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Northdale resident mixes cards, cowboys
By TIM GRANT © St. Petersburg Times, published January 7, 2001 CARROLLWOOD -- She was the driving force behind a ball to celebrate Kwanzaa and a coming-out ceremony at St. Paul Catholic Church last month where several young African-Americans were recognized as adults. Now Northdale resident Rudean Crawley is organizing a card tournament for black residents of north Tampa that will feature African-American cowboys straight from the dusty plains of Texas. "We're trying to introduce these people to our Florida environment and expose our Florida people to them," Crawley said. "We hope they will wear some of their cowboy hats and boots." Crawley, 57, has spent most of her life in Tampa and has been active in a number of social and political organizations, but she said none were that committed to reaching out to blacks living in the suburbs. Last year, Crawley and other black Catholics formed a group called the North Tampa African Alliance, which they hope will provide a social and political network for Tampa's loosely organized black suburbanites. Crawley was named president of the group. "I've been nurturing this idea since the early 1980s," she said. "This could help improve our networking, our understanding of our culture, our lifestyle and how we relate to each other." On Feb. 17, the NTAA will host the cards tournament at the Northdale Recreation Center. It will consist of teams competing in spades, a popular card game in the African-American community. They are billing the event as "Western Spades Night." The visiting cowboys are based in Houston, where they participate in rodeos and livestock shows. They are coming to Florida for the spades tournament at the request of some NTAA members who know them personally. Among the NTAA's future planned activities is the formation of a chapter of Toastmasters, Crawley said. Crawley was born and raised on 15th Street in a section of Tampa once known as the Bottom. Several black businesses, including a black drive-in theater, once thrived there before Interstate 275 separated the neighborhood. She graduated from Middleton High School in 1962 and earned a degree in mathematics from Dillard University in New Orleans in 1966. Straight out of college, Crawley worked as an engineer for NASA. "My job was to make sure the satellites had enough thrust to get out of the earth's atmosphere," Crawley said. After about 4 years at NASA, she worked as an antiballistics engineer for Aerojet General, and taught high school math and theater in Texas and California. She returned to Tampa in 1981 and joined the general service staff at GTE. In 1994, Crawley developed a clot in her left leg which left her disabled. These days, she works as a full-time care-giver for her 81-year-old mother and organizes events for the NTAA.
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