By Jared Castañeda
Crawford residents carried heavy hearts throughout December after Graham “Mike” Stillwell Jamison, a longtime resident and former town supervisor, passed away on December 8, 2024, at 95 years old. Throughout his lifetime, Jamison exemplified leadership, teamwork, and commitment to whatever role he served or goal he chased, whether it was at his family’s farm, his military base, or his conference table.
Jamison was born on November 26, 1929, in Glens Falls, New York; he was the son of the late George S. Jamison and Grace Alma Schumann Jamison, and the brother of the late Doris and Donald Jamison. He grew up in Glens Falls and moved to Thompson Ridge in Crawford after graduating from Glen Falls High School. Jamison aspired to be a dairy farmer and studied at Cornell University’s School of Agriculture, but his career would be postponed while he served in the U.S. Army between 1952 and 1954; he was in charge of his base’s motor pool and sorted convoys near the front lines.
Following his service, Graham moved back to Thompson Ridge and opened a dairy farm with his brother Donald; the two operated the farm for several years. In 1956, he married Ellen Zneimer, and the two would expand their family with three sons: Christopher, Kenneth, and Philip. Graham would later become a proud grandfather of eight children and a great-grandfather of nine.
Outside of farming, Jamison was drawn to government and served as Crawford’s supervisor for 16 years during the 1970s and ‘80s. He was also a board member of Orange County Community Development, a board member of Walden Savings Bank, and a liaison for the town’s veteran groups. As Crawford’s supervisor, he devoted himself to addressing residents’ issues and making the town a safer, more prosperous place to work and live. During his tenure, Jamison and his board established a sewer plant in Pine Bush, supported the town’s police department and ambulance corps, renovated the former town hall building at 62 Main Street in Pine Bush, and created new zoning for residential and business spaces.
“He was instrumental in bringing the police department here because we originally came from the constabulary, and we started the police department under the previous supervisor’s tenure. But he was committed to continuing that from his tenure on,” said Dan McCann, the town’s director of safety and security and former police chief. “He always worked very well with me and the townspeople to progressively grow the safety of the citizens here in the Town of Crawford. He invested in the police department and the ambulance corps, another vital service to the town, and he was committed to assisting with funding for all of those types of things.”
Jamison also worked with Richard J. Smith and the Pine Bush Area Arts Council on the Renaissance Project, a major restoration plan that transformed the town’s decrepit and abandoned Main Street into a flourishing downtown area filled with businesses.
“The stimulus of the Renaissance project was to develop the real estate in Pine Bush to make it more inviting for people coming in, both to live and do business in. That was something brought about by his tenure, as well as many zoning activities for business, BP, residential, and agricultural areas,” McCann said. “He did this to preserve our rural township and develop some business structures so that all the funding of the budget didn’t just come from the residential zoning, but that there was a nice mixture of business and residential zoning.”
Charles Carnes, the town’s current supervisor, never worked with Jamison while he was in office but the two did know each other through the Crawford Republican Committee. Carnes described Jamison as “a tough individual who stated his opinion, and he always watched out for the Town of Crawford.”