Palestine High School Alumni Association

Virginia Carroll Crawford 1943 • Distinguished High School Alumni of 1989
10-06-1926  – 08-08-1999

Mrs. Crawford, a 1943 graduate of Palestine High School, died Sunday at the age of 72 in Atlanta following a length illness.  A private burial will be held at Arlington Memorial Park in Atlanta and a memorial service is scheduled for a later date.  Mrs. Crawford was born October 6, 1926 in Palestine to Jesse and Ruby Carroll.  She grew up on her family’s cattle ranch in Tennessee Colony and was selected “prettiest girl” of bother her junior and senior classes at Palestine High School.  She attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman’s University) in Denton and met her future husband, James H. Crawford, at a dance in 1944 at Texas A&M University.  They were married on March 2, 1945.  She was preceded in death by her husband who died in 1962.

Mrs. Crawford is survived by a son, Jesse Carroll Crawford of Atlanta and a grandson, Jesse Carroll Crawford, Jr. of Atlanta.

Palestine Herald Press 08 / 08 / 1999

A Texan turned Buckhead resident, Virginia Crawford, widow of Crawford & Co. founder James H. Crawford, was an active patroness of the arts and the Atlanta community. In 1997, she was honored as a member of the Forward Arts Foundation at the Atlanta History Center. The renamed Shepherd Center’s research institute is now known as the Virginia C. Crawford Research Institute. She retired from the executive committee of Atlanta-based Crawford & Co., the world’s largest independent provider of risk and claims management services.

A marital trust in her name owns 9.49 million shares of Crawford & Co.’s class B common stock, worth about $180 million.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle 07-10-1998