Passion to help veterans guided Charlie Pratt to ministry

While serving in the Navy in 2005, alumnus Charlie Pratt passed out free makeup to women at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait during Easter. Military exchanges on the bases carried basics for men, but almost nothing for women. “I learned what a blow wearing the same drab colored uniform day in and day out could be for the women I served with over there. For the guys, we didn’t care. For many of our gals, they needed to have something to make them feel pretty, even in the desert, or it was a huge blow to their morale. Just a simple tube of lipstick could make all the difference.” The makeup was provided by his wife, Heather, a sales director for Mary Kay Cosmetics.

BY JOE SLAY

By the time of his encounter with a Korean War veteran with something very important to confess, Charlie Pratt (M.Div.’17) was ready. The old man, about to undergo surgery, had been carrying a dark secret since a dark day on a bridge in Korea, more than 60 years ago.

The man knew from the Navy crest on Charlie’s shirt that he was not only a hospital chaplain, but he was also a veteran. They prayed, and the man began to unburden himself of his terrible secret.

In a way, Charlie Pratt’s entire career had readied him for this confession. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and stayed in the Navy for 21 years, handling every conceivable assignment: aviator, Naval journalist and television producer, Supply Officer, submarine and surface vessel repair in the Mediterranean during the Kosovo and Bosnia conflict; and, ultimately, in Kuwait and Iraq doing security and communications, and serving as morale officer and anti-terrorism instructor.

“I was trained in the constantly evolving terror tactics of the enemy and how best to train and protect our people. I taught classes on how not to get blown up by roadside bombs.”

As “Force Protection Officer,” he was responsible for the safety of about 400 members of his battalion. “We did not lose a single guy, and we saw only two injuries.”

And he himself was not out of harm’s way. On his first trip to Baghdad, he was mortared.

“It was unnerving, really unnerving. When the alarm sounded to warn us of the incoming rounds, I first felt shock, but then I realized they were firing at us and me. I got really angry. And with the mortars being fired from outside the base security perimeter, there was no one to shoot at, but I really wanted to.”

The harsh and immediate realities of a combat situation and the lingering emotional and psychological fallout that can be part of a veteran’s life were familiar subjects for Pratt. Infidelity on the home front was the cause of four suicides on the base.

“Since our battalion did not deploy with a chaplain, our commanding officer, a Marine colonel, asked me to step in as morale officer. During peacetime, that was normally a role for a junior officer, but our colonel assigned me to that role because he recognized the need for spiritual support.”

Pratt quickly found himself helping the members of his unit through all of life’s toughest problems.

“This was a natural fit for me,” said Pratt, who felt that he had always been a father figure to others around him, dating as far back as Eagle Scout days, as senior patrol leader.

“That’s always been my instinct. I wasn’t a particularly religious person, but I was a protective person.”

Back from overseas, and active in John Knox Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina, that instinct to help others, particularly veterans, gradually became a call, but not one that he initially sought.

“I enrolled in Union Presbyterian Seminary to prove once and for all that God was wrong; that He had called the wrong number.”

Now, the June 2017 graduate of the seminary’s Charlotte campus is certain of that call.

Which brings us back to the Korean War veteran and the secret that had haunted him for decades. Seeing that he was in the presence of another who had known warfare, he told him the story of the refugees streaming across a bridge, ten abreast. One was spotted with explosives strapped to his back. A sergeant ordered the men to open fire on the crowd. Hundreds were killed. And it was classified, thus forbidding a participant from speaking of it for years.

Until he met Charlie Pratt, who heard his confession.

“Do you feel ready for your surgery now?” Pratt said to the old vet and to his crying daughter, who had never heard the wrenching story.

“Yes,” said the old vet. “I feel like I am ready now, no matter what happens. Even if I don’t make it through this, I am ready for whatever God has planned for me.”

“You know,” Pratt remembers, “if I had not been wearing that shirt with my Navy unit crest on that day, this conversation would not have happened. He would never have let go of that burden before his surgery.”

“I learned from Seminary that God will put people in your path. You don’t have to go looking for them.”

COMPUTER MINISTRY

Pratt is a Supply Chain Leader for GE Greenville Gas Turbines, LLC. In his spare time, he buys former corporate leased laptop computers, refurbishes them, and gives them away to ministries in need around the world through scholarships he raises from the sales of computers to individuals and organizations.

Five laptop computers refurbished by Charlie Pratt were delivered to the CEDEPCA (Protestant Center for Pastoral Education in Central America), a PC(USA) mission partner in Guatemala, in August 2017. Standing at left is director Judith Castaneda with three students who each received a computer for their continued studies. The computers were delivered by Union alumna Mary Jane Winter (M.Div.’76). One is a donation she paid for and the other four are scholarships funded by Pratt’s ministry. Photo credit: Karen Stanley (M.A.’98).

Pratt’s refurbished computers are available for purchase year-round and anyone can buy them. The more he sells, the more computer scholarships he can raise.

“Breaking the debt cycle in our community is something I love doing,” said Pratt. “I’ve applied what I’ve learned in my military and civilian life to the church and it’s pretty cool.”

An August 2017 shipment of former corporate leased laptop computers covers Charlie Pratt’s dining room table, which served as a software assembly line.