Ready or Not, Crawford May Soon Resume Normalcy
Bushes' Proximity Brought Revenue, Lots of Protesters

By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

CRAWFORD, Tex. -- These days, even protesters rarely visit this tiny town made famous as President Bush's favorite vacation spot.

Tourist traffic has slowed to a trickle. A cluster of storefronts and the one blinking stoplight that make up downtown Crawford have been spruced up since Bush, then the governor of Texas, bought his 1,600-acre ranch nearby in 1999.

But some of the long-empty historic shops -- despite freshened exteriors -- still have no occupants, and Crawford Country Style, one of a handful of memorabilia shops to open here since Bush became president in 2000, went under about a year ago.

Wednesday marks the final day of Bush's last Crawford summer vacation, a prospect has left longtime residents marveling at the changes that have come to their dusty, 700-person town about 20 miles west of Waco -- and wondering what comes next.

Bush has indicated that he and his wife, Laura, will make Dallas their primary residence after they leave the White House. It is not yet clear whether they will keep Prairie Chapel Ranch, but chances are good, given the extensive renovations the first couple made to the compound.

Still, next August will be the first since Bush took office that Crawford won't hear the chop of a helicopter ferrying the president from the Waco airport, or that the gymnasium at the Crawford middle school won't fill with hordes of reporters. Many here believe the town will then, at long last, return to normal.

"To me, this is the heartbeat of Crawford," Marilyn Judy, a local teacher, volunteer emergency medical technician and Chamber of Commerce president, said as she gestured at more than 100 townspeople munching on burgers and hot dogs after services Sunday at the First Baptist Church. "This is the part that's not going to change."

The president's presence has been mostly good for Crawford, his 75 visits here bringing spikes in visitors eager to buy Western White House mugs and, since May, collectible plates featuring images of daughter Jenna Bush and Henry Hager, who got married at the ranch.

A dying feed store was replaced with a shiny new bank, the Security Bank of Crawford. The Yellow Rose, a kitschy stone building made up to look a bit like the Alamo, opened in the old mechanic's shop at the corner of the town's main intersection, North Lone Star Parkway and Farm Road 185.

The trophy case at the local high school includes mementos of tours by then-Russian President Vladimir Putin and former then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, alongside reminders of the school's 2004 state high school football championship.

But Crawford's distinction as Bush's home away from Washington hasn't brought the boom some thought it might in the first heady years of his presidency. A once-discussed grocery store never materialized. Neither did a hotel.

"There was some of that circulating, but it was never very realistic," said Kenneth Judy, Marilyn's husband and the former school superintendent, now vice president at Security Bank.

The sale of Bush trinkets doesn't quite add up to a new economy, and although a few dozen new houses have been built, there has been no boom in the local population. "Very few people actually moved out here because this is the home of George W. Bush," he said.

Mostly, Crawford has attracted protesters, kept so far from the president's sprawling ranch that local residents always know when they're in town -- even if Bush probably does not.

There was the incident in 2001, for example, when Greenpeace protesters scaled the local water tower and hung a banner that read "Bush: The Toxic Texan."

Katherine Place, 84, who can remember, in the 1920s, going to Crawford's tiny school in her neighbor's horse and buggy, laughs when she remembers Chinese Falun Gong activists who made her small, red-brick home their base of operations during one of Bush's visits.

"The police came and said, 'Katherine, how many do you want to let on your yard?' " she recalled. "I said, 'Just as many as want to come.' "

Her friend Annie Lee Holmes, 88, made tiny cheese sandwiches for the group. "I think they appreciated them -- ate 'em all up," Holmes said.

Then there was Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, who camped out for weeks outside the president's ranch in August 2005 and turned Crawford into a symbol of the nation's fractured attitudes over the war. Thousands came to protest the war alongside Sheehan.

Then the anti-Sheehan protesters arrived in Crawford. Gary Qualls, whose Marine son was also killed in Iraq, eventually bought the abandoned barbershop on North Lone Star Parkway and converted it into Fort Qualls, partly a restoration of the barbershop, partly a shrine to the memory of his son and to Gary's cause opposing antiwar activists. Qualls, who said he is a retired disabled veteran, now sells vintage glass bottles and old bank notes to raise money for his charity.

"It all happened, right here in Crawford," Qualls said.

Marilyn Judy, the Chamber of Commerce president, expressed concern that the Sheehan protest increased calls to the volunteer fire department; on one hot August day, the rarely used town ambulance was called upon three times.

"People came from all over, and they weren't used to the heat," she said. "They were yelling at each other from across the street, and they were overcome."

Bush may make another appearance in Crawford before the end of his term. He often spends a few days at the ranch just after Christmas. But already his presence has faded. He rarely visits the local coffee shop, for instance, as he did at the start of his presidency.

There will always be visitors who make their way to Crawford because of its Bush ties, but residents are now banking on other ways to boost economic growth, including the further westward growth of the Waco suburbs.

L.E. "Boze" Godwin could have warned Crawford that this was likely to happen. For 30 years, Godwin has been the mayor of similarly sized Plains, Ga., made famous as the boyhood home of President Jimmy Carter.

During the height of the Carter administration, thousands visited each day. Several restaurants and souvenir stores opened. But Godwin said the boom evaporated quickly after Carter's term ended. Just one of those restaurants survives today, even though the occasional tourist can still find Carter teaching Sunday school at a local church.

"We miss the notoriety," Godwin said, "but we enjoy the quiet."