Ernie Crosser came to Pompano in the late 1920s becoming a carpenter and after marrying opened a cabinet shop on Old Dixie Highway with another Pompano pioneer, Bill Lefler.

Crosser and Lefler cabinet shop was noted far and wide for the quality of work produced and for the custom staircases they built in their shop, dismantled shipped and installed in homes of notable people and estates in several states and offshore Islands>.

Ernie served in the “Sea-Bees” (Construction Battalion) of the US Navy in WW II. As a Chief Boatswains mate. building airstrips and camps in the South Pacific.

Ernie was commissioned by his commanding officer to construct a run-about pleasure boat for the battalion, which he did, making everything from material cut from the jungles and what could be “surveyed” (navy parlance for “obtaining” in any possible way.) Including an engine from a wrecked Japanese landing craft. This 20 ft. boat was used to take the men on fishing trips when they weren’t working or fighting off Japs. Ernie was the “Captain” of this boat and remained as such until the war ended and the boat was taken by the Navy. The photos Ernie had of the building and use of this boat was printed in yearbook of his group after the war. Ernie was an avid sportsman, hunter and fisherman and was considered one of ,if not the leading authority on black powder guns and shooting in Florida, participating in and winning many shooting competitions in the Southeastern United States. Ernie gave much to Pompano before he died in 1999

Reprinted with permission of Bud Garner


Please visit Bud Garner's site at "http://members.tripod.com/~budgarner/"


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