BRIGADIER GENERAL CRUMBLY LIVES HIS BOYHOOD DREAMS IN THE SKIES
BY [ Megan TRUSDELL ]
A desire to take it higher, on a mission to do it his way
Crumbly with his combat aircrew and infantry security detachment during Operation Allied Force in Albania in 1999.
When Konata Ato “Deuce” Crumbly (Class of ‘96) grew up in Fort Valley, Georgia, he was more than 100 miles from the nearest major airport. DC 10s and Boeing 747s were seen in books or on television. Military planes, however, were common going in and out of Robins Air Force Base. Besides the sight of cargo planes like the workhorse C-130, a yearning to fly was inspired by a peek into an airliner’s cockpit on a flight to Hawaii when he was 3 years old and fueled by books on the Tuskegee Airmen from the Thomas Public Library. “I was just fascinated by airplanes,” Crumbly says. “Quite frankly, some people want to be actors and singers. Me, I wanted to fly airplanes. It was a natural affinity that I had.” He became a pilot, flying Black Hawk helicopters, and reached brigadier general after tours of duty during the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq. He is currently the director of the joint staff for the Georgia National Guard.
Driven to sprout wings, the young Crumbly traded work in Fort Valley at the local airport for flying lessons. Even joining the Army – where the glamour assignments often include tanks and artillery – did not deter him, nor did a 10-percent acceptance rate into its aviation brigade. Crumbly had an unlikely path to the Army’s upper echelon. He was a college campus brat. His father, Isaac Crumbly, Ph.D., is the associate vice president for careers and collaborative programs at Fort Valley State University (Georgia). His mother was an English professor at the university. Despite his connection to Fort Valley State, it was a football game that led him to Tallahassee and Florida A&M University (FAMU). When he was a high-school freshman, he attended the Tennessee State vs. FAMU game at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta. It was life-changing, he recalled. “The stadium was absolutely packed, filled with Black people. I was like, ‘This is awesome. We can fill up a stadium with 50,000 people. Everyone’s enjoying themselves.’ It was something about the attitude that did something to me. I was like, ‘I think I am going to go to FAM now.’ ” Crumbly was awarded a full Army ROTC scholarship at FAMU, where he majored in history and geography. His first year he stayed in Paddyfoote, “the worst dorm on campus,” he recalls fondly. “It was built for single occupancy. They ended up putting two people in there. We couldn’t get out of the bed at the same time because the room was so small.”
High praise from the highest altitude
The U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave Crumbly a shoutout during his 2021 FAMU commencement address, using Crumbly’s military career to illustrate the importance of working as part of a team. “In 2003, although I didn’t know it at the time, we were actually part of the same team,” Austin said. “I was an assistant division commander for the 3rd Infantry Division, helping lead my unit into Iraq on the ground, and, little did I know at the time, that then-Army Capt. Crumbly was helping us in the skies above. “Capt. Crumbly is now Gen. Crumbly, and I know first-hand that you don’t become a general in the United States military unless you’re willing to work as part of a team.”
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Crumbly in the cockpit during combat missions over Southwest Asia.
It was the “Humphries Era” (named for the late Frederick Humphries, Ph.D., the eighth president at FAMU). “There was an overall, ‘Hey, you’re representing FAMU, so you have to represent excellence,” he says. “That stuck with me.”
