John F. Pritchard Jr.

John F. Pritchard, Jr., 89, of Liberty, MO, the founder, with his wife, Mary, of Habitat for Humanity/Kansas City, died at home on August 4, 2005, after a brief illness. He was born in Fond du Lac, WI, in 1915, to John Franklin and Lucille Martin Pritchard and grew up in Kansas City, where he attended Southwest High School and Pembroke Country Day School. He received a B.A. in economics from Princeton University in 1937, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1939. He was employed by Inland Steel Company of Chicago for several years before enlisting in the Army Air Force. John was commissioned a pilot in 1943, and flew a C-47 troop transport during World War II. Based in England, he flew missions over northern Europe, dropping paratroops, flying in supplies and carrying back the wounded. In 1942, John married Mary Augusta Coy of Cloquet, MN--the love of his life. After the war, the couple moved to Liberty, where he resumed his business career by founding Dover Mfg. Co., named after the white cliffs of Dover that welcomed wartime pilots back to England. Dover, which manufactured industrial cooling towers and custom steel fabricated equipment, was renamed Pritchard Products Co. when John merged his business with his father's engineering company, J.F. Pritchard & Co. After his father's death, John transformed his business career by starting TimberLodge, Inc., a company based in North Kansas City that manufactured and sold precut redwood vacation homes. In addition, John dedicated many hours of service to civic and philanthropic organizations, for which he received widespread recognition. He was an elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Liberty, MO, and was active in the Presbytery and Synod. He served on many organizational boards, including Liberty Savings & Loan, Habitat for Humanity International (of which he was a founding member), UMKC, the Greater Kansas City YMCA, Starlight Theater and the Earnest Shepherd Memorial Youth Center. He especially valued the friendships he developed and the service he contributed to the Liberty community for 40 years as a member of the Fellowship of the Concerned. At the age of 60, John felt a call to wind up his business career and spend the remainder of his life serving those in need. It was at this time that he met Millard Fuller, who had just launched Habitat for Humanity, an ecumenical Christian organization dedicated to building houses for low-income families using donated capital, volunteer labor, sweat equity contributed by the homeowner family and no-interest 20-year mortgages. John and Mary soon became involved in this fledgling mission and they remained so for the next 20 years of their lives. Together they started Habitat for Humanity/Kansas City and began to build homes in Kansas City's Linwood/Paseo neighborhood. Some 200 houses have been built in the 25 years that Habitat/K.C. has operated in this neighborhood. On his retirement as the executive director of Habitat/K.C. in 1996, the Kansas City Star recognized his many years of service, saying that "few can claim to have made a community contribution equaling that of John Pritchard." John was predeceased by his older sister, Mary P. Eckels, of Kansas City, MO, and by his younger sister, Dorothy P. Williams, of Sioux City, IA. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Mary Coy Pritchard; by his six children and their spouses and partners, John and Lee Pritchard (New York, NY), Tom Pritchard and Jody Rhone (Brooklyn, NY), David Pritchard and Ellen Wittlinger (Haydenville, MA), Anne Pritchard and Gary Wong (Brooklyn, NY), Sally Pritchard and Tom Tremaine (Spokane, WA), and Mary Pritchard and Matthew Dallett, (Andover, MA); and by 12 grandchildren, all of whom held a special place in his heart. His children and grandchildren are especially grateful for the beautiful memoirs John and Mary have written of their life together, including their experiences during World War II, the summers John spent as a boy on a working ranch in Wyoming, and the trip they took around the world in 1982, visiting Habitat for Humanity sites in Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Uganda, Kenya and Zaire. The family will hold a private burial service at Forest Hill Cemetery in Kansas City, MO. A memorial service followed by a reception will be held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, August 9th, at the Liberty United Methodist Church. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations be made to Habitat for Humanity/Kansas City, Inc., 1423 E. Linwood Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64109. (Arr: ChurchArcher-Pasley Funeral Home, 816-781-2000)