Sarah Crosby, volunteer, gardener

Sarah Jane Ramsey Crosby, a homemaker and former Peabody Conservatory of Music alumni association worker, died of heart failure Oct. 30 at the Broadmead Retirement Community in Cockeysville. She was 93 and formerly resided in Monkton.

Born in Baltimore and raised in Ten Hills, she was the daughter of Alfred P. Ramsey, chief counsel and president of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., and his wife, Marion Pickard. She was a 1942 graduate of Friends School and earned a bachelor of arts at Wellesley College. As a teen, she played field hockey. She and her father enjoyed playing piano duets.

Mrs. Crosby had been active in Girl Scouts and was a former member of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church.

She met her future husband, Dr. Robert M.N. Crosby, a Baltimore pediatric neurosurgeon and neurologist, on a blind date.

For five years in the early 1960s she was the assistant for the Peabody Alumni Association and the Baltimore Music Club.

She and her family lived in Dickeyville from the late 1950s until they moved to Monkton in 1970.

She and her husband were interested in historic preservation and prepared documentation so that Dickeyville and Monkton could become historic districts.

While living in Dickeyville she was an active member of the Garden Club and the Dickeyville Players.

Mrs. Crosby played tennis and bridge and built a garden. She drove for Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland and was a volunteer library worker at the Ladew Gardens. She was an active member of St. James Episcopal Church.

“When the grandchildren started to arrive, they spent many weekend days and nights at ‘Golly’s’ house, where they played and listened to her play the piano for them,” said her daughter, Lucy Crosby Price, of Pasadena.

In 2007 Mrs. Crosby moved to Broadmead and participated in the retirement community’s theater group.

“My mother left behind, in the bottom of a big hamper, a bunch of letters from her friends who spoke of her strength, her determination and her graciousness, particularly in times of her own personal sorrow,” said Ms. Price. Services were private. In addition to her daughter, survivors include two sons, A. P. Ramsey Crosby of The Villages, Fla., and Andrew W. Crosby of Monkton; two other daughters, Susan Crosby Taliaferro of Parkton and Sarah Crosby Schweizer of Lutherville; 13 grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. A son, R.M. Nelson Crosby, died in 1977. Her husband of 40 years died in 1987.