The Morning After

August 5, 2005

By Ed Chasteen

Dr. Ed Chasteen, professor emeritus of sociology at William Jewell, offered the following appreciation for the Kansas City philanthropist after Pritchard’s death in August.

Why doesn’t our town look different this morning? It should. It certainly feels different. John Pritchard died last evening. But for John, I doubt I would have stayed in Liberty these 40 years. Straight from grad school I came to teach race relations at William Jewell. Almost my first day in town I met John and was mesmerized by his quiet but steely assertion of all the basic values and virtues I had grown up with in church. John then was about the age of my youngest son now. He owned a successful business and gave time, talent and treasure to every good cause.

Everywhere I would go in Greater Kansas City over the coming years I would see John’s name on cornerstones and letterheads. I would hear his name spoken in admiring and appreciative ways by folks from all walks of life and all colors of skin. When I would need money or advice for student projects, John was the first person I would visit.

A year or two in Liberty. Then back home to Texas. That was the plan Bobbie and I had. But John’s orbit, with its constellation of noble-minded people and uplifting causes, had us in its grasp. We could not, nor did we want to, pull ourselves free.

In the hospital and at his home, I visited John over the past several weeks. Bobbie and I were with him in his room at home just a few hours before he died. He was not conscious and probably could not hear me when I came to the head of his bed. My voice broke and tears came, but I managed to say, “John, I love you. Thanks for the memories. I hope to see you on the other side.”

John Pritchard was the most genuinely humble man I ever knew. He would not want our town to be different because he is gone. He would not want to draw attention in death any more than he wanted to draw attention in life. But it has been our loss these years that we did not in more open and obvious ways celebrate his presence among us. Now he is gone and we cannot. But John would not want us to grieve our failure. He really would not have wanted us to single him out for praise. It was for our sakes that we should have done so. So that we might testify aloud to ourselves the presence of simple goodness with us.

One day at the post office some years ago I happened to see John for the first time in months. He asked what I had been doing. For long minutes I filled his ear. “And what about you?” I asked. “Oh, nothing much,” he said. I learned a day or so later from some third party that John had just come from an event of world importance and the company of powerful people. I never told John what prompted me to say this the next time we met. “John, you have no right to be so humble.”

But he was. And in so being became a giant in my life. In many lives.