The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Crutchfield, known in Hampton Roads for his long ministry at Hilton Presbyterian Church and his participation in local musical life, died peacefully on May 4 at the age of 93 at the York Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

Robert Salley Crutchfield was born March 31, 1932 in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He was educated at Davidson College in North Carolina and Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia (later returning to earn a doctorate in theology at Emory University in Atlanta). Following assistantships in Raleigh, North Carolina and Staunton, Virginia, he became pastor of the Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church (Fishersville VA) and its rural sister congregation, Hermitage Presbyterian, in 1958. He came to Newport News in 1966 as pastor of Hilton Presbyterian Church, and to Birmingham, Alabama in 1983 as pastor of First Presbyterian Church, where he continued until his retirement in 1995, returning shortly afterwards to live in Newport News.

He was active in the civic life of all these communities, serving on the Hampton-Newport News Community Services Board and that of the Peninsula Association for Mental Health (including a term as President). He played a leadership role in several mental-health initiatives, including a church-sponsored coffeehouse for recovering drug users and of a telephone counseling line for those in crisis. In Birmingham he oversaw the establishment of a church-operated shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence.

Alongside his pastoral work Dr. Crutchfield led a long life on the operatic stage, stretching from tenor leads in Gilbert and Sullivan while still in high school in the 1940s to an appearance as the Old Emperor in Puccini’s Turandot in 2008. In between he sang more than two dozen roles with the Virginia Opera Association, the Peninsula Civic Opera, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, while appearing as a soloist in concert and oratorio with the Atlanta Symphony, the main orchestras of Virginia and Alabama, and choral societies in several states.

He was married for 68 years to Elisabeth Lewis (“Libby”) Crutchfield (1931-2022), who played an active role in all the churches he served as minister, and with whom he enjoyed a long retirement filled with travel. He is survived by their four sons Will, an opera conductor, Rob, a singer-songwriter, James, an attorney, and Charles, a business consultant, as well as four grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and numerous nieces and nephews. A memorial service is planned for September at Hilton Presbyterian in Newport News.