Memories that surface when someone dies.

Louis Lavar Pratt

Published: February 07. 2011 4:55AM

KANAB — Louis Lavar Pratt passed away on February 3, 2011 at his home in Kanab, Utah. Lou was born June 30, 1933, the only child to Lavar Orson and Clara Cram Pratt. He lived most of his life in Kanab.  While in the Army in New York, he met Frances Louise Welch. After a 7 day courtship they were married and returned to Utah. Later they lived on Beach Street in Henderson, Nevada where he was employed with the Las Vegas Metro Police & at TIMET Plant where they made Titanium Metals. In 1973 Lou and Fran moved their family back to Kanab, and Lou worked at Arizona Fuels until he retired in 1983.  Lou enjoyed spending time at the cabin that he built with his parents and family at Swains Creek on Cedar Mountain. He loved the outdoors and anything that had to do with fishing, hunting & camping. He enjoyed jeeping and later 4-wheeling with his friends. He listened to Tradio every morning on the radio and made lots of deals over the phone. He enjoyed reading the Nifty Nickel and watching any program on TV about wildlife. He loved to wheel and deal on anything from cars to guns to property.  Survivors include wife Frances; children Kathy (J.Lowe) Barton, Beverly (Gus) Carayas and Louis Jr. (Traci) Pratt; grandsons Seth Michael Barton, Joshua J. Barton, Evan Carayas, Nicholas Clyde Pratt, and Justin Louis Pratt; granddaughters Sarah Butts, Jessica Hoff, Robyn Carayas, and Rebecca Nelson; and great-grandchildren Kamryn & Troy Black, Samara Stark, Jaxon Butts and Michael Rowe.  Services will be held Monday, February 7, 2011 at 1:00 PM at Mosdell Mortuary, with a viewing from 12:00 Noon to time of service. Interment with Military honors by American Legion Post 69 will be in the Kanab Cemetery. Services arranged with Mosdell Mortuary.

My brother, Jerry, said the last time he talked to Keith Tilley he remembered the incident in Orderville so many years ago.  Keith came down from Utah State with my brothers, Lynn and DeLoy, for the Thanksgiving weekend.  As was our custom, after the dance we invited everyone to our house for games and fun.  My best friend, Georgia, had dated Louis Pratt a little (I double-dated with his friend, Kent Nash) so he and his no-good buddies were messing around outside.  They actually opened up one of the windows in our front room that had never been opened.  It was painted shut.  When that happened, the guys went outside to see what was going on.  They all came in laughing because they had scared them away.  “That one kid didn’t want to fight because I asked him,” Larry, our strong veteran cousin, bragged.  Then DeLoy came in.  He was bleeding.  Louis had hit him with a pipe wrench.  It wasn’t funny anymore. 

I don’t remember if it was that night or another night but we were afraid of them so we drove Georgia home.  Lynn walked her in, just to keep her safe.  When he came back out, Louis called him over to the car.  When Lynn got close, Louis grabbed him and drove off.  He was really a trouble-maker.  They were horrific for no good reason.  A classmate, DeRay ran with him a little bit.  He has no good memories.  Kent straightened up and even got active in the church in later years.  I saw him at a wedding reception in Vegas once.  Reading the obituary, it sounds like Louis grew up too.  The thing of it was, the guys from Valley didn’t fight.  At least, not our big group who was everyone who wasn’t married from 15-16 years through 35—my age through Shirley’s; before and beyond.  She started the parties, then one New Year’s Eve after she was teaching school, she found her true love and left Georgia and me holding the bag while she ran off to New Castle to be with him.  I cried big tears and told her she was a deserter and questioned how she could be so mean.  I remember Georgia and me lying up on my bed before the dance, scared to death, promising that next year we would have a party with just us and our boyfriends.  However, the parties, well-established, were so much fun that we sponsored them until we both got married.

Georgia and I double-dated with lots of guys.  She went with a guy from Cedar named Charlie Peterson and I went with Doug Maxwell.  Doug had first cousins in Glendale.  I wrote to Doug all the time he was on his mission and in the service.  Amy still uses the jewelry box he sent me from Japan.  But I never planned to marry him, as he did me according to rumor.  (His dad delivered gas to my cousin in Enterprise.)  I always planned to marry my true love, DeRay, who was away in the Service in Germany while I was graduating from high school and going to business college in Salt Lake City.

Back to Louis Pratt, when I was in Salt Lake living with Bishop Terry and JaNee while going to business school, Louis came to town so he called and asked if I would like to go out.  Georgia was married by this time; barefoot and pregnant; bottling peaches.  Bishop Terry said that was the nicest young man who had come calling in all winter.  I didn’t breathe a word of Louis’ reputation.  He was a perfect gentleman that night.  Just friends, sort of. 

My friend and cousin, Mary Lee Esplin, and I went to Salt Lake together to attend Henager’s School of Business.  There was a program where you could live with families and help out and get board and room free.  I was lucky enough to get in with the Terrys.  JaNee’s mother had died a lingering cancer death the year before.  Besides being bishop, Bishop Terry was on the police force (and dating) so he was gone a lot.  He wanted someone to keep JaNee company after the sorrow of the past year.  We prepared meals together and did the housework.  I had a lot of time to study and was treated like a member of the family. 

Of all our friends at Henager’s who did this, I was the only one who lasted the school year out.  Mary Lee got in with a socialite family who expected her to feed and tend the children every single night while they went out.  She was the youngest in her family (after her younger sister died) and was used to being pampered; not accustomed to waiting on anyone.  She didn’t last two months, moving in with our older cousin who had lived in Salt Lake City after her marriage.  Beverly Church, our new friend from Panguitch, got in with a family with lots of children where the husband chased her around the table.  She moved into the Beehive house, where Nancy Shumway, my rival from Kanab, lived.  She went with Kent Nash also.  When he came to Salt Lake, he didn’t call me, he went with Nancy, making me jealous even though I didn’t even like him.  Along with a couple of guys from Kanab going to the U, we all rode home to Southern Utah together for holidays and such.
Such memories the death of an old acquaintance stirs up.