Necrology

Leroy John Crane '33

Oct. 3, 1911-Feb. 21, 2005

Leroy John Crane ’33, a retired hotel, club, and resort manager, and the last surviving of five brothers who attended Hamilton, was born on October 3, 1911, on College Hill. A son of Philip B. and Catherine Kennedy Crane, he grew up on the family dairy farm on Griffin Road, adjacent to the College’s campus. He attended the one-room district grade school, which was located where the Rudd Health Center now stands, and entered Hamilton from Clinton High School in 1929. He became a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon as well as the Newman Club, and played hockey, twice lettering in the sport.

Two days after his graduation in 1933, Leroy Crane, known as “Lee,” began work as a kitchen trainee at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan. He was assistant credit manager when he left the hotel in 1938 to operate his own retail business in Newark, NJ. Drafted into the U.S. Army during the Second World War in 1942, he was commissioned as an officer and assigned to the newly formed 63rd Infantry Division. He landed in France in December 1944 with a detachment of the division, which was immediately rushed to Alsace to help stem the German offensive in the “Battle of the Bulge.” In charge of the division headquarters mess, he was with the 63rd Infantry when it broke through the Siegfried Line into Germany and went on to peacefully occupy Heidelberg. Promoted to captain and awarded the Bronze Star with two battle stars, he was discharged from the Army in 1946.

After the war, Lee Crane returned to Clinton and joined his brothers in the family business, Crane Dairy Co. By 1952, however, the milk business didn’t seem to have much of a future, so he found a new line of work in managing the Westhampton Club on Long Island in summer and the Flamingo Hotel and Club in Miami Beach, FL, in winter. In 1959, he took over management of the Lyford Cay Club, a unit of the newly developed Lyford Cay Community, a residential resort complex on New Providence Island in the Bahamas. However, after spending a dozen years on “a plot of land 21 miles long and seven miles wide,” he became afflicted with “island fever” and decided to retire at the age of 59 and return to Clinton.

Lee Crane, ever the genial gentleman, took up residence on Reservoir Road on College Hill, above the campus. Because of its panoramic vista of the valley below he named it “Point of View.” There he acquired a dog for the first time in his life, took to gardening, and found a “wonderful” life in retirement. When not “tooling around” in his near-vintage Fiat convertible, he also enjoyed capturing birds on film with his camera. In addition, through almost 30 years, he faithfully kept detailed records of the daily weather on College Hill. Those records are now part of the College Archives, having joined the ones kept by Professor Oren Root, Sr., in the 19th century and by Professor William Carruth in the early 20th. As a result, the existing weather data for Clinton is exceptionally extensive over a period of 150 years.

In 2001, advanced age and illness compelled Leroy J. Crane to leave “Point of View” and take up residence in a retirement home in the village. He died in Clinton on February 21, 2005, at the age of 93. Never married, he is survived by a brother, Kenneth Crane, as well as nieces and nephews, including Thomas R. Crane, Jr. ’61. He was predeceased by his brothers Philip J. ’26, Leonard J. ’29, Thomas R. ’31, and Harold B. Crane ’38.

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