Carnivals, Cults, and Con Artists: Meet my dad, Tom Crotser

A very rare picture of my dad, Tom Crotser

My Grandparents

Before I can go into more detail, I really feel that you need to get to know who my dad was. Well, at least what I know about him. My dad was born on March 23, 1938, to Ila Mae Gregory Crotser and Rolla Purl Crotser. His parents were carnival people. His dad (my grandpa) was a barker. You know, the guy that says "Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, see the fat lady!" My grandpa had been in an accident when he was 7 years old and was electrocuted and lost the use of his right hand. He had a sort of metal hook in the place of his hand and fingers. He was very smart and taught himself to drive, shuffle cards, and do just about anything with that hook. My grandmother worked different booths at the carnivals. I can remember one of them being a booth where you had to sink the the little plastic ducks swimming around to win prizes. My grandmother was an amazing woman, so I'm told, but I didn't have the opportunity to know her very well. She wrote for the newspaper, ran for local office, was president of the women's garden committee, collected plates, sold Avon, and loved everyone. I can remember being in her house a few times as a young child. She had plates on every inch of her walls. And she had a drawer filled with Avon products and would always let me pick something out to take home.

My Grandparents

My grandparents and their boys.

My dad in the suit standing next to his mom and dad. His brother Joe is on the right. (His brother Jack is cut off.)

My dad, the magician

I must preface what I'm telling you with the fact that most of this was what I heard from my dad. Because my dad was a known "story teller", I'm not entirely sure of how much of it is really true. When my dad was born, he was premature and supposedly weighed only 2 pounds. They didn't have a crib for him, so they made his bed in a dresser drawer. He cried a lot! And a neighbor lady told my grandma to give him buttermilk to drink and that is how he started gaining weight and growing. His parents were part of a travelling company that not only did carnivals, but also lot of magic and vaudeville type acts. He said they moved around so many times that he went to over 25 schools just in the 5th grade alone! But the upside of all that is that he was able to learn and hang out with some of the best magicians in the business.

My dad standing next to the truck he travelled in for the magic shows he was in. You can see he is pointing to "Miracle in Magic" sign.

My grandpa was referred to as the "one-armed" magician but he really was missing a hand and had a hook instead.

My parents at their wedding.

My mom was excellent at sewing and made her own beautiful dress for her wedding.

I didn't always call him "Tom"

I should explain that I didn't always call my dad, Tom. He was always dad to me until I got married. At the wedding ceremony where he had arranged my marriage, he announced that I was no longer his daughter. I was now Larry's wife and I had to call my parents Tom and Margie. I'm not entirely sure why he did this, but I heard that he was concerned about people seeing him as partial to his children and he wanted to avoid that. Because of the this, my children never really had grandparents. They grew up knowing them as Tom and Margie. We weren't allowed to be as family. My sister says she didn't even know she had a sister for a very long time, as she was only 6 when all this happened. It was just another shocking thing that happened to me that I had to overcome.

I had a coping mechanism that I used a lot growing up where I just "put on a happy face" and made myself pretend that everything was fine. I never really dealt with any of this until I had therapy much much later in life. My therapist called this the "Pollyanna mechanism". You basically just turn off your emotions, which meant that I never really cried about what I endured, nor did I tell my children how I felt about them. My parents never told us "I love you," and I don't really think I told my children that much either. It makes me so sad now to think about that. I did and do love my children very much but just didn't really know how to express that until much later in life.

My dad always wore his hair in this styled way. He didn't really go gray as he got older either. I thought he looked like a movie star.

I know that he did go into the army and went to serve during the War in Japan. He never talked about this time in his life much, but did allude to the fact that he had to actually kill people and it made him so horrified. Tom was very good looking and charming. He and his family were in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was in his early 20s and he got a job at Hannah Lumber and that is where he met my mom, Marguerite Snyder. Mom was a senior in high school and was swept off her feet by him. They dated for about 6 weeks before he asked her to marry him. She was 17 and said yes. She was an expert seamstress and actually made her own dress for the wedding. After the wedding, they started travelling and doing magic shows all over the country. They pulled a small box type trailer behind the car for all the magic props. At the end of each show, they often said that loading up that trailer "just so" was the biggest magic trick. Tom shortened her name to Margie and she became part of the act. She was the woman in the sawing-the-lady-in-half trick and brought his props out to him for other tricks and was a great asset to the show.

A newspaper clipping I found showing his "Houdini" type of tricks that he performed in his shows.

My parents in the middle of one their shows.

My dad doing his escape from a milk can on stage.

My dad had a lot of "Houdini" style tricks that he did in his show. One of them was the "escape from a milk can" trick. He was handcuffed and the lid was padlocked. It was filled up with milk and he was somehow able to escape. He also did one trick where he was in a tall glass box that was filled with water. He would be in a straitjacket and submerged. Within seconds he would be out of the straitjacket and swim to the top and get out of it. One time something went wrong and my mom was sitting on the front row and could tell that something was wrong. She jumped up and tried to get them to help her, but they thought her calls to help him were also part of the act. She was finally able to convince them that something was really wrong, so they ended pushing the tank full of water over and were able to get him out. It was quite scary. Another time he drove a car blindfolded down main street to advertise for the show. And another time he hung upside down from a very tall crane and got himself out of a straitjacket. He loved doing these stunts and boy, it brought the people in to see the show!

A picture of me with my parents as small child traveling with them.

Going to Church

I was their first baby; mom had me a month after she turned 19. They were still on the road travelling and I travelled with them. I have been told that they often travelled with other magic and vaudeville type acts and joined forces. One of them had an orangutan and was in the playpen with me from time to time. I have no memory of this but always have had a fondness for monkeys. After having a child, they thought that maybe they should think about settling down somewhere and maybe even going to church. My dad had never been to church and while my mom's family wasn't religious, she often went with friends while growing up and had a good time there. They decided to settle in a tiny little town called Sperry, Oklahoma. By this time, I was 2 and my mother had already given birth to my first baby brother, Mike.

I believe this is the first church in Smithville, Texas that my dad was a pastor for.

They visited the little Christian church there in Sperry. The first time they came they were welcomed with open arms and in 3 weeks were Sunday School teachers. They were also on the entertainment committee so they held parties at our house. They loved to play pinochle and often those parties would go late into the night. They were very popular. They also held a Halloween party one year where my dad dressed up as woman and it was a riot, or so I'm told.

My dad painted houses to bring in money but it was hard work and he really wanted to do something else. Ever since he had started going to church, he was thinking about the job the preacher had. It seemed like a pretty great job, so he decided to be become a preacher. It was a great gig for him. He was a gifted public speaker and enjoyed having the audience hang on every word. Plus, they provided a home for the preacher and you really only had to work a couple days a week for that. Of course, you were expected to visit people at the hospital and hold a Wednesday night service. But all in all, it seemed like the perfect job for him. He said he went to Seminary school and I'm sure he did but not sure if he actually graduated. After my second brother, Steve, was born, my mom certainly had her hands full. She never wanted to have a job; she loved being a homemaker and taking care of her babies. She loved to bake cakes and cookies and I have great memories of her doing that and letting us lick the bowl and the spoon and the beaters. We all got at least one of those. She also loved to read us stories and we got to know all the fairly tales and some really great children's literature. She played the piano and we listened to records every day and learned all the great little children's songs of the time.

This was where we lived in Sperry, Oklahoma.

This was the parsonage the church provided for us in Smithville, Texas. That is me on the porch with one of my brothers, maybe Jimmy? I was about 9 years old there.

Becoming a Preacher

One of the first churches where he was a pastor was in a little town in Texas called Smithville. I was around 8 by the time we moved there. Our home was right beside the church and the school was within easy walking distance. My best friend lived a few blocks away and my boyfriend, David, lived right next door. I loved living in Smithville. I had the run of the town and rode my bike everywhere. I went roller skating with my friends several times a week. We played outside all the time. We played cops and robbers, cowboys and indians and I loved playing jacks, jumping rope and climbing just about anything. I could go down to the drug store and get an ice cream cone or just go hang out in my best friend's room and listen to Donnie Osmond. It was a great life and I never wanted it to end. This is definitely one of the highlights of my life—a place where I remember really being happy. The church was very small when he first started preaching there and had mostly older people as members, but after the first year, he had grown the church size tremendously and it was a great place for young people and families. After this, I think he felt that he was such a success that he needed to move on up and was offered a preaching position in Irving, Texas.

I was so sad when we moved, but move is what we had to do. The church we moved to was quite large and the parsonage was pretty fancy as well. He was making more money and the church had a fairly large board to work with as well. The school I went to was nice, but I no longer was able to just ride my bike anywhere. By this time, though, I was used to moving around and made friends easily.

My dad started feeling powerful about that time and began to get his own "revelations". He started preaching things like, "Christians cannot sin" Not that they shouldn't but that they "can't". The board didn't care for this at all and asked him to stop. He didn't stop, and the next thing we knew, we were voted out.

All of us all dressed up and ready to go to church.

And here we are again with my dad.

So, when you are voted out of the church, that means you are also out of your house. We had to move immediately and quickly found a rental house. But after only one night, we decided that it was haunted. Weird things happened that freaked out my parents, like lights going on and off and things being moved around, so we moved out the next day. I know that a lot of Christians believe that ghosts are not real, but my parents didn't seem to feel that way. Thankfully, the next house seemed fine.

At this time, Tom did have some loyal people who left the church when he did and wanted him to still be their preacher. He would hold services in our home for them—and, of course, take up a collection to keep it going. This was so difficult for him; I know he really wanted to get back to a church at some point but it just didn't happen. People loved coming to our house for church and I think we had over 40 people at one time.

Money was really tight. Mom was a great budgeter and really managed to make the dollar stretch. But my dad kept looking for opportunities. At one point we could no longer be in the house and ended up moving to Irving, Texas in a motel. It wasn't in the best part of town and was extremely cramped. And to add to that it was across the street from a truck stop gas station and the all the noise associated with that. By this time, my parents had my third brother and my sister, so our family had a total of 5 children now. To help make ends meet, my dad also took a paper route delivering the Dallas Morning News. Sometimes I would get to go with him and I thought this was the best thing ever. We would be out the door before 5 am and I would help to roll the papers and put rubber bands on them. Boy, that Sunday paper was huge! I couldn't be much help with rolling that as my little 10 year old hands just weren't able to, but I could hand him the supplement that had to be wrapped up inside of it, so we were a team. I remember the orange gum we chewed. It was such a treat as that wasn't something we had at any other time.

Brother Woo

Also during that time, he met a man from Mexico that we called "Brother Woo". Brother Woo taught me how to sing "Yes, Jesus loves you" in Spanish and I was enthralled. My dad started talking about being a missionary to Mexico and we actually went there and stayed for a whole month. I was supposed to go to English school there but we didn't have enough money for the cost of it. My youngest brother, Jimmy, was a baby and my mom was going nuts trying to figure out how to feed and entertain all of us. It wasn't safe to just go and and play like it was in the states. I was soooo glad to get back home to Oklahoma when we returned that I actually kissed the ground. We stayed with some friends of theirs for a while and I know we lived in several different places but I was so young I really don't remember much about it all.

When I was 10, we moved back to Oklahoma for a time and I really love Oklahoma. I felt like it was home since I was born there and lived there until I was around 7 years old. It just seemed like "my kind of people" rather than the big city type from Ft. Worth and Dallas. During the time we lived there, my dad met Junior Cooper. Junior was a Pentecostal who really took an interest in Tom. We started attending the Pentecostal church with them and I joined the girl's choir. I really liked being back in church. Just felt like home. It wasn't at all like the other churches we had been a part of before, though. People "spoke in tongues" and sometimes "danced in the spirit" if they felt moved. Junior taught me how to speak in tongues too! He said you just say "Hallelujah" backwards 3 times and then the "spirit" will take it from there. It seemed to work, but I doubt I could do it now.

I'm not sure how long we lived in Oklahoma, but it wasn't too long because I was still 11 when we lived in a small rental house Tyler, Texas. This was the time when my parents started looking for a piece of land. They wanted to raise their children in the country and build a homestead. They found land just outside of a very tiny little town called Frankston. It was 10 acreas and had never been developed. There was a dirt road that lead to a large open area where a single light pole had been erected. And that is how the mission started. I was 12 at the time we moved out there, and I hated the thought of living in the middle of nowhere. Before that I felt like I was living a somewhat normal life. I took piano lessons, went to public school and had my set of friends to hang out with. Moving out to the country took all that away and I was devastated. At first, we just went out there for the weekends and then it was decided that we would actually live there.

Holy Ground Mission

Tom soon began plans to build "Holy Ground Mission Training Center" and started putting up signs around the land of the different buildings he planned to have there: "Dining Hall", "Community Room", and "Office". My mom wasn't too keen on this, but never voiced her opinions in front of us. I know this only because she told me about it much later.

After a very short time, people began to move out there with us. Tom told everyone that the Bible says to leave everything they had behind and become disciples of Christ. Just like Jesus commanded the disciples in the Bible. (He drew this from Matthew 19:27-29: "For anyone who has left behind their home and property, leaving family—brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers, or children—for my sake, they will be repaid a hundred times over and will inherit eternal life") It was a time when a lot of people seemed to be looking for more than the world was offering, and he really convinced people to just "come out from the world, and be a separate people for God". At one point there were over 200 people living there and the 10 acres on either side of the initial 10 acres were purchased to make the property a total of 30 acres. This included people from all walks of life— engineers, carpenters, writers, day laborers, and musicians. Some of them were college grads, some were hippies. They all came to live this communal lifestyle.

We rarely took any pictures but I have a few like this one. If you look to the left, you will see a man with a baby in a hooded coat on his shoulder. That is Larry with our first daughter, and you can see me peeking from behind. Front and Center you will see my brother Mike after he broke his arm and standing next to him is my mom with my baby sister Nancy in front, My brother Jimmy is next to her and behind him is my dad and between my mom and dad is my brother, Steve.

There was a film company that wanted to include us in a movie they were making and took this picture. I'm not sure if anything came out of it. You can see Wayne with his guitar in the middle and if you look all the way to the left, I'm the young woman sitting there with my oldest daughter in my lap.

I really feel like, when my dad first started this, that his intentions were good. I think he wanted to really do something important, that he really wanted to help people feel closer to God. But I also think having the power and authority over all of these people really went to his head. He again started to get revelations and fancied himself to be the reincarnated spirit of Elijah. We called him "The Lord" and whenever we talked about him or something he said, we would say, "the Lord" said this or that. He took ideas from many different things he read and put them forth as his own. It didn't really seem strange to me to do this for some reason. I mean, he was God's representative to us, and we accepted everything he said as truth. I think we thought it was "the Lord" speaking through him just like people in the Bible.

Being a Con Artist

At one point, one of the families that came said that women needed to be "modest," so we weren't allowed to wear make up and had to wear long dresses. We weren't allowed to say "imagine" or "confused," as these words referred to the confusion the Bible spoke of with the Tower of Babel, according to Tom. All of this was definitely another manifestation of his control over us, his followers.

I think the con artist that my dad was came fairly naturally to him. He grew up around people who elevated being a con artist to a successful career. He was never diagnosed but I'm pretty sure he had some sort of personality disorder. I feel fairly certain, in fact, that he was a sociopath (but of course I'm not a doctor). He would pit us against one another. He never wanted us to be best friends with someone else. If he saw two people getting closer, he would quickly let you know that that other person wasn't really being honest with you, and that he was your only really true friend.

There were so many rules and weird things that happened that were used to control people and as you will see in future blog posts. But this at least will give you some insight into who he was, as well as an idea of who he will become as the story goes on.

Key words: Carnival, Con Artist, Cult