In Memoriam

Lawrence S. Pratt

Larry Pratt died of heart failure in Boston on June 27, 2020. Here is his obituary, followed by the essay he wrote on the occasion of our 50th Reunion in 2014.

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Obituary

Wiscasset (ME) Newspaper

June 30, 2020

Lawrence Spencer Pratt, 78, a longtime summer resident of Squirrel Island, Maine, died June 27, 2020 of heart failure at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

He was born June 17, 1942, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, while his mother, Ann Spencer Pratt, was visiting her parents in the village of Williamsville, West Stockbridge.

Larry grew up in Greenwich Village, New York City. He attended Friends Seminary and Trinity School before entering Yale, where he studied economics. There, he edited the campus humor magazine, The Yale Record, and was active in the Elizabethan Club and Manuscript.

In 1964, Larry joined the Peace Corps in Malawi, where he worked for the Farmers Marketing Board assisting rural farmers with best agricultural practices and obtaining fair prices at rural markets.

Upon his return, he met his wife, Abby Dickler, whom he married in 1967. They went together to Malawi to work for an additional two years. Their first son, Sam Pratt, was born there.

They moved to New York City, where Larry spent two years as a bond analyst at New York Life Insurance Company. Their second son, Bob Pratt, was born there.

In 1972, Larry and Abby and their two boys moved to his grandparents’ house in Williamsville. In 2005, they began living in a retirement community in Lexington, Massachusetts, with frequent trips home to Williamsville. He also built a modern house in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with the architect Daniel Bucsescu.

Larry worked for almost his entire adult life until retirement at the American Institute for Economic Research, a nonprofit think tank in Great Barrington, writing and editing their bimonthly report analyzing finance, as well as periodic book-length reports. He also served as president of AIER’s sister organization, American Investment Services.

In the 1970s and ’80s he was elected to multiple terms as chairman of the Finance Committee of the Town of West Stockbridge. He also served in the 1980s and 1990s as treasurer of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in Lenox, Massachusetts.

He was known for his gentle manner, his intellect, his sense of humor, his cooking, and his love of jazz music. His interest in developing nations was revived in recent years as he and Abby traveled regularly to Malawi, Burma, and Ecuador for both tourism and charitable work.

In addition to his wife and sons, Larry is survived by Bob’s wife, Dory Pratt, and their children, Lucy Pratt and Owen Pratt, of Denver.

There will be no funeral service. A memorial gathering may be held in Williamsville and on Squirrel Island, where Larry spent summers since first visiting with his father, Lawrence Southwick Pratt, in the 1940s.

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Essay, 50th Reunion Classbook

by Larry Pratt

Fifty years ago, I met a man who brought his wife to his 50th Yale reunion. They wanted to know what Yale was like, so I tried to describe the Yale College of 1964. There had been many changes since 1914. A lot of the buildings we habituated were new to him. Mandatory chapel and Latin and Greek requirements were long gone and Sheff had melded with Yale College when the residential colleges were established.

However, I would guess that Yale has changed far more during the last 50 years than it did from 1914 to 1964 and that our class was more like the class of 1914 than the class of 2014. Nowadays, every Yalie is an honors major, there are no standard majors or Gentleman C's. On fall weekends the Yale Bowl is seldom full and more than anything else, the classes of 1914 and 1964 mainly included over-privileged white boys, like me. The class of 2014 is more diverse, with more minorities and, above all, women. For us white boys there would now be only about 700 or so places. Girls make up about half of a current class of about 1,400 which today includes many males who would not have applied in 1960. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that a lot if not most of us would not be Yalies if we were applying today.

Despite this humility-inducing prologue, I have found it incontestable that members of our class have accomplished very many remarkable and admirable things. Things that make me feel like quite the underachiever.

I do take some pride in the work I did in Malawi in the Peace Corps and on a subsequent contract there, as well as my efforts on behalf of my town as a board member and treasurer of two nearly insolvent non-profits. When I look over the economic analyses and articles I have produced over the years, I am often pleased and impressed with their quality and prescience. However all these are all fairly small beer, because for most of my life since college I have stayed in a rural area, content to enjoy life in a small pond. In fact, I would have to say that my greatest achievement has been to raise my two reasonably well-adjusted sons.

In my retirement I have continued to be way over-privileged, having received exceptionally excellent medical care, including a kidney from my wife. There is more, but I will forgo the usual organ recital here. I now divide my time between the Berkshires, Maine, and Greenwich Village, places I love and enjoy and where I have spent most of my life. Abby and I do seem to travel a lot and I try to help her in various good works which nowadays are mainly in Burma, supporting several tiny NGO's operating under the radar of the Junta.