Jennifer Crutchfield’s busy life and community outreach can be best compared to that of a superhero like Wonder Woman with the zeal for her community like Barney Fife. She also makes the occasional citizen’s arrest with skills as a former private investigator under her belt.
Crutchfield also keeps her swimsuit on under her clothes to go swim with her three boys some days and has a work dress and heels in her bag as well to change like Wonder Woman answering to a call. Crutchfield says this healthy balancing act is what being a parent is all about. Crutchfield serves her community as editor for the Chattanooga Parent Magazine, as a relocation specialist for Volkswagen families, a member of the GoFest committee, for the city of Chattanooga on the mayor’s council for disability, as an active parent at Normal Park and on the Marketplace committee for Normalpalooza, and on the committee at the Northside Learning Center.
Crutchfield was born in Chattanooga, and with her dad in the Army she grew up in all kinds of places, but always called Chattanooga her hometown. She says whether they were in Latin America or North Carolina, when they would finish an assignment, the family would come to Chattanooga and visit the grandparents. Crutchfield moved back to Chattanooga when she was 24 after working in D.C. in disabilities and civil rights with the Americans with Disabilities Act and on a congressional campaign in Missouri as deputy field director. She planned to help her grandfather with Alzheimer’s to remain independent, but when he couldn’t, she moved to Chattanooga full-time.
It was during this time that she got her private investigator’s license, and made a citizen’s arrest while eight months pregnant with her oldest son, chasing and macing a thief trying to steal out of her car while she took her grandfather to the Veteran’s Administration. But overall the P.I. work wasn’t any fun for her, she says. In 2006, May Bell Hurley teamed up with Michael Kull from The Pulse to discuss the need for a magazine to serve families. Chattanooga Parent Magazine came out of this and has been in backpacks ever since in Hamilton County and has been serving families in Catoosa County since last year.
Crutchfield started at Chattanooga Parent writing a column called “History Mystery.” This column (still running) allows Crutchfield to explore a landmark in Chattanooga history and write a story about it every month. After enough years, this turned into a book called Chattanooga Landmarks. Crutchfield uses her book to go to schools to get children enthusiastic about the things they drive by everyday with their families, but don’t recognize as landmarks in Chattanooga or the country’s history, she says.
As editor of Chattanooga Parent, Crutchfield oversees the rest of the columns and features, which include a lot of writers who serve the non-profits and groups that serve families in Chattanooga. Each month is an article by an Erlanger doctor, regular features following an editorial theme, an education column, a column from Allied arts, the Creative Discovery Museum’s column on healthy eating, a column where a different therapist addresses questions about mental health, a page for the Chattanooga Library on books from the children’s department, a column on music for kids and their parents, a calendar of events, a column from the Partnership on consumer credit alerts, a column called Dad Dispatch that shares stories from the experiences of different dads across the community and Alison Lebovitz’s column that uses “mom humor” to relate to all races and socioeconomic levels.
The magazine is available online by the article and in a turn-by-turn version. Each month, 35,000 copies are printed and put in the backpacks of all Hamilton county students, go home in private school students’ backpacks, are stocked in coffee shops, recreation centers, family venues, doctor’s offices and more, she says. Crutchfield’s community roles
don’t stop there. She plays the role of mom to her sons, ages eight, 10 and 12 and to an assorted “roving band of small humans” that accompany them, she says. With her children at Normal Park, she is active there and on their Marketplace committee for Normalpalooza. She is on the committee at the Northside Learning Center, which is a five-star rated daycare program in Chattanooga based out of Northside Presbyterian Church.
“Having grown up in the military, I have an aptitude for languages and a level of rapport that I think comes from moving so often as a kid,” she says. “It’s a dovetailing of objectives with the Chattanooga Parent Magazine because it’s all about serving families.”
Crutchfield says when a Volkswagen family comes here on a global reassignment, they are assigned someone like her to work with them on their housing and schools and government documents, social security and acclimating to Chattanooga and understanding where to go to do family things such as, where to grocery shop. It involves all of those different parts of being a family and acclimating to a different culture, not just a different geographic location, she says. With families from all over the world, culturally, the experience is very interesting for her and her children, she adds.
But all of these community roles come back to her role as a mom, she says. “I am compelled to do certain things because I’m a mom and whether I’m acting as mom to a small human or to a family that is coming here, Chattanooga has always been a special thing for me,” Crutchfield says. “When you have a place that you love but you don’t get to grow up there, you only get to visit, it does make for a different perspective. I love our city and am really proud of it; proud to help my kids appreciate it and their role in continuing how it changes.”
Crutchfield and her sons Will, George and Max live in a 100-year-old house that they spend their free time fixing up. They also enjoy chasing history mysteries with day and camping trips. Crutchfield’s book Chattanooga Landmarks is available at the Visitor’s Bureau, the Hunter Museum and other locations. For more information, visit chattanoogalandmarks.com.