52 Ancestors Week 13 – Vera Luana Crouch, Pretty Young Thing

Vera Luana CROUCH was born on 18 Oct 1904 to Risden Tyler CROUCH and his wife, Pennie GRANT CROUCH. The family was in Chesterfield County, South Carolina at that time.

Vera was a beautiful girl. She had her mother’s dark hair and thin frame, but her face was rounder and less angular than her mother’s. Perhaps the round face came from her father.

When Vera was 10, she was diagnosed with mitral regurgitation which meant that the mitral valve in her heart didn’t close tightly.  This allowed for blood to flow backward in her heart. Mitral regurgitation can be caused by several things including rheumatic heart disease, mitral valve prolapse or an infection in the heart. Any of those things could have caused Vera’s heart problem.

My grandma, Florrie THOMAS MARTIN, told me about a cousin of hers who “had a hole in the heart and you could hear the blood wooshing around just being in the same room with her.”  It must have been Vera she was talking about since a severe mitral regurgitation can be heard without a stethoscope. Pennie and Florrie’s mother, Margaret GRANT THOMAS, were sisters making Florrie and Vera cousins.

As you can guess, Vera died young. At 15, her heart was no longer strong enough to  keep her alive. According to her death certificate, she suffered for 5 days with ‘acute congestion of the lungs’ until she finally passed on 24 June 1919.

Vera’s father passed away when Vera was eight, and her mother married a second time to a man named George Lawhon. Vera,her mother and her stepfather were living in McFarlan, North Carolina at the time of her death. She was buried at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in McFarlan. The following poem can be found on her gravestone:

We loved her, yes we loved her,

But Jesus loved her more,

And he has sweetly called her,

To yonder shining shore.

 

The golden gates were opened,

A gentle voice said come,

And she with a farewell unspoken,

Calmly entered home.

 

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