Emma Jean Crocker

If ever there was a woman who lived on her own terms, that woman was Emma Jean Crocker. She was short in stature and high in social conscious. Her five-foot frame, dimpled grin and twinkling eyes belied her determination and what was, when the occasion called for it, her sharp tongue.
Emma Jean Williams Crocker, 103, died Saturday at her Thomas County residence. The funeral is at 11 a.m. Monday, July 26th, at Allen & Allen Funeral Home. Visitation is 4-6 p.m. Sunday, July 25th, at Allen & Allen.
Widowed in 1972 after a 33-year marriage to Jack Ivan Crocker, Mrs. Crocker managed the family's farm, was a beloved educator, 30-year volunteer at Archbold Memorial Hospital, 4-H leader, adult literacy teacher, founding member of New Hope Community Center, Sunday school and Baptist Training Union teacher, member of the Young at Heart Choir, and at the time of her death the oldest member of Thomasville First Baptist Church.
At the farm, she drove the tractor, managed cash crops, horses, cows, hogs and the 70-acre pecan grove. She stopped driving her car at 98 after breaking her leg and took up driving a golf cart to manage the farm until the day she died. She was pretty much up for anything, whether it was rescuing a goat that had fallen into a well, propagating successful varieties of pecan trees for 50 years, threatening to shoot highway workers damaging her property, or rescuing a neighborhood family from abuse. A member of that family recently told Mrs. Crocker's family that her rescue saved their life.
Wherever she saw a need she took action to correct it, sometimes with tender concern and other times with tough love. She had her five children grow and can their own food and till the land with a plow pulled by a goat or horse to make it a more interesting task. When Mrs. Crocker wanted an addition to the family home, she planted popular hot peppers which her children picked and sold at an astronomical price to pay for its construction.
A former student said of Mrs. Crocker, "You just cannot have a memory of her without smiling. What a powerhouse of wisdom, love mixed with discipline, untold knowledge, and pithy sayings sprinkled with grit, grace, and an extra helping of spunk!"
When the highway at their property was being widened, Department of Transportation workers bulldozed dirt and debris onto her azaleas. Mad as a wet hen, she jumped into her golf cart loaded with farm tools and her rifle and went flying up to the construction crew. Mrs. Crocker told the crew in no uncertain terms that they had ruined her azaleas and warned them never to set foot on her property again or she would shoot them. Her daughter Judi Corbin was in the golf cart with her and stopped Mrs. Crocker as she reached for her rifle.
Her daughter Eileen Hart, grafted a white camellia in her honor in 1989. The Emma Jean Crocker seedling American Camellia Society #2166 is described as a stubborn little white flower, much like Mrs. Crocker.
Her strength, outlook on life, and support was a mainstay to the family through the deaths of her son Thomas Floyd Crocker, her daughter Martha Eileen Crocker Hart, and sons-in-law Allen Triplett Corbin and David Michael Edwards.
Survivors include her daughter Judith Pauline Crocker Corbin of Thomasville; two sons, Timothy Eugene Crocker (Linda) of Pickens, SC, and William Ivan Crocker (Ginger) of Albany; daughter-in-law Jane Elizabeth Rehberg Crocker of Tifton; son-in-law Robert Samuel Hart II of Odessa, FL; brother-in-law Claude Eugene Crocker (Claudia) of Thomasville; 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
Memorial contributions may be made to Georgia Baptist Children's Home and Family Ministries, Inc., at 9420 Blackshear Hwy, Baxley, GA 31513 or to Christian City at 7345 Red Oak Rd., Union City, GA 30291.