Dorothy Pratt

News Obituary Article

WOODSTOCK: Dorothy Pratt, gave life to medicine

By HOLLY CRENSHAW

Nurse Dorothy Pratt left her midwifery skills behind when she moved to the United States from her native Sierra Leone.

For years, she had toiled alongside her husband, the late Dr. Sylvester Pratt, in the remote hospital he founded, where she helped women give birth in clean, safe conditions.

By the time she moved to Woodstock a few years ago, her body was weary and her work was done. Yet her work lived on in the children she helped bring into the world and in her own children, three of whom studied medicine.

"Both my parents were instrumental in my going into medicine," said her daughter Dr. Melody Pratt Palmore of Atlanta, who treats HIV and AIDS patients at the Grady Infectious Disease Clinic. "But they were almost the front and back of a coin because they complemented each other so well."

"My father had a very big personality, which is what he needed to accomplish the things he did," she said.

"But she was the quiet, unassuming one who could accomplish just as much but in a different way. She chose a different approach."

Mrs. Pratt, 80, of Woodstock died of heart failure March 31 at St. Joseph's Hospital. The body was cremated. The memorial service is 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Cathedral of St. Philip. Sandy Springs Chapel Funeral Directors is in charge of arrangements.

Mrs. Pratt, born into relative wealth, chose a life more challenging than it could have been. She followed her physician father into medicine.

Mrs. Pratt joined her sister in London to study nursing and midwifery there, then returned to Sierra Leone and married in 1959. She and her husband worked in a remote area of their native country, where there was no running water and electricity was available just a few hours a day.

While she ran the hospital's obstetrics ward, many of the new mothers she worked with practiced scarification, sometimes darkening their babies' markings with coal. "She was trying to teach them hygiene and how to take care of their infants, but she was dealing with the mores of the time and some of the babies were dying from tetanus," her daughter said.

Once Mrs. Pratt was paid with a bag of sweet potatoes, just as her family was running out of food. "But there was a thread throughout her life," her daughter said, "that God will provide when you're in need. She'd remind us there's no need to worry about what's going to happen tomorrow. It's going to be taken care of. Remember the lilies of the field."

In 1975, the Pratts moved to the United States so her children could attend school here. She performed hospice and home health-care work in Ohio and New York and sold hand-decorated, tie-dyed garments at bazaars and crafts fairs.

In Woodstock, she found pleasure in small family moments, like teaching her son-in-law to make peanut stews and other African dishes.

"She was the most grateful, gracious woman," her daughter said. "The littlest thing you did for her, she would make you feel like you'd given her the world."

Survivors include a son, Charles H. Pratt of Buffalo, N.Y.; two other daughters, Donna E. Pratt of Atlanta, and Marion Pratt Flathmann of Hamburg, Germany; and four grandchildren.

© 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution