Tacked on a shelf in the Essex home of Pat Crane is a poem entitled, "Have I done something good today?" Crane says it serves as a reminder for her to serve others.
Those who know Pat Crane would attest that she hardly needs to be reminded to perform a good deed for someone in need. She does it daily - often many times in a day.
Pat Crane was born Pat Langley in Poplar Bluff in 1943, the daughter of Wilson and Rita Langley. By many standards, Pat was raised in a challenging environment. Her father owned a service station in Essex for a time, and some of her first memories are of living in quarters above the station. They eventually moved into a home across the street. The family would move to Alaska for a short time when she was in high school. Her father had secured a job there teaching, but her parents would eventually divorce. Divorce was uncommon then, especially in small town America.
Still, Crane considers her childhood a charmed one. From those formative years growing up in what was then a thriving downtown area of Essex, she developed a sense of independence and adventure, and always ... always, a sense of humor.
"I remember when the migrant workers used to come in by the truckloads during harvest season, especially cotton harvest," she says. "They'd always stop by the station and gas up before leaving town, and my father would hold me up as they pulled out and holler, 'Wait! You forgot one!'
"Everybody knew everybody," she recalls. "We felt safe. We knew every shop owner. We'd ride our bikes and be gone all day, and nobody worried."
She readily credits that small-town environment and the strong women in her life with the "no fear" attitude that has carried her through life.
"When we moved to Alaska, my father was already there. It was 1956, and my mother and I took off in our Buick to join him. She drove 1,500 miles on dusty, gravel roads," Crane says.
Later, the family moved back to Essex. After her parents divorced, she and her mother moved to St. Louis on their own. Her mother would make a living as an executive secretary. Pat would attend St. Louis schools and eventually meet Jack Crane, who would become her husband in 1963 - the same year her mother remarried and became Rita Ferguson. Pat loved the city, but her husband wanted to make a go of it back in Essex, and so the two moved south. In a few short years, they welcomed a daughter, Andrea, and a son, John.
Pat's marriage would end in 1971. She found herself on her own in Essex, with two small children to raise.
Recollecting a time that most would regard with a heavy heart, Pat resorts to that ever-present sense of humor.
She laughs, "He left his bowling ball and his underwear, so I just thought he was coming back!"
She soon took a job as a teacher's aide at Grayridge Head Start. After seven years there, she was hired as an aide at Richland Schools. She retired in 2010, after 39 years of working with children in Stoddard County.
Looking back, Crane reflects on a memory from Alaska with regard to her giving spirit and its origin.
During the period when the Langleys lived in Alaska, statehood had not yet been attained. There was considerable petty crime, and while attending high school there, a classmate was jailed.
"I don't remember what he'd done, but he was put in jail. I took his homework to the jail so he could keep up," she laughs. "Maybe that's where this 'helping out' thing started!"
Pat Crane is a giver in the truest sense of the word. She is called upon often to transport friends and neighbors to doctor's appointments, to plan funeral dinners, to take those who cannot drive themselves to salon appointments or to the grocery store or to visit loved ones of their own. Pat, however, doesn't need to be called upon to help out. Her days feel empty if they pass without having reached out to someone in need.
Her good deeds go further than just a drive to a local doctor, or even to the many specialists in Cape Girardeau. It's not at all unusual to load up a friend or neighbor -- or the loved one of a friend or neighbor -- and head to St. Louis. Having lived in the city for 12 years, she's comfortable in city traffic and knows her way around.
"I love to drive," she attests. "I had to find something to do after I retired. I don't like taking money for what I do. Sometimes, they stick money somewhere for me to find later, but I don't ask for that. I say, 'Buy me lunch, and I'm good.' As long as I can afford it, I'm good."
Crane says it doesn't take a lot of effort to step up and do for others.
"I make a big pot of soup. I'm not about to throw out the extra. I put some in a Cool Whip bowl and take it to someone in need. I draw a lot from doing that. I really do," she says.
On Sundays, Pat Crane can be found heading up the congregation - numbering some 30 strong on a "good day" - serving as parish/pastor relationship chair at the First United Methodist Church in Essex.
"It's one of those jobs that once you take it, it's yours," she explains with a smile. "But I love doing it. When you're in a small church, you serve on a lot of committees!"
She cooks. She bakes. She regularly visits old friends in local nursing facilities, and drives her 2016 Ford Fusion whenever and to wherever there is a need. She does it all with a contagious smile and expecting nothing in return, but she receives payment for every kind gesture, she says.
"Everything I give," she says, "... it all comes back. I get back more than I could ever give. I am so, so blessed."
Pat's philosophy on life is a simple one.
"God's got a plan," she firmly attests. "He's in control of all of this."
She called that plan to mind when her husband left her to raise two children on her own in 1971.
"He had a plan. I have two fantastic kids and now two wonderful grandchildren. He had a plan," she says.
Crane's son, John Langley, serves as administrator at Dexter's Cypress Point Skilled Nursing Care facility, and her daughter, Andrea Crane, is a longtime elementary physical education teacher and district coordinator for health and physical education in the Highland Park School District in Texas. Her two grandchildren are in college.
Someone once told Pat Crane that she lived in a fantasy world. With little thought, she responded, "That's how I like it. Don't bother it."
So far, no one has.