Joe Crankshaw

Joe Crankshaw is an award winning journalist in Florida. He has been in the newspaper business for 51 years, working for the DeLand Sun News, Daytona Beach News Journal, Stuart News (weekly), The Florida Times-Union, The Miami Herald and The Stuart News, now a daily publication of Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. He has written extensively on Florida History for many of these publications and was author of the popular Miami Herald column Tales of Old Florida.

He currently writes sketches of veterans living on the Treasure Coast for Scripps, and has examined scams involving veterans causes in Florida.

In 2008, he was given the Dorothy Dodd Lifetime Achievement in Florida History by the Florida Historical Society. He has received several other awards from the society. He also has a lengthy list of news and photographic awards for newspaper work beginning in 1959.

Born in Atlanta, Ga., he and his mother, brothers and sister came to Tampa, Fl., in 1937. The family moved to Jacksonville and he graduated from Duncan U. Fletcher High School in Jacksonville Beach. He enlisted in the Army and in 1950 was sent to Korea where he served with the First Cavalry Division until wounded in late November.

The GI Bill allowed him to attend Stetson University in DeLand, Fl., where he was taught by reknowned Florida historian, Dr. John E. Johns. He received a degree in history and political science.

In 1959, he married the late Betty Jean Parker of Stuart and they had two daughters. Jean died and he married Cynthia Putnam Trefelner of Fort Pierce, who had a son and daughter. They now live in Stuart. He is a member of St. Marys Episcopal Church, Stuart, past master of Acacia Lodge 163, Free and Accepted Masons. He is a member of Stuart Heritage, a city historical society, the St. Lucie Historical Society and other similar organizations.

Crankshaw, now 81, likes photography, writing and chess.

He is associated in this venture with Dr. Nick Wynne, former executive director of the Florida Historical Society, and a historian who is widely published on Florida subjects.