By Mike Moore
Ohio Outdoor News
You know Tom Cross is a true outdoorsman when you learn that his parents bought him a 12-foot jon boat for his high school graduation.
That was in 1972 and at the time Cross was living in Amelia in Clermont County and driving a red Ford Falcon. Things in Amelia were much different then than they are today. Clermont County was still largely rural, and Cross took advantage of his outdoor opportunities at most every turn.
His grandparents owned a farm in nearby Adams County and Cross eventually made his way there after high school.
“We had unlimited woods and access to creeks,” Cross said of the homestead. “We caught crawdads, dug nightcrawlers, we did everything outdoors … It was different in those days than it is today. Mom would open the door about daylight and about dark we’d come straggling back in.”
It was Cross’ uncles who introduced him to hunting and fishing.
“My mom went to them and asked them to take me under their wings,” he said. “Plus, I just had that natural inclination. We also had a neighbor that fished a lot and I went with him some. That’s really when the bug hit me.”
Cross, 72, married his childhood sweetheart, Judy, in 1982 and they built a home on the family homestead in Adams County that has been in the Cross name since the 1850s.
“And it just happened to be in a location where at one time there was a lot of grouse and there’s always been a lot of deer and turkeys,” he said. “It was really an ideal area to grow up for a guy who likes to hunt and fish.”
Cross started his outdoor writing career in earnest freelancing for newspapers in Hillsboro and Georgetown in Highland and Brown counties respectively. Today, he is a columnist for The People’s Defender in West Union, a position he’s held since 1982. Actually, his career got its original start in 1972 when he wrote a fishing column while still in high school for The Clermont Sun.
“I always did kind of gravitate toward writing,” he said. “It was just kind of in me.”
Cross is also the executive director of the Adams County Travel and Visitors Bureau, a position he’s held for more than 25 years.
He remembers well the day he started with the bureau because he held off on taking the job until after that year’s spring turkey season was in the books.
“I got a gobbler and the next week I spent my first day as the director of tourism,” he laughed.
In 2006, Cross spent a year researching and writing Fishing Ohio, a book that details every public water in the state for fishermen.
“I was traveling all over the state, sleeping in the back of a pickup truck,” he said. “I think I was in every campground and state park in the state of Ohio in the summer of 2006.”
The book was published in 2008, and is often referenced in the back page lake profiles in Ohio Outdoor News.
Cross and his wife have two sons and a daughter. Both boys finished out military careers and live out West. The daughter is a fisherman also, Cross said.
“I kept them in the outdoors because it kept them from a lot of bad influences,” he said.
Toward the end of these interviews, we always ask the question of what drives your passion for the outdoors?
“It kept me from a lot of bad influences and stuff when I was growing up,” Cross said. “I spent all my money on fishing tackle and shotgun shells. I didn’t have enough money left over for beer and cigarettes. I look back, and back in the 70s there was a lot of bad stuff going around. A lot of stuff for a teenager to get into.
“I was lucky that I ran with a crowd that was similar to me,” he continued. “We all liked to hunt and fish and we all were in Boy Scouts. We just did that kind of stuff. We didn’t get arrested, thrown in jail, or shot at. That’s why I instilled (the outdoors) in my sons and my daughter.”
Any particular summer day today will find Cross on Cave Run Lake in Kentucky chasing muskies or on Brush Creek fly-fishing for smallmouth bass.
The outdoors, Cross said, “has guided my life.”
Cross’ money from his newspaper and magazine writing funds his hunting and fishing habits, he said.
“I was counting just the other day and I think I’m on my seventh or eighth boat,” he said.
Cross has landed 50-inch muskies on Cave Run, a renowned muskie water near Morehead, Kentucky.
“That was one of the highlights of my fishing,” he said.
Family trips to Canada in the 1970s produced big northern pike and lots of walleyes. And, Cross’ sons were stationed in Alaska and Idaho in the military, providing more opportunity.
“I have traveled everywhere, fishing for trout and muskies and everything,” he said. “It was big salmon in Alaska and trout in Idaho.
“I’ve had a very rewarding life hunting and fishing,” Cross summed. “And I’ve passed that down to my children.”
One of the accomplishments that he is most proud of is being able to secure grant funding from ODNR to develop two public canoe/kayak launch sites on Ohio Brush Creek. In his work with the tourism bureau, Cross is currently working on a grant for another access site near Serpent Mound.
(You can subscribe to Ohio Oudoor News at www.outdoornews.com/ohio)
Leave a Reply