Christian 'Billy' McCrudden dies; former Kings Park resident was 71

Christian “Billy” McCrudden wrote himself off for failing to publish a Great American Novel, never accepting family and friends’ insistence that, in their books, he was the champion of underdogs and justice in his other pursuits.

As a bartender, he threw out people who repeatedly used racist terms or harassed women. As a teacher, he changed the way Attica state prison inmates in his writing class saw the justice system and their own lives, friends and family said. When, as a professional heavyweight boxer, a young colleague sheepishly told a reporter that his job was cleaning a McDonald’s, McCrudden commanded the newsman to describe him in the article as a pro fighter. 

One time, he assured his grade-school daughter she wouldn’t get in trouble with him if she threw a chair at someone bullying her.

“He took a moral stand when it wasn’t fashionable,” said his friend Robert Mladinich of Manhattan. “He was very good at telling me how wonderful I was, but you could never tell him that because he was never good about accepting compliments.  . . . His contribution to the world was shaping people like me.”

McCrudden, who grew up in Kings Park, died of a heart attack Aug. 14 in his upstate Waterloo home at age 71.

He had several careers — in addition to boxing, bartending and teaching inmates, he also was a tutor to teenagers kicked out of high school, and a fitness trainer — but “exploring” language was his addiction, said daughter Sarah Paddock of upstate Spencerport.

His books, plays and even emails about simple topics like vacations were “dense” and difficult to read, family and friends said. His writings were less about the plot and more about playing with words and creating a cadence to evoke emotions or an emphasis, they said.

For example, words in a different font or capitalized were supposed to have a special meaning, and readers were supposed to stitch together what it was, sometimes by looking at the entire page or email, like a puzzle, his daughter said. One time, a theater group was going to do one of his plays if he could shorten it, but he refused because it had to be 77 pages — 7 being a metaphor for creation, she recalled. 

“He really liked using words in ways that he didn’t see other people using,” Paddock said.

Toiling at times from dawn to dawn and writing by longhand, he authored "The Savage Noose," "Horn Madness," "The Polish Rider" and more, self publishing a few of them because he got only rejection letters from book publishers, who called his work “brilliant” but lacking in mass appeal, family and friends said.

Born in Ireland, McCrudden was the eldest son and second of eight children. He was young when his parents moved to Manchester, England, where his father was a bus driver, his family said.

In the 1950s, the family emigrated to Kings Park, where McCrudden’s childhood experiences cemented his character and his love with language, said his brother, John McCrudden of Phoenix.

When other children made fun of the McCrudden children’s English accent and bullied them, Christian would fight his siblings’ battles, his younger brother recalled. For the rest of his life, McCrudden got into the middle of quarrels to stick up for the underdog, the brother said. “He would spot it — somebody who didn’t have the power and is being dominated by a bully. He would react deep inside. He couldn’t control it. He was a gentle soul and at the same time a tough guy.” 

He was a teenager when he lost his “dominance” in baseball and other sports and started searching for something to excel in, his brother said. His Kings Park High School English teacher turned him on to language and the classics, from Ernest Hemingway to Truman Capote, those who knew him said.

McCrudden graduated with an English degree in 1972 from SUNY Brockport, where he met his wife, Betsy, and they settled in the Brockport area with their three daughters. The couple’s divorce in 1996 prompted him to return to Long Island and live for a time in Mattituck.

Wherever he was, McCrudden had a “life force” that drew people to him, family and friends said. Whether he was bartending or teaching, he loved talking about life — “fashion is the most insidious form of elitism in the world,” he was known to say. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, he would suddenly do pushups.

“He liked being different,” Mladinich said. “Everybody wanted Christian’s attention. He always had a rapt audience. You never just talked about sports or the news of the day. There were deep, deep discussions.”

Besides Paddock and his brother, McCrudden is survived by daughters Tess McCrudden and Dawn Siragusa, both of Spencerport; sisters Mary Eisenstein of Mattituck, Kathy Warszycki of Kings Park and Karen McCrudden of Phoenix; and brothers Dan McCrudden of Chicago, Vincent McCrudden of Jacksonville, Florida, and Kevin McCrudden of Sag Harbor.

A celebration of his life has been scheduled for 3 p.m. Nov. 5 at Barber’s Grill and Tap Room in Brockport, where McCrudden was a regular, sitting in a corner, smoking and entertaining and educating strangers and friends.