‘Ready to go to work:’ Family remembers Hardeeville vet best known for tomato stand
Richard “Bubba” Crosby Jr., a local tomato farmer who could often be found regaling visitors on his porch with stories of Lowcountry history, has died, one of his daughters announced Sunday via Facebook.
“Nothing made him happier than to share what they were growing and to talk to people,” the youngest of his four children, Cheryl Crosby Phillips, told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Crosby, 96, was born in Savannah but grew up in Hardeeville in the 1930s and died at his home off of S.C. 46 Saturday night, according to his daughter. What Phillips said she remembers best is her parents cultivating in her a love of horses and the family being together on the tomato field.
“One thing I keep telling people over and over again is how good he was when I was a teenager,” Phillips said of her father. “When we got to the dirt road in the back, he would switch seats with me and teach me how to drive on the dirt road. I was the youngest, so he had more patience with me, I guess.”
His wife of 69 years, Joyce Crosby, passed in May 2022. When announcing her father’s passing, Phillips said he “just left this world to go be with my mama.”
“It’s hard losing them both so close together, but we’re blessed,” she said. “Most people don’t have their parents as long as we did.”
For decades in Bluffton, Crosby had been a commercial farmer selling crops such as okra, squash and watermelon, according to previous reporting from the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. Tomatoes, however, remained his signature calling card. Visitors could often spot Crosby waiting on his back porch for someone to come by, the fresh produce laid out on tables in neat rows or crowded in white plastic buckets.
The local farmer was able to attract people to his back porch produce stand with plump red tomatoes, but his customers stayed for his history lessons and life advice. He often talked about the early days in the area and its subsequent development boom. As he talked, he was constantly readjusting the grip on his cane or pausing to make a sale, and a new friend.
When asked what her father would want to be remembered for, Phillips said he’d want people to remember him playing baseball, being honest and helping people. Up until his final days, she said, he was still trying to get in his garden.
“He was ready to go to work in the garden and I said, ‘Daddy, your legs don’t work,’” Phillips said. “He said, ‘Give me a hoe, I’ll lean on the hoe.’ In his mind, there was still work to do.”
The farm, which Crosby tended to for about seven decades, will remain in the family. Details about a funeral or memorial service were not immediately available Sunday morning.
