Memorial Service Today
The service is 2 hours away. Here is the link to watch online.
As a reminder, please bring your favorite mask. We will also provide them at the door.
Following the service, cookies and lemonade will be provided.
Below is a map (if on mobile, tap for directions) of the church’s location.
Evangel Assembly of God, 9920 W. Good Hope Road, Milwaukee, WI 53224
Tomorrow: Online Service
Pleased to share that memorial service will be viewable online at the link below. The service starts at 1 PM Central, but it’s recommended to test your connection 15-30 minutes in advance.
After the service, we will share an unlisted YouTube link to view in the future
For those joining in person, we look forward to seeing you there. For those joining virtually, we appreciate your presence.
Three Weeks Away: Memorial Service Details
Hello Friends & Family,
Perry’s in-person memorial service will be held at Evangel Assembly of God on September 11th. The service will start at 1:00 pm.
Evangel is located at 9920 West Good Hope Road, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53224. You can click or tap the map below for driving directions.
This is an open invitation, so please pass along the service details to anyone who knew Perry and would like to attend. We look forward to seeing many of you on the 11th!
Masks will be provided but feel free to bring your own.
Memorial Service Date Set
Hello Friends & Family,
We would like to let you know that we have chosen a date for Perry’s in-person memorial service. Given the unique nature of the wake procession and the small funeral service last year, it has been our hope and intention to gather together to celebrate Perry’s life at a later date, when larger groups can meet with more freedom and fewer restrictions.
Please mark your calendars for Saturday, September 11th for Perry’s memorial celebration. We will inform you once the location and time are confirmed.
Thank you for your continued prayers for our family. Our dear husband and father is in our thoughts every day; memories of him make us smile and cry on a regular basis. We look forward to gathering with you on September 11th - when we can laugh, hug, cry and remember Perry.
How to Help
Friday is a tough day with Perry’s burial in the morning followed by the socially-distanced Funeral Wake. We hope to see many of you between 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm. Then afterwards, we will have several months to plan a memorial service.
In the last few years and especially in the last week, so many have helped. An update dedicated to thanking folks will be in order! Evangel coordinated a meal train that’s got our refrigerator packed, and our house is full of flowers. To answer the question of how to support the family and how to honor Perry’s memory:
If you would like to send flowers, we would suggest waiting for the future memorial service.
Evangel has the meal deliveries well-organized, but sending a restaurant gift card is welcome. Jeanne’s address is in the bottom of the email updates but not listed on the website itself.
Sympathy cards are more than welcome. You can leave a memory here, but if you would like to mail a card, you can email us at rememberingperry@gmail.com to get the physical address.
Below are a couple of the organizations that Perry cared about the most. A gift in his memory would mean a lot to us.
Robert Felix Memorial Scholarship Program
In the November 2006 of TCI Magazine, Perry was quoted saying “Bob Felix introduced me to the then National Arborist Association. Alex [Shigo] changed my practices and Bob changed my business. Both of them opened up new horizons and insights.”
To designate funds to this program, specify in the Additional Comments box.
A non-profit dedicated to serving central Milwaukee neighborhoods where Perry had deep personal connections.
City on a Hill started with a Convoy of Hope event that Perry and Jeanne volunteered at 20 years ago. In the years since, Perry and family continued to lead youth programs, plow snow, and care for the grounds.
The state’s largest homeless shelter.
For decades, Perry would join their Wednesday night services to meet with the men experiencing homelessness and to pray with them.
Care Net
Care Net Crisis Pregnancy Center of Milwaukee provides baby clothes and counseling for expecting mothers.
Funeral Wake on Friday, 6/19
Photo by Andrew Stallworth
On Friday, June 19th, we invite you to participate in a reception line to greet Jeanne and the Crawford children and to pay your respects to Perry. We look forward to seeing many of you!
In light of COVID-19 and the recommended guidelines for public gatherings, this reception line will allow you to speak to Jeanne and the children while remaining in your vehicles. This is certainly not the kind of gathering we expected, but we will be hosting a memorial service in the future in which we can honor Perry more fully, with many hugs and stories! For this reception line, we do ask that you respect social distancing and stay in your car.
The reception line will take place at Evangel Assembly of God (9920 W. Good Hope Road, Milwaukee, WI). Safety cones and attendants will guide you to line up in the parking lot and speak to the Crawfords under the carport.
Below you will find time slots that correspond with the first letter of your last name. We ask that you do your best to follow these guidelines so we can space out people’s coming and going.
4:00 - 4:30 pm —> Anyone 65 years and older (regardless of last name)
4:30 - 5:00 pm —> Last Name Beginning with A-F
5:00 - 5:30 pm —> Last Name Beginning with G-L
5:30 - 6:00 pm —> Last Name Beginning with M-S
6:00 - 6:30 pm —> Last Name Beginning with T-Z
6:30 - 7:00 pm —> Open
If you are unable to make the appropriate time slot, please come when you can or during the “Open” period (no need to contact us). Thank you once again for the tremendous love, support, meals, and messages we have received from so many of you. We are very grateful!
RSVP Here (optional)
Tap or click the map below to open Google Maps for driving directions.
With a heavy heart
With a heavy heart, we are sharing that Perry passed away peacefully on Sunday, June 14, 2020 at 12:15am. Jeanne, Joseph, Christina, and Victoria Zoe were with him, taking turns to hold his hand and let him know that if it was time, it was okay to go. Jeanne heard a sharp breath and stepped in the living room to see that it was his last on earth and his first with his Heavenly Father.
Perry’s final days were quiet. On Tuesday morning, he was awake enough to join us on the patio as all the children returned to Brown Deer to say goodbye. We believe that he was waiting to hear from everyone and once the room emptied out, he took that as his cue.
Talking about his final days, we inevitably step back 7 or 8 years to when it all started with cognitive and motor changes. But even then, we thought it was a lingering impact of his battle with cancer that started 14 years ago. He, in many ways, fought several waves of health impacts and pushed back his lifespan estimates beyond anyone’s best guess. It was all a testament to his inner strength and faith in God that carried him. A heart and lungs trained through a lifetime of physical work and exercise which would sustain him through brutal treatments.
While it would be understandable for him to be angered by the unfairness of it all or to feel robbed of his golden years after decades of perseverance, he instead took on a sweetness and chose to latch on tightly to Jeanne’s care. Always wanting to be within earshot of her, it was clear that if everything were stripped away, he would be satisfied just to be in her arms. Since about 2016, Joseph, Christina, and Victoria Zoe assumed full time roles supporting Jeanne with the business and his full-time, round-the-clock care. We are forever grateful for the deep personal sacrifice of all four.
What is next? Despite years of knowing this would come, we are still piecing together what will unfold. Perry was immediately transported to allow his brain to be studied by Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease. This is a necessary step to confirm his diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration. Then later this week a private, invitation-only funeral and burial will likely be held. We wish it could be an open invitation, but funeral homes and cemeteries in the Greater Milwaukee Area are restricted to gatherings of 50.
Our desire is to host a drive-through receiving line open to all which would maintain social distancing. We anticipate a date set of Friday, 6/19 or thereabouts. Details will be forthcoming along with a signup, and all the information will be posted here as soon as we know. At least several months from now, we plan to have a more traditional memorial service.
In closing, a thank you. Already so many of you have blessed us with loving messages, food deliveries, and a multitude of other expressions of kindness. It is a testament to the impact Perry had on us all, and we cannot thank you enough. If you have a story or a memory to share, a photo or video, or a note of support, we are saving them all through the rememberingperry.com page. Feel free to pass this news on to others who knew him.
In loving memory of his smile, his heart, and his soul. We look forward to seeing him again one day.
Sincerely,
Jeanne and family