While she was married to Jack, she had a son, Wesley Crusher. Wesley grew up with Beverly aboard the Enterprise - E. Even though it seems to some that Picard has a "dislike" for children, he obviously feels close to Wesley.
Dr. Crusher spent her formative years with her grandmother, Felisa Howard, who raised her from an early age after her mother died. In fact, it was Felisa's knowledge of folk medicine, which allowed the two Howards to be among the few survivors of the Arvada III colony disaster and inspired young Beverly to choose medicine as her life's work.
Unknown to her at the time, Felisa was involved with an anaphasic "lover" who derived life-affirming sustenance in return for the companionship - a secret stretching back through generations of the family which nearly consumed Dr. Crusher herself.
It was her marriage to Lt. Cmdr. Jack Crusher that provided the major trauma of her adult life, when he died on an away team mission from the U.S.S. Stargazer under Captain Jean-Luc Picard in 2355. Before their wedding on July 20, 2348, during her medical schooling, the future Crushers had dated for several months until he finally proposed by sending her the book "How To Advance Your Career Through Marriage." The two had first been introduced by Walker Keel, who with Jack had been Picard's closest friend during their early years in Starfleet. Ironically, her relationship with Jack followed an intense but brief affair that had already run its course. The new couple and Picard became close friends during the years the men served together on the U.S.S. Stargazer. The captain later accompanied Crusher to the Starbase 32 morgue to view Jack's corpse.
It was not until years later, in 2370, that Picard confirmed her suspicion that he was attracted to her, thanks to a telepathic link they experienced while held as spies on Kesprytt. Picard had denied there would be any personal problems when she signed aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise as his CMO in 2364 at Farpoint Station, but in reality both knew they shared a latent interest in each other by the time of the Tsiolkovsky virus epidemic that brought it out only a few weeks later.
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