Jim Crone (D-IN-6)
Jim Crone
Campaign links: Jim Crone (D-IN-6) 
James Alan “Jim” Crone
Jim Crone Congressional Candidate Indiana District 6
Biography of Jim Crone from Jim Crone for Congress
Jim was born and grew up in Connersville (Fayette County), which is part of the newly formed Sixth Congressional District. His father, Bill, taught in the public high school for 42 years and his mother sang in the choir at the First United Methodist church for 60 years. Jim has an older brother, John, who was a B-52 pilot in the Vietnam War and later flew for TWA airlines.
The Crone family lived across the street from the high school and the gymnasium. Since his father taught at the school, Jim was used to going to various school events. His favorite event, even as early as the age of three, was going to the Connersville Spartan basketball games with his parents. Immediately, he was hooked on basketball—not a surprise for a boy growing up in Indiana. In early elementary school, he played on all of the neighborhood goals and also played with neighborhood kids in his basement where his dad placed a goal about six feet high. No one knew at this time that Jim would later play for the Connersville Spartans and be selected to the Indiana All-Star team. In high school, he also played other sports such as football, baseball, and ran cross country.
In high school, Jim was not only a good athlete but also a good student and in other school activities. He was a member of the National Honor Society and was also elected each year to the Student Council, serving as President his senior year.
Jim earned a basketball scholarship to play for the University of Tennessee. Although he liked the people and students that he met while at UT, he decided to transfer in order to play closer to home where his parents could come to some of his games. He chose to attend Indiana State University.
At ISU, Jim started for the Sycamores his junior and senior year and earned honorable mention all-conference. He and his teammates, such as Jerry Newsome, Butch Wade, and Steve Hollenbeck of Columbus had a very good team, posting an 81% winning percentage. Jim majored in world history and minored in sociology and political science. In the fall of his first year at ISU, he had an ancient history professor that impressed him so much that Jim decided that he, too, wanted to become a college professor. Jim was also interested in student government and was elected as ISU’s student body president in his senior year.
During the summers while he was in undergraduate and graduate school, Jim had a number of jobs that helped expand his view on life. In three summers during his undergraduate years, Jim worked at the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home near Knightstown, Indiana where he worked with children who were orphans or who came from families that could not afford to keep their children. For two summers while in graduate school, Jim worked with low-income high school students in the Upward Bound program at Indiana State University, helping them develop their English and math skills so that they could someday go to college. Also, for two summers in graduate school, Jim worked in two factories in his hometown of Connersville, experiencing what it was like to work on assembly lines.
Since Jim was interested in becoming a college professor, he decided to try high school teaching first to see if he liked teaching. He taught at Danville High School, just 20 miles west of Indianapolis, for three years where the students elected him as Teacher of the Year in his second year. He learned that he loved teaching and knew that he wanted to be a college professor in sociology.
Jim attended graduate school at the University of Kansas where he earned a Ph.D. in sociology. He knew that he wanted to teach at a college or university that emphasized excellence in teaching while still having the chance to do scholarly writing. Fortunately, one of the colleges that invited him to interview was Hanover College, in southeastern Indiana, near the historic city of Madison. The College offered him a position and he accepted the offer to come to Hanover where he has greatly enjoyed being a professor at such a beautiful college overlooking the Ohio river.
While at Hanover College, Jim has taught many sociology courses and over 4,000 students. He has published papers on various topics but his favorite topic has been the study of social problems. A few years ago, he published the book, How Can We Solve Our Social Problems (now in the second edition, 2011, by Pine Forge Press), a book that suggests realistic ways to decrease various social problems such as poverty, inequality, the world’s population problem. For over 30 years, Jim has had a chance to think about the social problems that we have and what we can do about them. His thinking about and writing on what we can do about these social problems is a key way that he can contribute as a member of Congress. Besides his writing, Jim has also loved working with the students at Hanover College where they voted to give him the Arthur and Ilene Baynham Award for Outstanding Teaching.
Jim has a son, Alex, who is a senior in high school and who likes the sciences such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Alex plans to go to college and major in one of these sciences and someday become a medical doctor, researcher, or engineer. Alex and his dad like to play tennis, go on trips visiting such places as Washington, D.C. and New York City, and hike in our national parks such as Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton parks.
Jim had parents who taught him to treat all people with dignity and respect and who taught him to contribute to making a more humane and just society and world. He is now prepared to take what his parents taught him, what he has learned from his life experiences, and what knowledge and skills he has developed as a sociology professor to represent and help the people of the Sixth Congressional District in particular and the American people in general.
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