Erskine Crossley: A Man of the World Turns 100

According to the American Community Survey, conducted between 2007 and 2011 as a supplement to the US Census, there are approximately 55,000 centenarians.

As of July 21, Erskine Crossley, world renowned mechanical engineer and Branford volunteer extraordinare, joined those ranks.

His friends and family came together at Trinity Episcopal Church to celebrate the milestone on July 19. In the photo are Rev. Sharon Gracen, Erskine, and his daughter, Phyllis Mervine.

The congregation sang ​“Happy Birthday” to him during the service and a reception, complete with birthday cake, followed.

An integral part of Branford, he is a man of the world, reflected through his career as a mechanical engineer, specializing in mechanisms, a branch of mechanical engineering that deals with linkages. Twenty years at Yale University as a professor of mechanical engineer was just one of several distinguished academic positions he held over a many decades.

He found time to give back to his town despite a profession that took him around the world.

Crossley Motors

Described by his family as ​“a true British gentleman,” Erskine, or rather Francis Rendel Erskine Crossley, emigrated to the US in 1937, intending to return to England to work for Crossley Motors, the automobile company founded by his grandfather. He had just graduated from Cambridge University.

Here’s a later photo of Crossley and his brother, Christopher, looking at a Crossley engine.

The family company, Crossley Motors was founded in 1904, and operated until the late ​‘30s; its diesel engines ran the double decker buses in England and Star Ferries in Hong Kong.

Although his family wanted him to return to England to fight against the Nazis, he remained in the US, where he worked for General Motors in Detroit. The US Army also sought him, but he claimed conscientious objector, citing deep religious convictions. In fact, he met his first wife, Mary (May) Coyne, an Irish woman, in church and they married in 1941. At the University of Detroit, he taught the U.S. Army’s Special Training Program, so he indeed contributed to the war effort.

Post World War II Years

Erskine and May moved to Branford in 1945, when he began an impressive 20-year affiliation with Yale University. He received his Doctor of Engineering degree in 1945 and subsequently held many academic positions. He also organized conferences and workshops in the 1960s attended by experts in the field of mechanisms. He published a textbook, and then started a magazine, Journal of Mechanisms, which facilitated the publication of research papers in the field of mechanical engineering.

A Fulbright Fellowship brought Crossley back to England in 1964 when he taught a graduate course on mechanism and facilitated his work on Journal of Mechanisms. The publication had an international reach and included articles by Russian authors; May Crossley was an integral part of its operations.

The Crossleys and their two children, Michael and Phyllis, headed south in 1965 when Erskine took a position as professor of mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. It was well known that May preferred the Connecticut shoreline.

Michael was born in New Haven and grew up in Pine Orchard. Phyllis lives in California and returned to Branford for the celebration.

Then at the end of 1968, Crossley became professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He and May divided their time between there and their home in Branford.

The Cold War

In the late 1960s, amid the Cold War, Crossley attended conferences with Russian engineering professionals, including the impressive Fifth Soviet Conference on ​“Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Machines and Mechanisms.” He also joined with the Russians in creating an international society for research on mechanisms and machines; he was working on an American society at the time. Crossley later admitted that the Cold War restricted what could be accomplished.

However their efforts led to IFToMM, an international federation of scientists and engineers whose purpose was to create worldwide collaboration in the theory of mechanisms and machines (TMM) during the Cold War; representatives from 13 member countries originally took part and that number grew to 18 by 1978 and 48 today.

Crossley retired from the University of Massachusetts in 1983 and was appointed Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Once he and his wife settled back in Branford, Crossley embarked on what could be called a second career devoted to volunteering in Branford, where his accomplishments were equally remarkable.

Erskine and May celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1991.

At Work In Branford

Judy Gott, Branford’s First Selectman for 12 years beginning in 1983, appointed him head of the Landfill Committee as it was nearing its end. The landfill, located off Tabor Drive was nearing its capacity and the committee worked in transitioning the town’s waste to the current transfer station on East Main Street.

He was zoning officer for Pine Orchard Association, working on the finances and mapping that led to the Juniper Point development. He was a warden for the Branford Land Trust and helped maintain the trails in Stony Creek for many years. He also served on the Board of Education.

During that time, he was also staff scientist at the Office of Legislative Research for the Connecticut General Assembly, where he provided information to a task force studying the effects of acid rain.

When May died in 1998, Crossley found the house they shared to be too much, so he moved to Evergreen Woods in North Branford, joining friends who also lived there.

Serendipitously, he met Ginny Galpin within a couple days after he moved in; she was a member of the welcoming committee. She was about to leave on trip to Asia, but they quickly became a couple when she returned. To put an end to ​“gossip,” they were married in August 1999 at Trinity. Crossley was in his 80s then and Ginny was a few years younger. They had 14 years together, spending much time traveling, before she died in 2013.

Despite being retired for many years, Crossley’s contributions have not been forgotten. The publication, ​“Mechanisms and Machine Theory,” celebrated his 100th birthday with the publication of an article in its July 2015 issue titled, ​“A life to remember: Francis Rendel Erskine (“Erskine”) Crossley,” recollecting his life and times.

And Crossley’s ​“times” these days are spent enjoying Evergreen Woods. According to his son Michael, he does live with an aide, but he can walk two miles and even does some gardening. Although it’s a bit removed from mechanical engineering, it’s very much in keeping with a man who has explored the world and then returned home.

###