The late Joe Pratte’s daughters say they are more focused on the happy memories they have of their father than the sadness of his passing.
“We don’t mourn his death. We celebrate his life,” said Kris Pratte, 61. Her sister, Kyle Pratte Herbein, 65, nodded in agreement.
“He had a good, long life, but he was ready to go,” Kyle said.
Mr. Pratte, a longtime Twin Cities pharmacist, died Jan 6 at age 97 in Hickory, N.C., after battling Alzheimer’s disease for some years.
He grew up in Bonne Terre, one of 12 children in a coal mining family. He graduated from Bonne Terre High School and worked a few odd jobs around town.
“He broke his ankle playing baseball, and my mom, Emma Lou, was the med tech at the local hospital,” Kris said. “They dated for a year or so and married in October 1949.”
Mr. Pratte joined the Air Force in 1951 and was stationed in Germany during the Korean War. After he came home, he went to St. Louis College of Pharmacy on the GI Bill, and his wife worked in St. Louis. Kyle came along in 1959 and Kris in 1964.
“Dad worked at a pharmacy off Grand in St. Louis,” Kris said. “They moved to Crystal City in 1965, and he went to work for Frank Callahan at the Rexall drugstore in Crystal Village.”
Mr. Pratte opened his own place in 1972 with a clear vision of his mission.
“He wanted to be a traditional pharmacist,” Kris said. “He didn’t want to be a retail operation. No soda fountain, no candy, none of that stuff. He just didn’t want to mess with it.”
The business operated with a tiny staff.
“He had one register and usually one employee in there with him,” Kris said. “He had occasional part-time workers, kids from the high school. Lee Ann Moutray worked for him and ended up going to pharmacy school.”
A man of deep faith, Mr. Pratte was a lifelong practicing Catholic and an active member of the Sacred Heart Parish, serving as an usher.
He was an involved father as well.
“He shot baskets with me; he helped Kyle on her balance beam,” Kris said. “My mom was the disciplinarian.”
The couple relaxed their strict attitude considerably in later years, their daughters said.
“My kids would drink apple juice out of their Waterford crystal,” Kyle marveled. “We weren’t allowed to even touch those!”
Sandwiched between the era of doctor house calls and the advent of WebMD, small-town pharmacists like Mr. Pratte often served as families’ day-to-day health care advisers. Mr. Pratte dispensed advice and over-the-counter remedies, as well as consulting with local health care providers.
“He called doctors all the time,” Kyle said. “This was before anyone had computers; nothing was tied together. He monitored people’s drugs, knew their histories.”
The sisters recalled an instance where their father’s intervention likely saved a woman’s life.
“This lady had taken her elderly mother somewhere and gotten a prescription, and Dad wouldn’t fill it,” Kris said. “He said, ‘You can’t give her this; it will interact with her other medications and could be deadly.’
“He paid attention. At that time, pharmacists were the only ones who had the whole picture.”
It wasn’t at all unusual for Mr. Pratte to get calls for prescription help outside of business hours.
“He’d go to the shop at three in the morning on a Sunday,” Kyle said. “I can’t count how many times he got up from the dinner table to go and help someone. He was the only place in town that was open those kind of hours.”
Mr. Pratte often would bring prescriptions home with him to deliver to customers or to have them picked up.
“It was longtime customers, or they didn’t drive, or it was bad weather,” Kris said. “He’d drop it off on his way home or leave it in our mailbox for them to pick up.”
That kind of customer service engendered loyalty among Mr. Pratte’s longtime customers.
“People stayed with my dad even when they could have gone somewhere else and got things a little cheaper,” Kris said.
Mr. Pratte, an avid golfer, had a standing Sunday morning game at the Joachim Golf Course for many years, and he and his wife enjoyed travel.
“They took vacations on their own, and we always took at least one or two family vacations a year,” Kyle said. “Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, Hawaii. My mom wanted to see the world.”
Mr. Pratte sold his business in 1995 and retired with his wife to North Carolina.
In 2008, Emma Lou died suddenly from a pulmonary embolism.
“In the ambulance, she thanked him for their wonderful life together and told him she wanted him to be happy,” Kyle said. “It took him a while, but he found a life. He played 18 holes of golf twice a week until he was well into his 90s.
“The main thing that helped was I got him a dog, and Duke quickly became the favorite child. He took him everywhere with him.”
Mr. Pratte began showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s around the time COVID-19 hit, and he moved into an assisted living facility in June 2020.
In recent years, his symptoms accelerated.
“He started losing his way, got weaker,” Kris said. “This summer, we moved him to a higher level care center.”
Both daughters were with him when Mr. Pratte died.
“He was following the priest with his eyes while he was giving him the sacraments,” Kris said. “He died about an hour later. He found his peace.”
Asked what they thought their father would want to be remembered for, the sisters quickly agreed on one thing.
“He liked being a good guy,” Kris said. “He liked helping people, and he loved being our protector. He was a great guy.”