Hazel Mae Crye King

Yesterday morning my mother was up and dressed, had breakfast which had been delivered to her apartment, and apparently had laid down to take a nap from which she never awoke. She died peacefully in her sleep sometime before the Morningside staff came in to check on her at 10:00 a.m. Of late, her dementia had become greatly advanced. While still physically active, her cognitive functions had shown extreme decline in recent months. She had entered hospice care a few weeks ago, and while there were few medical indications of her immediate demise, it must have been her time. Her funeral will take place Wednesday, June 28, at 1:00 p.m. with visitation from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Woodlawn-Roesch-Patton Funeral Home, 660 Thompson Lane, Nashville. In lieu of flowers please support organizations that promote the visual and performing arts in your community. She would be pleased.

I wish to acknowledge the wonderful, loving and compassionate staff at Morningside of Belmont in Nashville, where she has lived for the past five years. She loved her home there, and from her first day there until her passing, every staff member, to a person, has provided absolutely the finest quality of care a human being could receive, always rendered cheerfully and lovingly. They have also provided complete care and support for me and they have my undying gratitude.

Hazel has been a pillar of the Nashville arts and cultural community since she arrived here in 1950. She came here to complete her art studies at what is now the Watkins College of Art and Design. She excelled such that within a year she was working as a fashion artist and almost immediately became Fashion Art Director for Tinsley’s, one of the south’s most prestigious high fashion women’s clothing stores at that time. When television came to Nashville she was the first artist to produce fashion art for television advertising. She left Tinsley’s in 1954 two weeks prior to my birth, and in 1962 began her teaching career.

For the next five decades, she would be one of Nashville’s most honored and celebrated art and ballroom dance teachers. During most of her teaching career she taught painting, drawing and sculpture to Nashville adults. Her daily all-day studio classes were always at capacity. She trained professional artists as well as hobbyists, and over the past twenty years her classes have been the mecca for retired professionals (doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, et al) who demanded her exceptionally high energy, high quality instruction along with the freedom to find their own artistic voice. She taught art until the age of 92. Currently, all the instructors who teach the day studio classes at the Centennial Art Center, where she taught for over 40 years, were previously her students who embrace her teaching style and are taking the Metro Parks visual arts program forward to new horizons.

Her second passion was ballroom dance. In the 1960’s she completed a thousand-hour instructor’s course and for 30 years she and husband Melvin taught weekly classes. Together with fellow instructor Gary Grove (after Melvin’s 1999 death) she continued teaching dance into her eighties. Even in her retirement home, she insisted on teaching the staff to belly dance, easily demonstrating the proper hip techniques.

She was an early member of the Tennessee Art League who in 2004 awarded her their lifetime achievement “Infinity” award.

She initiated the art teaching programs for many government and non-profit institutions including the Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art, the State of Tennessee Therapeutic Rehabilitation Program, the Clover Bottom Developmental Center, the Nashville League for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the YMCA, and the Metro Nashville Board of Parks and Recreation. She has been recognized by almost every local arts and business organization in some way during her career.

Nationally, she has been honored as “Woman of the Year” by the National Business Women’s Association, as well as The Smithsonian Institution (where her work has been displayed), VISA Card International (who nationally toured works she painted while traveling the U.S.), the White House, Washington D.C. (where her works have been displayed) and the United Nations in New York (where her work has also been displayed). She has won over 250 awards for her paintings and sculptures, and her works are included in an untold number of private collections.

She lived the life that she chose to live and no one can deny that she had a good run and exited this life with class. She will be remembered by her family, thousands of students, and the countless others whose lives she has touched in some way.