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Community leader was candid and confident

The feisty activist immersed herself in political campaigns and causes, and if you weren't onboard, you could count on getting a wag of the finger.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published May 5, 2006

"Has your mother always been so, um, feisty?" the nurse asked.

Mrs. Crosby, the nurse said, was refusing to take medications and was giving orders to the staff.

Pat Crosby laughed. Her mother was acting perfectly normal, she told the nurse.

"She was a leader, and she was always very sure of herself," Pat Crosby said. "She was opinionated and probably idealistic. She'd wag her finger in your face, and you'd know you'd been spoken to."

It was that confidence and feistiness that made Mrs. Crosby stand out in her community. She died April 30 of emphysema. She was 82.

Mrs. Crosby was active in South Tampa community affairs for many years, a full-time volunteer for several local political campaigns and a candidate for Tampa City Council.

As a former officer of the Gandy Civic Association, she helped lead residents south of Gandy Boulevard to oppose plans to build a cement manufacturing plant in their neighborhood in the late 1970s.

"The politicians at that time didn't really pay a lot of attention to the area south of Gandy," her daughter said. "She let them know it wasn't okay to build this big plant that would leave a layer of dust over their neighborhood."

Mrs. Crosby was born in a small village in northern England and raised in a town called Warrington.

Her father died when she was young, and she became partly responsible for earning the family's income.

During World War II, when England was being bombed regularly, she came to the United States to get a job and live with relatives on Long Island.

She crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth.

"She said she had the most wonderful time," her daughter said. "I remember seeing pictures, and there were all these girls on the ship, all about my mother's age, and they looked so happy. They were coming to America, and they were getting away from the bombing. It must have been heaven."

Not long after she moved to this country, she met a young military man named Cecil Crosby, whom everyone called Bing. They married in Kansas, where he was stationed, and had two daughters. The family lived in Puerto Rico and England before finally settling in the Gandy neighborhood in the 1960s.

Mrs. Crosby immediately immersed herself in charitable activities and political causes.

She volunteered in Pat Frank's first campaign for School Board and on all of Frank's subsequent campaigns. She also did campaign work for former Hillsborough County commissioners Betty Castor and Jan Platt.

"She was never home," Pat Crosby said. "You would have thought the woman had a job."

In the 1970s, Mrs. Crosby ran against a large field of candidates for Tampa City Council.

She didn't win and never campaigned for elective office again, but she served on several government and civic boards and as president of the Parent Teacher Association at Monroe Junior High School and Robinson High School.

For recreation, she and a group of friends regularly played bingo. Mrs. Crosby had a sharp mind for math and worked out statistics about number frequencies that helped her win some large prizes, her daughter said. In the mid 1990s, Mrs. Crosby's husband passed away. She gradually lost her passion for social causes and bingo and, in later years, became a homebody.

But at her funeral, it was the vibrant and idealistic Doris Crosby that friends and community leaders remembered.

"I've heard it so many times this week," her daughter said. "So many people have said to me, 'There's nobody else like Doris.' ''

In addition to daughter Pat, Mrs. Crosby is survived by another daughter, Linda Stewart, one grandson and one brother.

[Last modified May 5, 2006, 08:33:15]