Lucy Herndon Crockett (April 4, 1914 - July 30, 2002) was a Red Cross worker in the Pacific and the secretary and speechwriter to Basil O’Connor, National Chairman of the American ...ver maisLucy Herndon Crockett (April 4, 1914 - July 30, 2002) was a Red Cross worker in the Pacific and the secretary and speechwriter to Basil O’Connor, National Chairman of the American Red Cross, during World War II. She was also the author of nine books, an illustrator and a designer. Her best-known novel, The Magnificent Bastards (1954), which tells of her experiences with the U.S. Marine Corps, was adapted for the screen by Paramount in 1956 as The Proud and the Profane, starring William Holden and Deborah Kerr.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Colonel Cary Ingram Crockett and Nell Botts Johnson Crockett, she was raised on various military posts in the U.S. and countries abroad and was educated in schools in Venezuela, Switzerland and the U.S. She accompanied her father while he served as advisor to Governor General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who was overseeing both Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands.
Her overseas experiences inspired many of her works, including Lucio and his Nuong : A Tale of the Philippine Islands (1939); That Mario (1940); and Popcorn on the Ginza: An Informal Portrait of Postwar Japan (1949).
In 1947, she retired from the Red Cross and moved to Southwest Virginia, where her father, a cousin of the Preston Family, had purchased the 22-room house originally known as Preston House in 1942. Located in Seven Mile Ford, the house was familiarly called ‘The Ford.’ There she lived here with her mother, Nell, and operated a gift shop called “The Wilderness Road Trading Post,” selling her books, illustrations, paintings, decoupage and hand-hooked rugs.
Lucy Herndon Crockett died in 2002 at the age of 88.ver menos