Rep. Ron Crimm's legacy is one of legislative service to Kentucky: Opinion

On an icy stretch of southbound I-65 in January, 2010, 19-year-old Kathryn Crimm’s car suddenly began fish-tailing. The out-of-control vehicle headed for the median. Preventing a potentially deadly cross-over collision were heavy-duty cables installed in that median the previous year through a state appropriation Ms. Crimm’s grandfather, state Rep. Ron Crimm, had helped pass as a member of the Appropriations and Revenue Committee.

Ron Crimm, who died last week at the age of 87, served 20 years (1997-2017) in the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing a district centered around Middletown. His good work not only saved the life of his granddaughter, but contributed to the progress Louisville enjoyed during the years he was in Frankfort. Ron was also my good friend and colleague.

Ronald Edmond Crimm was born on March 11, 1935, in tiny (0.2 square miles) West Lawn, Pennsylvania. His parents, Ralph and Jean Crimm, during the Great Depression, started a concrete business with a twist. Ralph developed a process to color the concrete −any color you wanted. Jean kept the company’s books.

Family gatherings included trips to nearby West Virginia to celebrate holidays with their relatives among the Sharpe family. Ron’s first cousin, Bill Sharpe, a budding politician, was an ardent Democrat who would one day serve 44 years in the West Virginia state Senate (and would be succeeded by one Joe Manchin). Ron was a red-hot Republican, so the family’s political discussions were spirited.

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At Shippensburg State Teachers College, Ron met a pretty, vivacious coed from Gettysburg, Phyllis Raffensberger. It was love at first sight – at least on Ron’s part – he told his roommate after the couple’s first date that he would eventually marry the girl he had just met. Phyllis wasn’t nearly as infatuated – she was somewhat put off by Ron’s incessant political chatter and gregarious personality. Determined to break up with Ron over a Christmas break, she instead agreed to his marriage proposal, a union that lasted 62 years. (Phyllis died in 2020.)

After a stint in the Army and then teaching high school business classes, restless Ron embarked on a career in the insurance business. A growing family provided further incentive, a daughter and then a son were born in 1959 and 1960. He earned a series of promotions that in the 1970’s landed him in the Louisville office of insurance giant CIGNA. (He later started his own agency.)

Living in Middletown, Ron threw himself into the community – he was PTA President at Eastern high school; his church, Middletown United Methodist, and local Republican politics, including playing a role in electing Mitch McConnell Jefferson County Judge in 1977. In the 1990’s, Ron literally saved the Jefferson County GOP from bankruptcy. As County Chairman – a job nobody else wanted – he righted the ship, replenished the finances and recruited quality candidates to compete against the Democratic hegemony in this town.

In 1996, Ron gave up the chairmanship to be a candidate himself – he had been elected to the school board back in Pennsylvania and yearned to serve in public office again. At 61, Ron Crimm was elected to an open seat in the Kentucky General Assembly. To say that Ron loved his work is like saying Justin Thomas is a pretty fair golfer. Rep. Crimm was almost always the first legislator to arrive in the morning and the last one to turn out the lights in the Capitol Annex. Legislators usually serve on three committees; Ron served on four and I believe he would have been thrilled to be on all 16 House committees.

Being a minority Republican, Ron could sing The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” with the best of us. As a result, he brought home substantial budget allocations for his beloved Middletown and for Tom Sawyer Park among other worthy causes. As a plaintiff’s attorney, I liked to tease Ron about his occasional heightened concern for the poor, powerless insurance interests.

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For years, he held a leadership position in the National Council of Insurance Legislators – a sinister, subversive organization of state legislators who are insurance agents in real life. With his trademark hearty laugh, Ron assured me that it was absolutely untrue, that during annual NCOIL conventions the members did NOT burn a live trial lawyer at the stake as they shouted “deny the claim, DENY THE CLAIM!!” But, he chortled, “What a great idea!”

Back home, Ron and I supported the Middletown all-star baseball teams that featured his grandson, Tim Anderson, and our son, Philip. We rejoiced in their tournament victories and split the cost of impromptu post-game celebrations at local steakhouses.

It was Louisville’s immortal Justice Louis Brandeis who called state legislatures the “laboratories of democracy.” The unselfish women and men in Kentucky who leave their families and jobs for three months every year to work in those laboratories are among the finest citizens of the commonwealth. One of those remarkable people was the Honorable Ron Crimm. God bless him.

Bob Heleringer was a member of Kentucky’s House of Representatives from 1980-2002; he can be reached at helringr@bellsouth.net.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Rep. Ron Crimm's legacy is one of legislative service to Kentucky