Obituary of Sue Weaver Crook

Sue Weaver Crook died peacefully surrounded by family at the Jim and Betsy Bryan Hospice Home in Pittsboro, NC, on September 13, 2023, of respiratory failure. She was 89.

Sue was born Mary Sue Weaver on October 25, 1933, in Lewisburg, TN, to Leo and Hazel (Smith) Weaver. She went north to college, where she dropped the Mary from her name, graduated from Radcliffe College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1956, and then proceeded to fulfill all the direst predictions of family and friends in Tennessee that if her parents “let her go north to college, she’d marry a Yankee!” She married Foster Stevenson (“Terry”) Crook on July 10, 1956, and they lived in Boston for 5 years, where Terry worked in corporate sales and Sue was a homemaker. They moved to Needham, MA, in 1961, where they raised three children. In 1986 Terry left corporate sales to become a Realtor, and Sue went to work as a secretary in the Social Work department of the local community hospital to secure health insurance. She retired in 1998 and she and Terry moved to Chapel Hill, NC, to help care for two of their four granddaughters.

Sue loved folk music and she sang and played a variety of instruments, none of them well (by her own estimation), including the clarinet, the piano, the banjo, the dulcimer, and the pogo cello. She volunteered as “The Music Lady” at a Needham nursery school, and worked casually as a folk singer for children’s parties, where she encouraged the kids to sing along. She made amazing scratch pie crust and buttermilk biscuits, skills she taught all her granddaughters. She had a great sense of humor (and an appreciation of the ridiculous) and cultivated an eccentric image at home and in the community. For many years, she drove a VW camper around Needham with “Crook’s Getaway Car” spelled out on the back and fake bullet hole decals on the rear window.

Sue was a strong and wise woman, an independent thinker long before that was considered “suitable”: her high school guidance counselor once told her she needed to learn to play dumb if she hoped to marry, to which she replied, “I’d rather be single!” She also possessed a deep and abiding faith, and was fond of saying in her later years that “death is the next great adventure!”

Sue is survived by her beloved husband of 67 years, Terry Crook; her son and daughter-in-law Stephen and Kathi Crook of Reading, MA; her son Rich Crook of Carrboro, NC; her daughter and son-in-law Anne and Chris Lutes of Chapel Hill, NC; granddaughters Megg (Crook) Joosten (and Geoffrey Joosten) of Redmond WA, Laura Crook (and Lauren Bouchard) of Portland, OR, Rachel Lutes of Lansing, MI, and Sarah Lutes of Lansing, MI; and one great-grandson, Seamus Joosten. She is preceded in death by her brothers, Eddie Weaver and Jim Weaver.

A funeral mass will be held on Tuesday September 26, 2023, at 2:30 pm at St Thomas More Catholic Church in Chapel Hill, followed by interment in the columbarium and a reception. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to St Thomas More or Heifer International. Walker’s Funeral Home in Chapel Hill is assisting the family.