Ward Crutchfield, according to the late Hamilton County Mayor Dalton Roberts, was "as addicted to politics as any heroin addict who ever stuck a needle in his arm."
Crutchfield, a former Chattanooga Democratic state representative, state senator and majority leader whose political addiction got him caught up in the Tennessee Waltz corruption sting, died Sunday at the age of 87.
But before his 2005 arrest and 2007 guilty plea in the case, he was an influential player in state Democratic politics, a legislator who could work across the aisle and a loyal advocate for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Indeed, one of his last achievements in the legislature was pushing for passage of a bill that provided major funding for construction of UTC's $29 million engineering, mathematics and computer science building, now known as the EMCS building.
Crutchfield, whose family was among the first settlers in Chattanooga, served in the General Assembly for 31 years, holding seats after being elected to the Senate in 1984 on the Finance, Ways and Means, Commerce, Labor and Agriculture, and Education committees. He also was chairman of the Senate Labor Committee.
He also had been a member of the Metropolitan Government Charter Commission, acting attorney for Hamilton County, attorney for the Hamilton County Board of Education and chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party from 1970 to 1984.
The University of Chattanooga and University of Tennessee College of Law graduate ended his active career with a list of honors that eclipsed his number of years in the legislature. Among those were the Tennessee Judicial Conference Service Award (1987), UTC Outstanding Service Award (1996), Hamilton County Board of Commissioners Service Award (1998), and numerous legislator of the year awards.
Crutchfield so loved politics, in fact, that several years after having ill health allowed him to escape jail time and what might have been a $250,000 fine at his sentencing for bribery (he was fined only $3,000), he made numerous overtures about running for Chattanooga City Council in 2013. In the end, he decided against it.
"In all my years of political participation and observation, I've never seen anyone who loved politics like Ward," Roberts write in 2013.