“Do You Know About Ernestine Crowell?”

Crowell grew up in southeast Alabama’s Russell County. She watched her mother freeze vegetables from their gardens during the summer — in those days, food stamps did not exist — to give to the older neighbors during the winter. Her father, a truck driver, owned a car, so he often drove people where they needed to go. When neighbors had problems, they called Crowell’s father.

“I was raised to help the less fortunate,” she says.

When constituents need help, Crowell connects them with the various government and nonprofit agencies that can provide it. Other times, Crowell contributes out of her own pocket. When an out-of-state family with a sick child in a Mobile hospital ran out of money for the storage unit containing all their possessions, she enlisted several lobbyists. They split the bill to help the family weather the rough patch in the road.

In a predominantly red state with a myriad of social ills, Crowell makes sure partisan politics, race and class play no part in her job and mission: assisting people in Alabama as they struggle with overwhelming obstacles.

“There are so many problems people are facing that they eventually show up at the information desk at the House of Representatives,” she says.

When Crowell goes to work, she leaves her personal politics outside the door. She says she and her husband, a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force, cancel each other’s votes, so “I dish out my frustrations on him.”

During the workday, she says, “sometimes I have to grit my teeth or kick something under the desk,” but she doesn’t let her opinions interfere with her job or her relationships. Instead, Crowell speaks fondly of politicians as friends, many she has known for years. She was recently heartbroken when a longtime friend she first met at work died. After another retired colleague’s wife died, “I called and told him I was peeking through his windows and to clean up his house.” She didn’t have to go to his house to know that in his grief he’d probably let the dishes pile up in the sink.

After working at the State House of Representatives for so long, Crowell knows most people will need help at one point or another and that good people with problems simply need someone to listen. All these years, she has kept a blue notebook, chronicling people’s calls, their names, the date and other important notes. Because she cares and worries, she often checks up for years afterwards on folks who concern her the most.

“I have one man I’ve been dealing with for a long time,” Crowell says. “The last time I talked to him he wasn’t doing well and could barely talk, but I could hear him breathing, and I told him I would call him back. It just scares me to death he hasn’t answered the phone recently.”

Crowell sometimes wonders how a particular person finds her, but then she realizes it’s simple. She believes it’s only “by the grace of God” that the people in need connect with her, “because if they get me, I’m hurting for them, and I will find a solution.”