Here is the original post to see how she looked just in March

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/3764820/crape-myrtles-are-really-tuff-and-hardy-right-crossing-fingers

That new lead is a sucker, so named because they suck the nutrients right out of the plant, which is why it's growing so fast. It's best to keep suckers cut off, but if you like that tall one, keep it. How tall your plant will get depends on the variety. Some only get up to about 6 feet, some get to 30. Clemson has a good chart, if you know the variety. If not, you can usually make a decent guess based on the flowers.

http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/plants/landscape/trees/hgic1023.html

I very much like that tall one! I cut off a couple of suckers the other day, I don't want it to be super crazy with lots of trunks, but I want to be able to shape it how I want as it grows so if I only kept the main I would have been limited.

I am not surewhatt variety I have, it came from arbor day society a couple of yrs ago and was in a not good spot so growth was slow, but their site might name the variety, I'll have to search. I would love it to be small to medium tree, but I'll take what I can get!

It might be this one, I googled arbor day society crape myrtle and this popped up and the flowers look to match it.

https://www.arborday.org/trees/treeguide/TreeDetail.cfm?ItemID=824

You can root CM very easily.

Re: your question about growth- Yes, trees and bushes grow from the top. The trunk below the branching point will never elongate and get taller. You will need to keep the sucker or train the new growth from the branches up, to get more height. I hope that makes sense.

It does makes sense and is what I was thinking b/c the lower branches have already started to make an up ward turn, I think it was from pruning done last year.