Friday, April 21, 2000

Rabbit Hash couple lead no-fear lives

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BY John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Some people might consider it a pressure-packed situation, but not Jerry Crowder.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        There he was on a Hollywood stage, under bright lights and in front of 300 screaming people, having just been plucked from the studio audience to be a contestant on The Price Is Right. He was wearing a Rabbit Hash General Store T-shirt, as was his wife, Connie, who sat in the audience.

        “What they want is somebody who's going to get up there and not be too shy, I guess,” Jerry says, recalling that day 13 months ago. “And I've never been shy.”

        In fact, neither Jerry, 53, nor Connie, 41, has been shy about trying new things. Which is why the Crowders, who live with their two young daughters in a log home near Rabbit Hash in rural Boone County, agreed to accompany friends to the game show.

        First, Jerry was invited to “come on down!” Then, he won $515 worth of bowling equipment. And then he found himself standing beside the game's host, Bob Barker, trying to guess the prices of five grocery items. If his total came within $1 of the actual total, he would win a living room suite and TV worth $4,601.

        Jerry quickly guessed the prices. No dilly-dallying. “You're blowin' it!” someone yelled.

        Yep, Jerry blew it. He badly misjudged the price of a bag of popcorn, which killed his chances of winning.

        But nobody can say that Jerry folded under pressure. Pressure doesn't seem to bother him. Or Connie, either. The couple, married 12 years, enjoy putting themselves into intense situations.

        Years ago, they tried skydiving. Their first jump was pretty uneventful. The second time, Connie's lines became twisted.

        “In class they teach you how to untangle yourself,” she says. “So I wasn't really afraid. I knew how to do it.”

        Her parachute opened, and she was enjoying the trip down. “Then I realized I was headed toward a cornfield,” instead of her landing site. “It was cut corn, thank God.”

        The Crowders next tried downhill skiing. They took lessons at some of the smaller Tristate slopes, then hit the Utah mountains.

        At the end of one run, Connie collided with a tree. She messed up her knee and needed surgery.

        Undeterred and still looking for adventure, the Crowders turned to white-water rafting. Now, every year, they head to the Gauley River in West Virginia, sometimes accompanied by Jerry's adult children from a previous marriage. They especially like the Upper Gauley, known for its intense rapids.

        “Knock on wood, I haven't fallen out (of the raft) yet,” Connie says.

Law enforcers
        If the Crowders play hard, perhaps it's because they work hard, too. Connie is a lieutenant at the Boone County Jail, where she has worked for 18 years.

        She has dealt with plenty of drunks, unstable people and sweet-talking cons. “They're like your best buddy, till you turn around and they're ready to stab you. I've learned not to trust anybody,” Connie says.

        Some of the people she's locked up were brought to her by Jerry. He now sells log homes, but for 30 years he was a police officer, including 17 with Boone County. Which means he's been in some uncomfortable situations, too.

        He was patrolling in Richwood one day when he saw a guy picking up coins outside a motel. The man had on an overcoat. Unusual for summer, Jerry thought.

        It turned out the man had just robbed the place. Jerry confronted him. “He bit me right there; I still got the mark,” Jerry says, pointing to his wrist.

        The man grabbed for Jerry's gun. Didn't get it though. What he got was a prison sentence.

TV no pressure
        Another time, a young man started fighting with Jerry. During the struggle, the man's father took Jerry's gun from its holster.

        “This boy's saying (to his father), "Shoot him! Shoot him!' ” Jerry recalls.

        “All I could do was keep calm, and walk over to the cruiser. I walked real slow and kept talking to the guy, and I picked up the (radio) microphone and held it so (dispatchers) could hear what was going on.”

        It took six minutes for help to arrive. “It felt like six hours,” Jerry says.

        Now that's pressure.

        Pricing a package of popcorn on national TV, and blowing it? No pressure at all.

        Jerry sees it this way: “If you sit around and think about fear in your life, you're gonna sit around all your life doing nothing.”

       

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