Pat Crumby is the Godmother of the South Baldwin dance scene

Pat Crumby is the Godmother of the South Baldwin dance scene

By Fran Thompson
Pat Crumby was not destined to be the Godmother for those of a certain age that make up the South Baldwin dancing community.
She didn’t even dance in her younger years. She was too busy building a business empire and raising a child as a single mom in her native Kansas. She is not even sure how it happened. But it is a fact that she is our dancing queen.
She has her hand in as many as four dances each week. If there is a dance being held in South Baldwin County, Pat is almost always involved.
She dances at the Gulf Shores American Legion on Sundays and the Elks Club on Fridays and Saturdays. She goes to the Foley Senior Center for dances twice a month. On the third Wednesday of each month, she dances at Water’s Edge Dance Hall in Robertsdale. She has hosted dances at The Big Red Barn in Foley. She and her friends also take line dancing lessons twice a week.
“I’ve slowed down a bit,’’ Pat said. “Instead of five times a week, sometimes I only dance three times. But I never get tired of going to dances.’’
There are even dances named after her held every year in Loxley on Memorial Day, July 4 and Labor Day, and that does not count the hundreds of dance outings she organized in the Perdido Beach Resort Lobby Bar prior to local piano legend John Brust’s death.
At PBR, she led a mostly snowbird group of dancers that included as many as 30 couples.
“We would go dance at Perdido Beach Resort four nights a week,’’ she said. “Many of those people have passed or can’t dance anymore, and it wasn’t the same once John died.’’
Pat prints up a dance schedule and takes copies with her whenever she goes out. But that is about as technical as she gets. She does not have a computer. She does not have a cell phone.
Orange Beach/Gulf Shores Tourism printed 3,000 of the schedules to pass out at its visitor centers and another 5,000 to put in welcome snowbird packages.
Self made, Pat entered the male dominated paper product sales business in 1979. She climbed the sales ladder with several companies before hanging her own shingle by opening a computer form company that occupied two buildings that took up most of a downtown Kansas City block. She built a cedar wood home on top of one of her buildings that was written up in Architecture Digest. For awhile, she also lived in the house.
She and her mate Bob owned several vacation homes on The Lake of the Ozarks before they eventually settled on a large home with 3,100 ft. of shoreline on 17 acres with a 28 ft. cabin cruiser docked behind it.
The couple planned to retire there, but fate intervened during a golfing trip to check out courses along the Gulf Coast.
They found themselves heading south on Hwy 59 and, after a night at the old Holiday Inn on East Beach Blvd., they drove to Glenlakes to golf.
They saw a man working on a house. He said that house was sold, but he could build them another on a lot he owned nearby.
In late fall of 1990, Bob and Pat moved into their new home planning to stay for three months. They stayed for six. The next year, they brought their boat and planned to stay for six months. They stayed for nine. Like so many others, they were hooked on the Alabama Gulf Coast.
When Bob and Pat bought their home in 1990, there were only 71 others in the subdivision. They paid $72K, including appliances.
“We just fell in love with this place, especially Bob,’ Pat said. “We didn’t want to leave.’’
Pat dabbled in real estate when she first moved here. She developed The Villas at Glenlakes and her portfolio at one time included nine condos.
But her main focus was hosting parties. They were not the huge affairs she regularly organized in Kansas City. But it was not unusual for her to lead a group on a bus to the Mississippi casinos or set up the draw for a golf outing for 50 friends.
“Every place I’ve been I’ve gotten groups together for socializing,’’ she said.
Pat has a group of good friends that she enjoys car pooling to dances with and she even dances by herself in the living room.
“I think it’s the best exercise you can have,’’ she said. “I don’t dance as much now, but I still enjoy going around hosting and passing out my dance schedule. If people want to know anything about dances, they can ask me.’’
Pat’s helpful hints even include teaching her girlfriends how to ask men to dance. Just in the past three years, three couples she has introduced have gotten engaged.
“It’s a wonderful life and this has really helped me through the past three or four years. I am glad for my friends,’’ Pat said. “God has been good to me and he is still being good to me.’’
In case you were wondering, Pat justs turned 88 on March 1.