Calvin R. Crane died Sunday, September 15, 2019, at the age of 102. He was the son of James Antony Crane and was living at the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Salem, Virginia. Calvin’s father fought in the War Between the States. He was only a year old when his father died. Because he really never got to know his dad: Calvin Crane Says most of his memory of his dad is just what he has been told from other family members. He recalls they mostly talked about how his father loved to hunt and is very pleased to have inherited his shotgun.

Calvin was the youngest of the five children of James and Annie Crane, who married around the turn of the 20th century when James was in his 50s and Annie was about 18. James was a widower who served during the war with the Ringgold Battery, company B, 13th Battalion, Virginia Light Artillery and had 16 children by his first marriage: Annie was an orphan who was taken in by a farm family outside Danville. They eloped across the North Carolina line to marry.