October 25, 1920 – November 2, 2014
by the Episcopal Church Women, All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Hamlet, 2016
Irma Elizabeth Gordon Walker Crowell
Irma Crowell was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1920, to Delores Felice Perl and William St. George Walker. In 1941 she married Julius Alexander Crowell, Sr. (1916-2005), and they had a son and a daughter: Dr. Julius Alexander Crowell Jr. of High Point, NC, and Dale Crowell Armstrong of Charleston, SC.
At All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Hamlet Irma served as Altar Guild Chairman for many years. When she was elected as Diocesan Altar Guild Chairman part of her responsibility was to travel around the Diocese and offer presentations for different parish Altar Guilds. She subscribed to the National Altar Guild newsletter and found a communion wafer recipe which she began using at All Saints, where it remains in use today. She also shared this recipe with Altar Guilds at other parishes. At one time, one of Irma’s friends, an Episcopalian living in another state, made the wine for All Saints’, but now it is purchased commercially.
Among her many church activities, Irma served as Junior Warden several times, and also as a voting member of the Vestry. She represented All Saints’ at many Diocesan Conventions. She served as Treasurer for the Moncure Fund from its beginning and continued in that position for twenty-five years. She taught Sunday School, sang in the choir, served as a Lay Reader, and was the long-time Treasurer of the Episcopal Church Women.
Irma also volunteered in the community, first for the Red Cross and later for the Sandhills Regional Auxiliary Guild.
Until her death in 2014, Irma Crowell was the oldest living member of All Saints’. On her first Sunday in Hamlet she attended All Saints’, where Bishop Penick was making one of his official visitations. Ironically, Irma moved to Southern Pines in 2012, and died there while residing at Penick Village, the senior living facility and namesake legacy of this bishop’s vision for the diocese. And, as she became a legacy in her own right, Irma was the go-to person for All Saints’ history. She is missed in this place.