“Make sure to focus on your family and spend time with them,” advised Katie Crane. “As I’ve gotten older, my priorities have changed, and now I’m much more family focused. I’ve always been very family centered because that’s just how I was raised. My parents always put their kids first, and as I get older, I understand the importance of that and making sure that your spouse feels seen and loved and that your children also feel loved. They need to know that everything you do, you do for them.”
Family has always been very important to her. When she was growing up, she maintained a close relationship with her siblings.
“My brother, Brendan, is older than me by about two years, and he liked to go camping. He would go camping out in the woods right behind our house,” Katie reminisced. “He was very accident prone, and instead of waking my mom and daddy up, he would come and knock on my bedroom window if anything happened. I remember one time he was out there camping, and I had a knock on my window. It was him, and he had cut his hand open. I had to bandage him up. I guess he was afraid our mom and dad wouldn’t let him go camping anymore if they knew how destructive he was. He’d always come to me to fix it. I always had the mama role with my siblings and was taking care of everybody.”
Although she had the typical arguments and disputes with her siblings, she was still always able to find a way to have fun with them and make some great memories.
“A funny memory I have involves my sister, Audrey. We’re four years apart, and she’s younger than me, so she was still at home while I was in school,” continued Katie. “I would get off the bus, and she would run up to me, and we would ‘pretend’ that we were sisters. That’s how we would play. It just seemed normal to me at the time, even though now it seems kind of strange. We would play mermaids. We would play Barbies. She loved to cut the hair off my Barbies for some reason. It always stuck out to me, though, that we pretended to play sisters, but we probably got along the best when we were pretending to be sisters. Otherwise, she wanted my stuff, and I didn’t want her messing with it. We had regular sibling arguments, but when we played sisters, we really got along.”
Although she didn’t really play sports, she did have something that she enjoyed doing while she was still in school.
“I was a band geek,” declared Katie. “I was in band through probably tenth or eleventh grade before I had to drop out and get a job. Other than that, I loved band. I started out playing the trumpet, and then I ended up playing baritone.”
When she first graduated from high school, she chose to continue her education so that she could obtain the career she believed she wanted for years. It was actually a teacher who made an impact on her life that was the original inspiration for the career.
“I graduated from Quitman High School in 2007, and I went to school in Hattiesburg. I became a massage therapist, and that lasted for a few years,” informed Katie. “I had wanted to become a massage therapist because of Ms. Breland, who recently passed away. I had her in third grade, and I didn’t really love school. I would go over and play with her hair, and then I’d rub her shoulders and stuff like that. She told me that I should definitely do that for a living. I guess that just stuck in my head from third grade on. That just tells you how much of an influence your teachers have on you.”
She worked as a massage therapist for a few years, but she ultimately decided that she wanted to be able to do something else.
“Being a massage therapist wasn’t really my scene. I wanted to do something in biology or something in the sciences, so I went back to school at Meridian Community College,” continued Katie. “About two or three years in, I moved to Texas with Kevin, and I haven’t been back to school since.”
Of course, she had other jobs that she did. She and her husband had started a family of their own, and they owned a small business in the community.
“I’ve been a working mom. We owned a body shop for a little while. That was a lot. With my second son, I had him on a Friday and was back at work that following Monday, if that tells you anything about owning your own business. That was interesting,” expressed Katie. “I also worked at Bo Haarala while we had the body shop. I worked there as a title clerk. When you buy a car, you have to get a title. I was the one who did all that paperwork. I loved working there. Those are the best people ever. I loved everybody there because it was the best group of folks.”
Now she is enjoying what she sees as her most important job: just being a mom. She very recently had their third son and is enjoying spending as much time as she can with their little family.
“Now, I’m a stay-at-home mom, and I love it,” proclaimed Katie. “I got to be home throughout this past pregnancy, and it’s been wonderful. I’m really just soaking up all of the newborn scrunches and just loving it up. It has been wonderful. He doesn’t let me sleep, but that’s alright. I’ll take it. I’ve already been through two other little boys, so I know that this newborn stage is quick, and they’ll never be this little again. I’ve just been really soaking it up.”
Along with spending as much time with her family as she can, she also enjoys being able to help those around her when she can. Her oldest son is following in her footsteps at school, and she does her best to help out there when she is needed.
“I try to help out anywhere I can,” explained Katie. “My oldest kid is in the band, so I try to make sure that if they need anything that I’m volunteering for that. If anybody in the neighborhood needs anything, I’ll be one of the first ones to say that I’ll help out. I’ll help out where needed at church, too. I like to be able to be whatever anybody needs me to be. Being stuck in a singular role makes it hard to be wherever you’re needed, so I don’t have just one specific thing that I do.”
No matter what she does, she tries to make a positive impact on the lives of others. With each day that passes, she plans to spend as much time as she can with her family and make the lives of everyone around her even better.
