Joseph M. "Joe" Crews

DELAND - Joseph M. "Joe" Crews, 70, died Aug. 6, 2022, in the Hospice Care Center in Orange City. Visitation will be at 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 20, at Lankford Funeral Home in DeLand. A service will follow at 1 p.m. Aug. 20 at Lankford.
Crews had been The Beacon's business-news editor since 2013.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, Crews, along with his siblings, grew up as "Air Force brats," moving from place to place with their father's career, and living in Florida for a short time in the late 1960s.
Joe Crews graduated from high school in the Netherlands, and returned to Florida for college, earning a bachelor's degree in theater arts at the University of West Florida.
He participated in community-theater productions, acting as well as designing stages and sets, but started his professional career in radio, first as a disc jockey and later as a newscaster.
He transitioned to print with a job at The Daytona Beach News-Journal, where he went to work as a reporter in 1996.
After leaving the News-Journal during that newspaper's restructuring, Crews became The Beacon's business editor, endearing himself to the Beacon staff with his native intelligence and acerbic wit (not to mention the potato salad he brought to every staff potluck), and ultimately adopting his fellow Beaconites as a second family.
He was a devotee of politics, and The Associated Press depended on him, whenever there was an election, to report up-to-the-minute results from the Volusia County Elections Office.
Crews was known to those who loved him for his curmudgeonly demeanor, which disguised (but not always well) a sentimental and loving heart.
He loved comics and humor, and nightly emailed a selection of his favorite cartoons and jokes to a long list of friends and associates.
Crews is survived by four siblings: Hazel Brandenberg and her husband, Harry, of Vienna, Virginia; Brenda Dollar and her husband, Michael, of Nashville, Tennessee; Dennis Crews and his wife, Pam, of Alabama; and David Crews and his wife, Angie, of DeLand and Kissimmee; along with nine nieces, one nephew, and eight great-nieces and great-nephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Charles Anderson Crews III and Edna M. Crews, and a brother, Charles Edward "Eddie" Crews, who died in 1955 at the age of 9, when he was hit by a car while bicycling.
Lankford is in charge.