends and the League for Animal Protection, where he adopted his dog, Amber.
“It was a very generous gift to the town,’’ said Mayor Scott Critzer. “We will use the bequest wisely.”
