Interview Rendezvous: Christine Crouse-Dick

By Kate Duncan

KD: So I hear you are from Tabor.
CCD: “From” Tabor? Like, born and raised at Tabor?

KD: Well, went to Tabor.
CCD: I am a Tabor grad, like Brad Born and Merle Schlabaugh; they too are Tabor graduates, as is my husband. I met my husband at Tabor.
KD: Well, but he teaches at Tabor.
CCD: He is a professor at Tabor. He was not a professor while I was a student. Although he was an RD while I was a student.
KD: How old was he then?
CCD: Gosh, he’s only two and a half years older than I am, so I met him when I was nineteen, but we didn’t start dating until I was twenty-one.
KD: So you started dating him while you were still at Tabor.
CCD: I started dating him, (pause). Well, we never called it dating. We called it “hanging out.” We never “dated” – we never went out on dates. We just kind of “hung out.” It was convenient because we were in a folk rock band. We did a lot of things together and traveled together with the band.
KD: And you’re still in a folk band.
CCD: Well, we still sing folk music. Folk-ish.
KD: And, you performed at the talent show.
CCD: Yes, we did perform at the talent show.
KD: I thought you two sounded great. Where else do you guys perform?
CCD: Well, we do a lot at church. We used to do a lot at coffee shops and bars around the area, but we haven’t done as much since we both got full-time teaching jobs. It takes a lot more time than we thought it would. Now we know that professors work, like, twenty-four hours a day.
KD: And aren’t you also in a singing group in your church?
CCD: No, it’s not a group in my church, although a lot of the women do go to my church. It’s predominately Bethel grads, a few of the women attended other Mennonite schools. I’m the only Tabor representative. The group’s called Full Circle. The group organized originally in response to the Iraq War, as a form of protest. I, actually, should qualify that I was not a member of that original group. I think there were originally eight or ten and now we’re twelve.
KD: What type of music do you sing?
CCD: A lot of songs about life. They’re primarily folksy. We focus mainly on the hardships and the joys of life, for the run-of-the-mill gigs we do, at nursing homes, or at church things, and the big thing we are always aiming for is International Women’s Week. I find myself really wanting to do something with Avenue 8, something collaborative, maybe sing a song together, maybe doing a joint concert together. We should do things together.
KD: Now, it sounds pretty Mennonite; are you all Mennonite?
CCD: (long pause) I think it depends on how you define Mennonite, but yes.
KD: Well, let’s see. You have a black eye. Do you want to tell the story behind that?
CCD: Well, I have a little condition by my eye, right outside here, that is called Granuloma Annulare, which for a while we thought was skin cancer because three doctors told me they though it was, and then we had the biopsy and found out that it wasn’t.
KD: Thank God!
CCD: Yes, thank goodness. Anyway, now I have to get an injection of steroids into that area.
KD: On a regular basis?
CCD: Every two months. And the doctor hit the bump but also hit a blood vessel.
KD: Is this something that’s going to get cured after, like, a year and a half of this?
CCD: This is something that they don’t know much about. They say after several treatments the bumps should go down; they could come back, they could resurface on different areas, but we’ll see. They may never come back again.
KD: Let’s hope for that.
CCD: Yes, let’s hope for that.