Mary Crabtree, Theater Pioneer in Tennessee

Mary Ducey Crabtree

Mary Ducey Crabtree, who with husband Paul Crabtree and many area families founded Cumberland County Playhouse (CCP) in Crossville, TN in 1963-65, passed peacefully on Nov 11, 2005 after convalescence at home, surrounded by her seven children, friends, colleagues, caregivers and Hospice volunteers. During her career, CCP grew to serve Tennessee’s largest nonprofit performing arts audience, hosting 175,000 visits to Crossville (pop. 10,000) and on tour.

An actor, director and costume designer, Mary succeeded her husband as CCP Producing Director in ‘71, when he joined Opryland, USA to create the park’s original shows. She oversaw CCP’s first balanced budget, first season tickets, first professional company, and with CCP Board retired the mortgage in ’76. She joined founding board member Margaret Keyes Harrison to accept CCP’s TN Governor’s Award in the Arts from Gov. Alexander in ‘89.

Acting roles included Elizabeth I in Elizabeth The Queen, Eliza in Look Homeward, Angel, Emily in The Belle of Amherst, Hecuba in The Trojan Women, and Evelyn in Tennessee, USA! In 2003 she wrote and performed “Mary Crabtree Remembers”, a solo show of her career and family. A video of this memoir, her final performance, remains available.

After youth in Pittsburgh & Crossville, Mary moved to New York in ’41 & met Paul Crabtree in the National Company of George Abbott’s Kiss & Tell. She raised children as Paul directed for The Theater Guild, and acted in the original Oklahoma! and The Iceman Cometh. Theater & TV led to Palm Beach (where she performed with Helen Hayes and other stars), Hollywood, and a ‘63 Crossville sabbatical, when a school musical sparked CCP’s founding.

Mary’s parents, Ohio’s Maj. Ed Ducey and Crossville’s Eula Lee Bishop, met in 1912 as he surveyed the first federal highway (Memphis to Bristol), served in Europe in WWI, and later helped found the Engineering Dept. at Georgia Tech. She was one of the American Red Cross’s first Washington, DC employees during WWI, and ran the CCP box office until she was 80.
Grandparents S.C.& Eva Bishop founded The Crossville Chronicle in 1895, after great-grandparents Samuel & Eva Cline brought the county’s first steam sawmill in 1870, built the first Crossville church, used it as an early school, and hired preacher & teacher.

She called her children, who survive, her “best productions”: Jim Crabtree, CCP Producing Director since ‘81; Amanda May, retired Director of Development at Bassett Hospital, & founding Production Manager for Glimmerglass Opera, Cooperstown, NY. Tom Crabtree of Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Assoc., Harrisburg, PA , architects of CCP’s ‘93 expansion; Abigail C. Woods, CCP guest director, founder of TN Governor’s School theater program, theater teacher in Dallas; David Crabtree, partner and Exec VP at Nashville’s Brookside Properties; Amelie Woods, actor/costumer, art teacher, Putnam County Schools, TN; and Bill Crabtree, Asst.Chair of Audio and Media Technology, New England Institute of Art and Asst. Professor at Berklee College of Music, Boston.

Mary Ducey Crabtree

She is also survived by 17 grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and generations of young people she taught and loved during her career, including Crossville’s Hollywood and Broadway veterans Bob Gunton, Julie Emery, Sharon Wyatt, Jeremy Benton, Leonard Harman, Bobby Taylor and Marion Williams. Spouses of her kids are TV producer Diane M. Crabtree of Nashville; John May, MD of Cooperstown, NY; Jose Limon Co. lighting designer Steve Woods, of SMU in Dallas; artist/mother Lisa A Crabtree of Harrisburg, PA; Performer & city official Rick Woods of Cookeville, TN & Ann W. Crabtree, CCP musical director.

Mary was predeceased by her siblings James Ducey, MD, of New York; David Ducey, of Crossville; Virginia Vandewater Kramer, New York and Crossville; and Tom Ducey, killed in World War II. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to CCP or St. Alphonsus Church, saying “Mary trusted her dreams, lived her faith, served her community, nurtured her family, and brought joy & opportunity to millions. We echo her words about her own mother: ‘She taught us to love’.”

Family visitation will be at Bilbrey Funderal Home, Crossville, on Friday, Nov. 25 (5-9PM), with private interment in the family plot at Crossville City Cemetery on Sunday, Nov. 27. A public funeral Mass will be celebrated in her honor at St. Alphonsus
Catholic Church at 7:30 PM on Sunday Nov. 27,followed by a reception and memory sharing for family, friends and the public at Cumberland County Playhouse beginning about 9PM. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations, in memory of Mary, to the Playhouse or to St. Alphonsus Church.

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Click here for the article in The Tennessean