Several weeks before police came knocking on Sheliah Crutcher’s door to tell her that her son had died in a car crash, the gospel song “Because He Lives” popped into her head.

She couldn’t let it go. She sang it and ran it through her mind over and over.

It was the message of that song — that because Jesus lives — that helped her through one of the worst times of her life, Crutcher said.

It also was not Crutcher’s first experience with death. Her father Sherman Manuel had died when Crutcher was 13 years old.

“I was a daddy’s girl,” she said. “If I cried or whimpered or anything, I would get what I wanted. My mother would just moan (at how I was being spoiled).”

One of the main lessons her mother, Thelma Manuel, had taught Crutcher and her siblings was to always be prepared for the unexpected. That lesson has helped Crutcher not only through deaths, but also through life, she said.

It was one of many lessons her mother taught her over the years, Crutcher said.

Many of the lessons were stories that Thelma Manuel passed along to her children. At the time, she might not have told them as lessons in life, but they stuck with Crutcher and she has applied them in her life.

She also learned a lot about life in getting her psychology degree and worked many years in counseling before joining the county election board staff several years ago.

“I accepted the job, not even knowing what I was coming into,” Crutcher said.

She had some experience in politics and had campaigned door-to-door with her attorney, Bill Settle, when he was running for state senator. He was successful in that race and was county Election Board secretary when she got the clerk’s job there.

She loves the work and the people, but hopes that when her daughter finishes college, she can go back into the psychology field and plans to relocate out of state to do that.

Happy childhood

memories are plentiful