Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1922-06-23
RHEBA. CRAWFORD
Story Of a Salvation Army Lass hhO
MeltS Hearts Of Broadway,
Is WANTED BADLY ON The STAGE
Her Street Talks Cause New York
Crowds to Stop, Look and Listen
She Says They Listen Because God
Is Talking Through Her.
BY Ward Greene.


BY Ward Greene.
New York.-When the heads oil
Keith and Loew vaudeville circuits,
joining with some Of the most famous
men and women on the stage, the
other day conferred on Captain Rheba
Crawford, of the Salvation Army. q
life membership in the National
Vaudeville association, the event
marked another blazing star in the
remarkable career Of an Atlanta girl
! That career reaches back, in its be-
ginning, TO small frame house op-
posite Grant Park, TO a tambourinc
jingling in the old Rex saloon, to
street meetings on Marietta street and
the somehow wistful music Of hymns
drifting through the Sunday twilight
across Five Points and up to the far
windows of skyscrapers.
1t has reached toGay corner on
Broadway, a narrow platform In the
lea of the, Gaiety theater at Forty
Sixth street, where the heart of New
York bbSsts hottest Past that plat
form nightly roars tho brightest, nois-
lest stream of people in New York;
and from that platform, where she
stands a SLENDER hatless figure in blue
Rheba Crawford filings her message
int, the stream.
: And the stream stops. That is the
astounding part of 1.-THE stream
stops. 1t buckles, breaks, flows on
again, but it leaves behind clump af-
ter clump and knot after knot of peo-
. pie, edged deep about the narrow plat
form, listening to the fresh young
voice That stopped the stream.
You see, the stream has never stop
ped before-not for the Salvation
Army, anyway. Time was, some years
ago, when the army maintained a
Broadway Corps; when it tried to
hold street meetings like those Rheba
Crawford holds now. But the stream
refused TO stop. Broadway closed its
ears. The roar of Times Square
drowned out the tambourine, the
drum, the message. The army, Tor
the first time in It's history, ac-
knowledged defeat. Broadway throt
tied the corps; the tenderloin crushed
drawn. ,e,t
And then, up from. the south, came
this girl who is scarcely yet wo-
man. She was-and is-much as
other girls are. She had light brown
hair and blue eyes anu little slut
ter in her speech when she was cX-
cited. / suppose, when She was six
teen, She wanted to so to dances and
theaters and have beauX and flyaway
adventures as sweet sixteen always
does.
But she couldn't. The father of
this girl was Brigadier A. w. Craw-
ford, commanding the Salvation Army
in the southeast, and his daughter,
Rheba, was born into the army as
surely as princq of the blood is born
to the purple. me brigadiE, 1 am
sure, conceived her destiny to be as
high as any princcling's; thus she
was taught from the first, until the
army, its love and service, became as
much part of her as her right arm.
She was a cadet when other girls
were flappers. She banged tambou-
rine on Peachtree street when her
schoolmatcs were learning the barn
dance. She had looked at sin and
comforted suffering, trotted Christmas
baskets into mill settlements and given
a hand TO vagabonds on Decatur
street, when neighbOrs' daughters
were planning trips to the scdshore
and boarding school.
Her education wasn't neglected
she was graduated from North Avcnne
'school-and | don't mean to imply
that she was to be piticd, simply be-
cause she. was young and pretty. AS
u matter of fact, she may have been
lucky; that is. if it is lucl; TO lose Il
good many of your ideas and ideals,
your illusions and the rosy glamour
of dreams, in Il very early and very
sharp collision with real life. Ger