Local historian Jerry “Hickory” Pryor died September 6 at age 85. He was born to Marguerite (Robb) Pryor and Frank “Hickory” Pryor on June 30, 1932, in his family’s home on Washington Street in his beloved Carterville, Missouri. Throughout his life, wherever he traveled, he compared everything to his hometown—and nowhere else ever measured up.
Early on, young Jerry began loafing with his older brothers, Russell and Eugene, at Lacey’s gas station on Route 66. There, he became acquainted with “old timers” who told stories of Carterville’s mining past. He soon became a storyteller himself and the keeper of the old timers’ stories, a passion that culminated in a book called Southwest Missouri Mining, which is a compilation of local photographs and history. He also wrote history notes for the Webb City Sentinel and served for more than a decade as the volunteer archivist of the Webb City Historical Society.
Jerry grew up during the Great Depression and remembered his father crying in the family’s kitchen as news rolled in over the radio from Pearl Harbor. When his father’s fears were realized and his older sons went off to World War II, Jerry waited at home for letters from his brothers, who used a different middle initial on each successive letter, a code to avoid the censors and alert the family where they were stationed. Jerry himself later served in the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army during the Korean War and was stationed in California, Washington, and France. He traveled solo by train to photograph the sights in cities across Europe.
Jerry traveled extensively, too, in the States, early on with his childhood friend and lifelong buddy, Charles “Red” Rand. Together the two ranged in Red’s specially engineered cars from Key West to Santa Monica. It was with Red that Jerry first visited the Grand Canyon, a place he loved and where he later took his children when they were small and then visited with his family on both his 57th and 80th birthdays.
Jerry married Dixie Campbell in 1959, and they had two children, Kelli and Robb, who became the focus of Jerry’s life. Though he was happily engaged by his 38-year career as a highway designer at the Missouri Highway Department, Jerry often spoke of daydreaming during his lunch hours about what fun things he would do that night and on the weekend with his family. He drew flashcards to help his children learn to read, and he gave them lessons in drawing, painting, photography, and writing. He took them to swim in the ocean in Florida and to camp under the Sequoias in California. He designed and built “river boards” that skimmed the family over the shallows in Big Sugar. He told his children a series of stories on rainy summer afternoons when the family retreated to the porch at the family cabin in Racine. He later wove the same stories into a book, The Long Escape, for his grandchildren.
After his marriage ended, Jerry was blessed with an enduring friendship with Jeannine Landreth, whose daughter, Shelly, became his adored third child and his favorite pie baker.
Following his retirement in 1993, Jerry took long walks, read a revolving stack of library books, and spent happy summers in Maine, canoeing and picking blueberries. He taught his granddaughters how to whistle and speak alfalfa, how to hang cedar shingles after measuring twice and cutting once. He wore plastic shopping bags on his feet to spare his sneakers from the dew when he was picking blackberries. At home on Oronogo Street, he put a face on his storm shelter and invited the neighbors to safety when the tornado sirens blew. He treated the neighborhood children with special candy bags on Halloween. At Christmas, he was the embodiment of Santa and gave to so many charities that his mailbox brimmed with thank-you notes year round. He was a deeply decent man who slipped his neighbor a little cash each month because her yard light shone on his yard, too.
Jerry was a man of purpose and leaves a legacy of lasting work. He was an excellent draftsman who designed highways that run from Kansas City to the Arkansas line. His hand-lettered signs can still be seen around the area. His children’s homes are filled with his oil paintings and his handmade clocks and cradles. Jerry and his buddy, Red, built a totem pole and erected it along Route 66. He was proud when visitors from around the world stopped in Carterville to take a photograph of his handiwork.
Jerry’s memory and his devotion to dessert, storytelling, and laughter will live on through his family: Kelli Pryor and her husband Andrew Rosenstein, of Maine; Robb Pryor, of Lakeside, and Shelly Landreth Terry and her husband Vaughn of Carl Junction. His playfulness, his engineering prowess, and his generosity will live on through his grandchildren, Mae and Sylvie Pryor Rosenstein, of Maine; Devon Crews of Columbia and Sierra Schorzman of Joplin; and Garrett Terry, of Carl Junction; Ashleigh and Jeff Baxter, of Carl Junction, and Meagan and Caleb Spangler, of Joplin. Jerry delighted in the two littlest members of the family, great-grandchildren Piper and Bear Baxter. Jerry spent one of his last best days shooting the breeze with Red Rand in his workshop.
Despite failing health in recent months, Jerry told his stories as long as he could and kept up his sense of humor. When medical professionals tested his mental acuity by asking who the president was, he would say, “Well, that’s debatable. But the vice president is Pence.” And then he’d tell them how there was a doctor in Carterville named Pence and how he bought Doc Pence’s house and raised his family there and…
When Jerry capped off the acknowledgments for Southwest Missouri Mining, he wrote: “Finally, my warmest regards go to the old timers, long vanished, whose stories, tall tales, and perhaps lies are fading echoes. How I wish I could hear them again.”
How his family and friends will wish, forever, to hear again Hickory’s stories and tall tales (though he never once told a lie). Rest in peace, old timer.
Funeral services will be 10:00 am Friday September 22, 2017 at the Hedge-Lewis-Goodwin Funeral Home. Burial will follow at Mt. Hope Cemetery. The family will receive friends Thursday September 21, 2017 from 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm at the funeral home.
In lieu of flowers contributions are requested to the Alzheimer’s Association and may be sent in care of the funeral home.
No comments:
Post a Comment