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ALPHARETTA
Bill Crowder, 62, expert blacksmith, nurturer of horses

By HOLLY CRENSHAW
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/06/07
Bill Crowder's understanding of horses permeated him the way the pungent scent of horses permeated his jeans.
"He was not only a wonderful blacksmith, he was an artist," said Jill E. Mills of Alpharetta, who employed Mr. Crowder at her 34-stall WindCrest Farms. "He could see things in horses that the average man could not. He could make a good horse better and make a horse that had some physical incapabilities be able to do its job.
"And part of it was really knowing a horse and knowing how it's put together," she said. "He understood their weaknesses as well as their strengths. He was not trying to alter the way that God built them, but to help how God built them."
Straight out of Marietta High School in the early '60s, Mr. Crowder enrolled at Tennessee Technical School and earned an animal husbandry degree with a focus on equine studies. He never considered doing anything else.
"He was a farrier, and that's all he ever knew," said his stepmother, Winona Crowder of Vinings. When Mr. Crowder was a teenager, his father would grill him about picking a profession. "Bill would say, 'This is what I want to do,' " she said.
"He was compassionate, for one thing, just a loving, caring person," she said. "And somehow, when he put his hands on animals, he just knew what to do."
William Ford Crowder, 62, died of a heart attack Monday at his Alpharetta residence. The funeral is 1 p.m. Saturday at Davis-Struempf Funeral Home.
By the time he was 10, Mr. Crowder had trained his pet pony to buck like a bronco. By high school, he was practicing bull-riding in a makeshift rodeo ring on his family's farm.
He rode bulls and broncos to rodeo championships throughout the South in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, spent 20 years producing annual rodeos to benefit charities and served several terms as president of the American Cowboy Association.
He looked like a born cowboy. Tall, lean and ruggedly handsome, he worked out to keep his body rodeo-ready. His big black hat resembled the type worn by country singer George Strait, whose songs Mr. Crowder would perform in a beautiful singing voice as he strummed his vintage Martin guitar.
Clients from as far away as Belgium would fly him in to shoe their horses. He knew so much about corrective techniques that he was hired to work the equestrian events at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
"Horses are beautiful animals, but they have all that weight standing on those very thin legs," said his brother Charlie Crowder of Marietta. "Whether it's racing or jumping or dressage, the whole key to their livelihood is how healthy and sound their feet are.
"He could just look at a horse and see what it needed immediately. It would walk back and forth and Bill would look at it, just like a doctor would, and just know how to make the animal walk straight and, most of all, to run without pain."
Mr. Crowder usually traveled from farm to farm in a pickup truck outfitted with a propane-heated forge and a 125-pound black anvil. As he trimmed each horse hoof, he'd toss pieces to his ever-present dog, Gracie, as a treat.
Other times, he worked from his small farm, where he taught professional farriers.
"Just about everybody who puts a shoe on a horse in this town was under his tutelage," Mrs. Mills said. "And it didn't matter if it was 10 at night if someone was having trouble with a difficult horse."
""If you think about the virtues of the good American cowboy," his brother said, "well, that was Bill."
Survivors include a son, Clay Crowder of Athens; another brother, Jack Crowder of Gainesville; and two grandsons.