Priscilla Pratt Kluckhuhn

She was born Priscilla Evelyn Pratt on August 17, 1921, in Cambridge, NY, to the late Jane Esther Smith Pratt and Col. Daniel H. Pratt. She grew up in Washington, DC, & graduated from McKinley Tech High School in 1938. Priscilla was married for nearly 60 years to Frederick H. Kluckhuhn, from 1940 to his death in 1999. They raised their 4 children in Silver Spring and moved to Annapolis, MD, in 1968.

Priscilla is survived by her 4 children, Carolyn K. Long, Dan Kluckhuhn & daughter-in-law Helen English, Gary R. Kluckhuhn, Nancy K. Thornton & son-in-law Kenneth Thornton; 4 of her 6 grandchildren: Christina D. Long, Bryan A. Long, Katrina K. Canady, Kiersten K. Mooney, and 3 Great Grandchildren: Severn Priscilla Strong & Laurence Archer Strong & Casey Lee Canady & Great-Great Grandchild Skylar Lee Canady. She is also survived by her sister Diane P. Rowley. She was preceded in death by Grandchildren Amy L. Kramberger & Jason R. Kramberger.

In addition to being a devoted wife and mother, Priscilla partnered with Fred to build houses in Silver Spring. They also spent almost 20 years sailing in the Chesapeake Bay, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Florida Keys. Having traveled around the world, they were members of the Circumnavigation Club, as well as active members of the Annapolis Yacht Club. Priscilla was a member of the AYC Race Committee into her mid-90s.

She was the loving and very much-loved Mom and Nana of the next four generations of the family!

A Funeral Mass will be held on Friday, August 13, at 10:30 a.m. at St. Mary’s Catholic Church at 109 Duke of Gloucester St., Annapolis, MD, followed by interment at Lakemont Memorial Gardens, 900 W. Central Ave., Davidsonville, MD 21035, at 12 noon.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.

Eulogy for the Funeral Mass

of Priscilla Pratt Kluckhuhn

St. Mary’s Church, Annapolis, MD

Friday, August 13, 2021

by Carolyn Long

Priscilla’s Gifts

Mom was a devout Catholic, and I don’t think she ever read the Torah, but if she lived by one abiding mantra, it could best be described by an Chasidic teacher who wrote in the Torah:

"There are those who feel deep distress and are unable even to tell what they feel in their hearts; but, if they meet one person with a joyful face, he can revive them with his joy. And to revive a person is no slight thing."

Mom often said, “I try to make at least one person smile every day.” And She figured out a very clever way of doing that. She pretty much smiled at everyone she met and that often led to her striking up conversations in the most unusual places with some of the most unsuspecting people. Now, you might not have even known you needed a smile, but when you got one of those heartwarming smiles from Priscilla, well, you pretty much couldn’t help but smile back. Or at least reply with her often heard refrain, “You’ve got a beautiful smile! “

On one such occasion she turned around to her granddaughter who had been walking behind her and said, “Did that woman say anything to you?” And when her granddaughter answered, “No.“ Mom replied, “You need to smile more!“

She didn’t stop there. If she knew there were something more she could do to make a difference in your life, she was likely to try and do it, whether you thought you needed it or not!

I remember learning about a man who was doing odd jobs for people in her neighborhood in Florida where she used to spend winters. In talking with him she learned that he couldn’t seem to get a real job anywhere, even though he seemed like a nice, intelligent, hard-working man. But, see, this fella had about the worst teeth she’d ever seen, and she figured that was his big handicap. So one day she just told him I’m gonna give you the money to get your teeth fixed, and you don’t have to pay me back, unless it helps you get a job that you could afford to. Well, few things brought her greater joy than the broad smile on that man’s now attractive face when he came and gave her the money that he’d earned from his new job.

Another way she brought so much joy to people was with her amazing storytelling ability, which was greatly enhanced by her extraordinary memory. You couldn’t sit with Priscilla for five minutes without hearing some fascinating story from her long and very interesting life. It could go back as far as the very first burial ceremony she ever attended. She and her best friend, Aubrey See, whole name she distinctly remembered, both three years old, found a dead mouse and proceeded to get a box and conduct a burial ceremony under the porch with prayers and everything for this smallest of God’s creatures.

Talking with mom was like talking with a living history book. She might tell you how she watched the lamplighter from her window in SE DC, or listened to FDR’s Fireside Chats on the radio, or cried over Pearl Harbor, because she had been to dances with boys from the Nava. l Academy on those ships.

Or she might share stories from her life with Fred Kluckhuhn, the love of her life: how they built houses together and became avid sailors, spending six months of every year for 17 years, sailing from Annapolis to Florida and the Islands, sing the Bermuda triangle 17 times, and battling 15’ high waves in the high seas. Someone asked, “Just the two of you?“ She replied, “There were never just the two of us. There was always One more,” as she pointed upward. She had such faith she said she was never afraid.

“People say it’s hard to have that much faith.” My Brother Gary said, and added, “I’d hate to tell you how hard it is NOT to!”

The first reading from the Gospel today from the Book of Wisdom begins: “The souls of the Just are in the hand of God and no torment shall touch them.” And concludes, “Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones and his care is with his elect.”

I quote this passage because the nurses on duty Mom’s last night in the hospital told me their names were Mercy and Grace. So God clearly wanted us to know that in Mom’s last moments she was surrounded by Mercy and Grace, just in case we didn’t already know it.

Priscilla Pratt Kluckhuhn, Centenarian

Celebration of Life

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Thank you for coming to Celebrate with us the extraordinary life of the wonderful woman that we have been blessed to call Mom, Grandma, Nana, Sister, Aunt, Cousin and Friend.

This is not the Surprise Birthday Party for Priscilla we had hoped to be celebrating with you, but this is the party God and Mom, once she learned about the party we had planned for her at the Annapolis Yacht Club, requested we hold to celebrate her life. We’re honored and moved that you chose to come when the biggest party girl of them all chose to be celebrating elsewhere.

In struggling to know what parts of such a huge and long life to share with you, I took my cue from my very dear friend Dr. Desai who said, “Yes, we are still coming. You said it will be a Celebration of her life, and I want to learn more about her life.” So we are hoping that through the words of family and friends, through some highlights of her life, and a brief video in her own words, we will convey something of the breadth and depth, and of the essence of this amazing woman.

It’s really hard to comprehend how much Mom saw and did in her lifetime.

Priscilla Evelyn Pratt was born on August 17, 1921, in Cambridge, New York, the second of three girls to Jane Esther Smith Pratt and Daniel Harry Pratt. Her first home was in the Cambridge hotel, owned by her grandfather, Charles Orlando Pratt.

One of Priscilla’s most striking attributes was her extraordinary Memory. She could reach back to events that occurred when she was as young as three years of age. You might think 100 years is long enough to learn everything you need to know about a person. But it never ceased to amaze me how she would pull out new events and people from her magic hat of experiences I hadn’t heard before, and her wise perspective on so many things.

She was a year old when they moved to Washington DC, where she vividly remembers looking out the window of their house to see the big clock at Howard University, and watching the lamplighter light the streetlights on Harvard Street, and street vendors selling vegetables, delivering milk, and calling out “knives and scissors.” Their favorite was the Ice Man who delivered huge chunks of ice for their ice boxes, because he always gave them chips of ice. What he didn’t know was they hung on to the back of the truck to ride to the top of the hill. In about 1923 they moved to 3009 S. Dakota Avenue.

Talking with Mom was like talking with a living history book. Her life spanned 19 presidents. She remembers listening to FDR on the radio, seeing Eleanor Roosevelt at a DAR Hall, and hearing the announcer cry while reporting on the explosion of the Hindenburg. She remembers sitting on the grass under massive trees watching her father graduate from Georgetown Law School. And going with her father to Saturday double features at the Jesse theater where she saw movie stars like Frank Sinatra and 16-year-old Judy Garland, and to baseball games at Griffith Stadium.

Her lifelong attributes of resourcefulness and entrepreneurship began early. She saved money from babysitting, shoveling show, pulling weeds and picking blueberries for a penny a bucket, and selling creams and Liberty Magazines to buy her very own “Rosebud,” a Flexible Flyer Sled on which she engraved her name. Her Mother was a great model in that regard, as she made most of her daughters’ clothes, and baked pies on Saturday afternoons for her husband to sell at the VA where he practiced law.

To say Priscilla was a SURVIVOR would be something of an understatement. She survived a series of childhood diseases and a major house fire, from which her father rescued her, falling down a flight of stairs with her in the process. Throughout her life she overcame numerous physical challenges, but she didn’t live to be 100 by accident! She was highly attuned to her body and sought professional help when she needed it. She was a lifelong learner about many things, including things that affected her health or that of her family.

She didn’t just save her own life again and again. She waw also a RESCUER. She saved the lives of family and friends by diagnosing such things as appendicitis and peritonitis and anaphylaxis, and by turning more than one young child upside down to dislodge food or a penny, and by rescuing young children who had fallen off piers.

People who knew Priscilla called her a FORCE OF NATURE. That she knew her own mind, spoke her truth and acted on her beliefs and best instincts. That manifested in another attribute: she was a strong DECISION-MAKER: She graduated at just 16 from high school, and when her father declined to send her to college, she got a job at a neighbor’s small plumbing company, where she met the young engineer, Fred Kluckhuhn. She was just barely 19 when they married on September 27, 1940.

The US entered WWII just a year later, in September 1941. Priscilla’s Father encouraged Fred to join the US Air Corps, as he had in WWI, before being drafted, which he did, as he always wanted to fly.

Before she met Fred, Priscilla often spent weekends in Annapolis, going sailing and to dances with boys from the Naval Academy. She was devastated by the December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor, as she knew boys who were on ships that were destroyed.

A GREAT LOVE STORY: Fred & Priscilla’s first of four children, Carolyn, was born April 8, 1942, and Priscilla traveled around the Country to be with Fred as he moved from base to base. When he was transferred to California, they wrote letters to one another every day. Rereading those hundreds of beautiful love letters in recent years brought Priscilla tremendous joy. She said finding them was the greatest gift ever!

ENTREPRENEURSHIP: After the war was over, the growing family, which included Dan (8/24/44), Gary (11/17/45), and Nancy (10/5/48), eventually settled in Maryland, where in the early 50s, they purchased 30 acres of farmland in Silver Spring, named it Rolling Acres, and built an entire subdivision. While Fred ran an engineering firm in DC, Priscilla was general contractor and on-site builder of the houses Fred designed in Rolling Acres. She was also an avid GARDENER and put-up preserves from the peaches and other fruits they grew in their orchard. Priscilla loved riding their cub tractor, mowing lawns, pulling neighbors out of snow drifts, and spreading gravel on Priscilla Drive. She was a fantastic cook, preparing meals for family dinners of more than 20 guests, making curtains for the windows, and repairing every appliance that broke down, including the TV, whose tubes she was adept at changing!

Fred and Priscilla took their four children on a cross-country auto tour whose highlight was attending the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

Fred was doing the engineering on projects all over the Country and around the world. On one of his overseas trips Priscilla accompanied him, and they made it an around-the-world tour, qualifying them as Circumnavigators.

Fred & Priscilla were both great swimmers and loved the water. Fred had been captain of the swim team at the University of Maryland from which he had graduated. So, it was no surprise they took up sailing, and in 1968 moved to Annapolis, where Priscilla lived on the Severn River with Carolyn, her caregiver.

MISS PRIS, Sailor Extraordinaire: Their first sailboat was a 32’ Galaxy, a sloop. When they outgrew that they purchased a 42’ Countess, a racing sailboat with ketch rigging. Their last sailboat was a 47’ Gulfstar, the “MISS PRIS 2.” They were enthusiastic members of the Annapolis Yacht Club and other sailing organizations and enjoyed sailing on the Severn River and Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and rafting up with other sailors on outings.

Being an engineer and former pilot, there was little Fred did not know about engines and navigation. This enabled the two of them to sail safely in the ocean, which they did for many years. For 17 years, the two of them single-handedly sailed from Annapolis to Florida and the Islands for six months of every year, crossing the Bermuda Triangle 34 times, battling 15’ high waves alone at night on the open sea! One sailing buddy liked to tell friends that they had more “Blue Miles” than anyone else in the Club.

When Fred passed in 1999 at the age of 83, Priscilla continued her enthusiasm for sailing as a Recorder for the sailboats at AYC’s Wednesday Night Races until the 2015 fire at the Annapolis Yacht Club forced Recorders to work from boats and other locations.

Her greatest joys in recent years were visiting with friends and family, particularly her great grandchildren, 10-year-old Severn Priscilla (named after the River and her), 7-year-old Laurence, and her great-great granddaughter, Skylar.

Priscilla was also an amazing techie, enjoying Facetime and Facebook, and trading stocks on her computer!

Priscilla: devoted wife, super-mom, master gardener, builder extraordinaire, sailor on the high seas, would-be-computer geek, and the most entertaining member of any group she’s in! A true Super Mom and clearly qualified member in good standing of the Greatest Generation! And the loving and very much-loved Mom and Nana of the next four generations of her family!