Seminole Spirit

For many, college is a catalyst for new beginnings. For John Crowe, Florida State University is more: it has served as the foundation for nearly every aspect of his life since he first stepped foot on campus almost 60 years ago.

"I owe FSU more than I can repay for what it’s given me,” said Crowe, who earned a bachelor’s in 1969 and a master’s in 1971, both from the Department of Mathematics. “Everything I did here, from academics to the Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps to football, was foundational to my life. Everything comes back to having a good education; it inspired me to never stop learning.”

While Crowe, who grew up about 30 miles from Orlando in a small town called St. Cloud, was recruited to several universities for various sports, he fell in love with Tallahassee during his first visit and came to FSU the summer of 1965 on a football scholarship.

“The game of football is like the game of life: playing taught me lessons that translated off the field like teamwork and dealing with penalties and setbacks,” Crowe said. “Simultaneously, studying math taught me to be logical and to put in the extra effort even when it wasn’t required. I’m especially thankful for [Robert O. Lawton Professor of Mathematics] De Witt Sumners, my advisor, who supported and encouraged me through my endeavors.”

It wasn’t all hard work. At a sorority-fraternity Christmas party, Crowe met Betty, a home economics, education and extension major, who became the love of his life. After a drive-in first date and a second the next night at Mom & Dad’s Italian Restaurant, the rest was history; Betty and John have been married 54 years, and John describes her as the wind beneath the Crowes’ wings.

At the time — the U.S. military was fighting in Vietnam and the draft was in effect — ROTC was mandatory for every male student, but Crowe’s discovery of a love for flying led to him commissioning as an Air Force second lieutenant upon his bachelor’s graduation. Due to his excellence in both military training and mathematics, Crowe received an educational delay to complete his graduate program before starting his service as an Air Force pilot.

“I was lucky to fly around the world,” Crowe said. “I flew Vietnam prisoners of war back to America, flew presidential support with Air Force One several times, and I completed many other meaningful missions. After seven years, I was assigned to the Air Force Academy where I taught mathematics and was an assistant football and basketball coach — ROTC provided me with these once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”

Upon his retirement as a USAF lieutenant colonel, Crowe continued a second career in paper manufacturing, working his way up to chairman and CEO for Buckeye Technologies, a former division of Procter & Gamble. In 2013, Buckeye Technologies merged with Georgia Pacific, and Crowe retired again to work in consulting and write. In 2019, he and teammate Dale McCullers co-authored “FSU’s Sons of the 60s,” a tribute to the Seminole defensive players of the decade, and in 2020, Crowe published “Living in the Cloud: Lessons from the Streets,” which Betty describes as a love letter to his hometown.

Today, in addition to being active alumni and regular attendees at FSU sporting events, the Crowes are Seminole Boosters and members of the FSU Emeritus Society. John also serves on the College of Arts and Sciences Leadership Council. In 2019, five decades after his first graduation, John gave the FSU commencement address.

“The love our family has for FSU spans generations — brothers, nieces, sisters-in-law, and grandchildren are graduates or current students,” Betty said. “I’m proud of the excellent education I received that has helped me in every step of my life, and it was a gift that we could both attend FSU. It means even more that we can give back to this great institution.”

The Crowes also established the De Witt Sumners Endowment within the Department of Mathematics to support a professorship; the Joyce Wolfgang Williams Endowment for Excellence within the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences in honor of Betty’s sister-in-law who taught at FSU in the 1970s; and the Johnnie Stephens Scholarship Fund in athletics to honor John’s teammate who was killed in combat in Vietnam in 1969.

“John and Betty are remarkably generous with their time and resources,” said Dean Sam Huckaba. “As a student-athlete who excelled on the field and in the classroom, not to mention a career filled with successes, John has a unique perspective. He set a superb example for the rest of us to follow, and the Crowes’ philanthropic actions will have lasting impacts on the college and the Department of Mathematics.”