Legends of Exeter: Charlie Pratt

By EILENA DING, WILLIAM INOUE, LILY RAMPE, and KEVIN THANT

A hush fell over the Harkness table of thirteen as Charlie Pratt, in his red crew neck sweater, questioned his preps to be deep in thought. This is his home.

Hailed as one of Exeter’s greatest English teachers, C. Pratt taught at Exeter for over twenty years. In those twenty years, he sold crepes out of his house on Elliot Street, and was a beloved member of the community. C. Pratt also established and managed the Bennett Fellowship, which awards one author who has not written a book yet by providing them with a year of freedom and time to pursue their career. Described as a stereotypical New Englander frost in his iconic cable-knit sweater, khakis, and boots, C. Pratt was an accomplished poet and, to many students, one of the earliest teachers of the Harkness method. 

C. Pratt was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and graduated from Exeter as part of the class of 1952. As a child, he loved writing, traveling, teaching, and farming, all things he made sure to incorporate into his life. After Exeter, C. Pratt attended Princeton University where he played on the hockey team. 

C. Pratt, however, soon returned to Exeter on a teaching fellowship. As his wife Joanie Pratt described, “It was a new program at Exeter then, but he had been teaching at a public high school in Massachusetts, and he really was just trying to teach English and writing. The classes were huge and he just got so burned out from the public school after two years. So he decided to take this teaching fellowship at Exeter, and he really loved it.”

J. Pratt continued, “So after that was over, he went to the Pomfret School in Connecticut and that was where he was when we met.” 

Married in 1963, C. Pratt met J. Pratt through an arranged meeting between his mother and her aunt. “We were neighbors on Cape Cod in the summer, but he was four years older than me and when you are a teenager that can be a big difference, right? So although I knew his mother, father, and both his brothers, I really never met him in the summer.” 

J. Pratt continued, “ It was kind of an arranged meeting by his mother and my aunt when we were in our 20s. They had arranged for us to be there on the same weekend in the summer. And, it just clicked.”

“I moved to Pomfret with him and then he decided that Exeter was kind of looking for him. I think the English teachers wanted him back. He decided that Pomfret was a small school and he wanted a slightly bigger English faculty to work with. So we came to Exeter in 1966 with a one-year-old and two-week-old. We moved into Merrill Hall,” J. Pratt said.

During C. Pratt’s time here at Exeter, he was known as an incredibly honest and kind teacher. Current Instructor in English Brooks Moriarty had him during his prep fall. “Although I didn’t fancy myself as a very good student in English, he made me feel comfortable and excited about the work we were doing in class.” 

C. Pratt created a positive, engaging learning environment by incorporating hands-on activities. “We were doing work, but the work was enjoyable, like picking apples and pressing cider in his orchard.” 

His Harkness classes described him as “quiet,” barely saying anything. Despite the silence, his words were meaningful, and he was able to create effective, engaging classes. 

On campus, he provided family away from home for many students, with the crepe store that operated out of his house from Elliot Street, to school years abroad, to cookies and cider. C. Pratt and his wife J. Pratt provided for many students. Former student and current English teacher Brooks Moriarty described him as “a gentle soul and a kindly guy.” To his students, he was also considered a “safe harbor in the tough environment.”

But C. Pratt’s hospitality extended even to fellow faculty. Current Instructor in English Todd Hearon recalled his first time meeting C. Pratt. “It was our first time in Exeter, and he immediately put us at ease,” Hearon said.

Even more than that, his legacy of establishing the Bennett fellowship is recognized today. Hearon describes it as “infusing the campus with creative energy, year by year, by having a writer on campus.” The Bennett fellowship brings in and develops new writers onto campus every year. 

Throughout his journey both at Exeter and after, he was a very strong believer in the removal of harsh DDT pesticide and in supporting small local producers. After working at Exeter for 25 years, C. Pratt decided to pursue other interests. 

Yet, despite that, he stayed connected through the Bennett Fellowship and was an active community member until the 2010s. He spent his newfound time divulging himself in poetry, often getting inspired by the environment around him. 

Hearon would describe his poetry as “inspired by place, and they’re definitely in the tradition of a poet like Robert Frost with the Yankee country, New England countryside; the sort of hard drawn wisdom that comes out of this place. Mr. Pratt’s poems are not merely descriptive, but they’re very rich in description. They distill wisdom from their treatment of place, objects, and animals.” 

C. Pratt sadly passed away in May of 2012. He left an everlasting legacy at the Academy. 

“I think his impact on Exeter was definitely through his love of reading and words and teaching and mainly of poetry,” J. Pratt said. “He and many students have written to me, even visited, when they come to a reunion. I hear it’s been wonderful to have some of his students actually hosted a special memorial service for him in New York. We all went and read poems.” 

Prior to his passing, they went on a trip to France together that J. Pratt still cherishes to this day. 

His passing deeply saddened many people, including Moriarity. He said, “I think you come away from those with a different and deeper understanding of time and human life. Because even though you’re at the bookends of a person’s life, the stories that you hear, and all these others which are just scratching the surface, are very clear demonstrations that these human lives are infinite, in a way I don’t know how to explain.”

“You know, in this hour together in a church, there’s an infinity of time being shared about people’s recollections,” Moriarty said. “Everything that this person brought to the world seems infinite. And it happens in an hour, just like a life happens in a lifetime.”