"My mistake. When someone calls me on the telephone screaming that they will show the world that I am fraud and then several days later informs me their first effort will be to pick apart my A&C essay (an effort that has continued off and on for a year and a half)…you might get the impression it was personal."
Tom MacWood:
If you want to keep bringing that up it's just fine by me.
You had been very critical of PVGC regarding their treatment of Harry Colt. I didn't like that at all and I never will. It just isn't the case but obviously you're not in a postion to understand that. All you could do is refer to an article or so that suggested something like that but that article was entirely inaccurate too, even if written by an otherwise respected woman member of Merion.
You seem to want to be percieved as some great researcher and history writer for uncovering Crump's death certificate. If anyone around here or perhaps from anywhere else wanted to find out how he died at anytime in the last 85 years then that would not be a very difficult thing to do. Obviously no one really wanted to get into that. Apparently you didn't have or don't have much appreciation for why that was. You deduced it was to cover something up and glorify the man perhaps at the expense of Colt. That's just total BS but perhaps you don't even realize that today.
You told me that you wanted to write about that and then might consider writing an article about Crump's death while being harrassed by people around here who were looking to cover something up.
At least I'm happy to know that I disabused you of an idea like that or the one about PVGC always being out to glorify Crump at the expense of what Colt did at PV. And I don't like the way you took advantage of those people in Merchantville either. If you had any kind of integrity or understanding of researching and publicly reporting something you should have told them what you were calling them for in the first place. You might tell me you didn't know at that point you were going to write an article about his death, but, frankly, I just don't accept that explanaton. To me that's simply a lie.
But in the end I think you did a pretty good article on him even if it has nothing much to do with architecture, or PV's architecture or who did what down there. PVGC thankfully doesn't mind the article either which pretty much proves they weren't out to hide anything regarding Crump, and their only motivation was obviously one of respect for him and what he really did do there.
The manner of his death doesn't have anything to do with what he did there in the last six years of his life anyway.
The resaon he shot himself has never even been remotely explained and certainly why his family (or friends) would've endorsed a story that he died of poison to the brain from poor teeth has never been explained either and it probably never will be.
It looks fairly certain to me that Crump didn't even die in Merchantville. It looks like he died at PVGC and his body was moved to Merchantville.
In an interview in 1990 his foreman's son, George Govan, mentioned how sad it was when Crump was found dead in his bungalow at PVGC. The Govan family was the only other one who lived down there back then.
But again, I have nothing personal against you. I don't even know you---I just think some of the things you write are very wrong.
Personally, if someone even handed me Crump's death certificate I think I'd have more respect for him and his memory than to write about the manner of his death to try to make a name for myself.