David Crabb, ’63: Encyclopedic Knowledge and Immeasurable Impact
Even though David Crabb, ’63, retired in June of last year from his position as senior philanthropic advisor in the University’s Office of Gift Planning, he still uses the word “we” when he talks about the University of Chicago.
He’s earned it. He served the University for more than 40 years, beginning when he was in Law School, when he worked part time for the University’s dean of students. As he later took on a range of roles that included director of gift planning, senior director for development, assistant general counsel, and vice marshal, he became known as the person in the administration most deeply knowledgeable about its history, and as one whose admiration for its mission was unsurpassed. “I love the University. I love its ideals and I love how hard its leaders have worked to hew to its core values,” he said.
He started accumulating his knowledge about Chicago when he was in college at Hamilton, where a fraternity brother from Chicago regaled him with stories about the University. “By the time I got to the Law School, I think I knew more about the University than most people who had been there for many years,” he said. He also had advance notice of the challenge that the Law School would hold for him. “First-years were sent a copy of Ed Levi’s Introduction to Legal Reasoning to read before school started, and I found myself struggling with it. In general, most of my classmates seemed to be smarter than I was,” he said.
However, he quickly found a niche that worked for him: “I just took naturally to two of my first-year courses, Decedents’ Estates and Property,” he said. “And I got what was probably my only A in the course on accounting for lawyers. Those things all appealed to what I consider my obsessive-compulsive side, my desire for tidiness, rules, and order. It worked out well for me.”
After he graduated, he served in the Navy (where he says he “drove people crazy” with his stories about the University), and he then returned to take a leading role in the University’s first major capital campaign in many years, which aimed to raise 160 million dollars. More recently, he helped lead the 2005–2008 capital campaign that raised more than two billion dollars, and he played a pivotal role in the current five-billion-dollar campaign. During his years of service, he carried out special projects for every sitting president of the University, while most of his years were devoted to managing the estate and gift-planning function.
“If there were more than a few days when I didn’t feel buoyed just by the thought of coming to work, I don’t remember them,” he said. “It wasn’t work to me; it was fun at the least and more often it was joy.”
Geoffrey Stone, the Law School’s Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, worked with Crabb in a number of roles, including when Stone was dean of the Law School and when he was provost of the University. Stone observed, “David’s deep professional knowledge and his commitment to the University’s values made him a great problem solver, and they also made working with him a consistent pleasure. He was the consummate professional, whose advice and guidance were always filled with wisdom, insight, and—dare I say—humor.”
Having lived just a short walk from the campus for more than 30 years, Crabb and his wife, Dorothy, relocated last fall to Virginia to be closer to their daughter Laura and their two grandchildren. “My days are filled with a different kind of joy now,” he said, “and there’s a way in which my grandchildren are just like the University of Chicago—in my completely unbiased view, they’re the greatest in the world at everything they do.”