WYRTZEN: And Percy Crawford was a great help to us. And Percy'd announce on the radio where he was going to be all that week and I'd write it down so I prayed for him every night. And he was out seven nights a week with his quartet. And if he was within fifty, sixty miles of New York, we'd get the car full...cars full and we'd take them. So most of my gang came out of Percy Crawford's ministry 'cause he knew how to pull the net in. We didn't.
SHUSTER: How do you mean that? How did you pull the net in?
WYRTZEN: Well, this fellow Duke, who became one of our original Word-of-Lifers, and we got him to come to a...I guess it was a Baptist church we had. And we had the place jammed and Percy spoke. And afterward I met Duke and he was the ballplayer in school. And he looked at me. He said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I've been converted." He said, "You've been what?" [Shuster laughs] I said, "What are you doing here?" "Oh," he said, "my sister about dragged me here." And so Duke came. And Percy Crawford had all of us to stand up in front and Percy said, "Duke, do you realize you're a sinner?" And he bowed his head [?], said, "Yeah. Pretty bad one at that." And he said, "Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?" "Yeah." He'd learned that in the Lutheran Church. He said, "Do you believe that Christ arose from the grave?" "Yeah." And Percy put out his mitt and he said, "Wouldn't you like to accept the Lord?" And Duke grabbed his hand, and we all stood around crying and Duke got saved. And then Ernie Love came in. We had a banquet. It was seventy-five cents a piece to go to it, and you couldn't come without an unsaved person. And Ann Love come in....
SHUSTER: As your guest or...?
WYRTZEN: Yeah, she brought her brother Ernie. That was on a Monday and Percy spoke at our banquet and Du...Ernie got saved. Next Friday night we had him out playing his violin and trumpet and speaking on the street corner.
SHUSTER: So Percy Crawford knew how to bring people to a point of commitment?
WYRTZEN: Yeah. And outside of Pinebrook (even at Pine...Pinebrook)...yeah, he had 'em come forward but in his meetings he'd just [say], "Do you want to accept the Lord? Raise your hand." And then he'd get in the car and drive back to Philadelphia with the quartet, and I don't think he even gave out Gospels of John. Dawson Trotman of the Navigators is the one that got all of us started, I think, on follow-up. But we didn't have any. But Percy, when he'd get up there, the Spirit of God would come upon him and the quartet would sing "It was for you the Savior died," and, boy, people would respond all over the place and even to this day I meet converts.
SHUSTER: At one point I'd read that you described him as a man of astonishing drive.
WYRTZEN: Percy.
SHUSTER: Uh-hmm. How do you mean that?
WYRTZEN: Seven nights a week out with the quartet and working all day long on radio mail and running a Christian bookstore in Philadelphia. And Percy did everything himself. I mean after we got Word of Life started, he...he said, "Hey," (he'd come up here to speak for a few days) ...he'd say, "How'd you get all this organized?" And I got Fred Scharmann, who was then our business manager, to go down and work with Percy for two weeks, because I remember when I'd be at Pinebrook, a kid would run up [?] and say, "How much is it?" I think then maybe it was twenty-five dollars. He'd put twenty-five dollars in pocket. [Shuster laughs] A few minutes later the bread man comes. "How much do I owe you?" "Twenty dollars." [Shuster laughs] Pay it. They didn't have books or anything. I mean, he was as honest as the day is long but that's the way he ran it, out of....just out of his pocket. And I remember he had a little black book and every once in a while he'd make a note out. [laughs] I don't remember what he would put in there. And I sent Fred down and Fred organized and...bookkeeping and everything for him. But I think that lasted two weeks. Then I sent Gil Dodds, who was the world champion miler, while I did [?] to the Lord, and he was our camp athletic director. I sent him down to organize the athletic program. That lasted about two weeks.
SHUSTER: Because he was just the kind of person that had to do it himself?
WYRTZEN: He had to do everything himself. And tireless worker. And he used to say to me, "How'd you learn to delegate?" [laughs] I'm glad I did. But...otherwise I'd have been dead. He died at fifty-eight from a heart attack. But he was a driver. And I think he could have gotten up there and said, "Mary had a little lamb," and the quartet would have sung "It was for you," and people would have accepted the Lord. Great, great, great man of God.
SHUSTER: What were some of his other characteristics as a person?
WYRTZEN: Well, I remember watching him play tennis with his wife Ruth up at Pinebrook, and I thought that was nice. And he'd bring in [H.A.] Ironside and [Donald Grey] Barnhouse, and [Harry] Rimmer and all these fellows to teach at Pinebrook. And on Sundays they'd have five meetings a day and twenty-one of us would drive up there. And then they cut down to four meetings a day and we said, "Hey, Crawford, we're not coming up if you don't have these [Shuster laughs] five meetings a day," because we got all our material to preach in the streets and rescue missions and jails from these speakers and we'd write down everything they said. And any books that Percy Crawford announced, we bought everything, everything. I had a library. I was reading morning, noon and night. And he was a great inspiration to us and we saw in Crawford...we saw something I don't any of his kids ever saw, maybe not even his wife. He just had a gift of evangelism that when he going [?] into the pulpit, he came alive. Yeah, I look back and I've heard a lot of great evangelists. I even heard Gipsey Smith a couple times. I don't know of anybody that I felt the power of God came on like Percy Crawford when he got up to speak.
SHUSTER: Did he seem like different person in the pulpit?
WYRTZEN: Yeah. It wasn't much fun in the pulpit. It was....he had a rather crooked finger and he'd keep pointing, and then he went on radio and television and we'd listen to him. And [pauses]...and Percy was for real.
