Richard Crooks

Maggie Valley, Richard Clark "Dick" Crooks, age 75, of 93 Hickory Drive, died on Friday, November 21, 2008 at his residence. A native of Marion, Indiana and former resident of Plantation, Florida, he had lived in Haywood County since 1989. He was the son of the late Lardner Clark and Lovey Ruth Fenstermaker Crooks. He was a US Army veteran and former owner of Crooks Printing Service, a family owned business in Hollywood, Florida. There, he touched the lives of countless people, was loved by all, and never asked an employee to do anything he wouldn't do himself. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Phyllis Scott; two sons, David Crooks of Mount Juliet, TN and Joseph Crooks of Lake Worth, FL; one daughter, Nancy Ranke, of Fort Meyers, FL; three sisters, Sybil Law of Converse, IN, Janice Elaine Nash of Tallahassee, FL and Sallie Kepner of Summerfield, FL; and seven grandchildren. Funeral services will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, November 25, 2008 in the Waynesville chapel of Wells Funeral Home with Reverend Wilson Strickhausen officiating. The family will receive friends from 9:30 until 11:00 a.m. prior to services. "You haven't stopped succeeding just because your business went into bankruptcy. You have been forced into bankruptcy because your accounts receivables have lost their value. But look at the homes you have built! They're still standing. Look at the salary checks you've paid out to subcontractors and laborers over the past 75 years! That money is still providing underpinnings for institutions and businesses that you'll never know about! No small amount of that money is in private saving accounts today. Some of it will be used to send a child through college twenty years from now. Doctors, teachers, and leaders in society will be educated from savings made possible by paychecks you issued. How much of this money you paid in salaries ended up in retirement funds to be drawn out of pensions ten, twenty, thirty years from today? Your business has come to an end, that's true, but your success keeps going on and on and on. How much of the money you paid was invested in stock and real estate, which will be inherited by children and their children's children? Just because your corporation is bankrupt doesn't mean your success has come to an end! The process of success continues to live—changing shape in changing lives." "Success is never ending because success is like the process of seed planting. Good deeds, honestly offered, immediately are transformed into fertile seeds. And only God can count the apples in a seed. Success may or may not mean that you've acquired a lot. It does mean that you've become a generous person. Your greatest success will forever remain God's secret. Only he will know how much good we have all done." Robert H. Schuller "Tough times never last, but tough people do!"

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