Two months after his death, the University community will gather this afternoon to celebrate the life of Edmund Pratt, Engineering '47.
A memorial ceremony, which will take place in the Chapel at 1 p.m., was a final wish of Pratt, the engineering school's namesake and the former chair and CEO of Pfizer Inc., said Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering Kristina Johnson.
Johnson, President Nan Keohane, Board of Trustee member Peter Nicholas and Pratt senior Kyle Smith will speak in honor of Pratt, who died Sept. 5 at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
"It's appropriate that it is in the Chapel that he loved so much," Johnson said. "When he first came to Duke, he said he looked up at the Chapel and literally thought he'd gone to heaven."
The entire University and Durham community is invited to celebrate the life of the man who in 1999 gave $35 million to the School of Engineering--one of the largest gifts in the University's history, second only to Duke's 1924 $40 million gift that would be worth about $480 million today.
"I hope the whole community comes, because he served not just the School of Engineering but the University as a whole," Johnson said. "He really wanted to make people happy, and he helped Duke grow."
The University regularly holds similar ceremonies for particularly distinguished alumni, trustees or major University benefactors, Keohane said. "Since all three categories apply to Ed Pratt, we wanted to be sure to do this," she wrote in an e-mail. "It's important for us to join together to remember, honor and recognize people whose lives have been especially important to the University."
The service was purposely scheduled two months after his death and a month after a similar service at Long Island University--an institution to which Pratt was also close--because University officials wanted to wait for the Board of Visitors to be here, Johnson said.
Pratt, who died at age 85, was born in Savannah, Ga., but grew up in Elkton, Md. He graduated magna cum laude from Duke's engineering school in 1947 with a B.S. in electrical engineering, and then received his M.B.A. in 1949 from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Pratt also served in both World War II and the Korean War.
As a Pratt Research Fellow, Smith met Pratt over lunch last year.
"The way he chose his path when faced with a decision was to always choose what he thought would be the most fun," said Smith, who is also the president of the Engineering Student Government. "That was one of the things that made him really successful.... He exemplified what we would hope a lot of our graduates would be."
Keohane said that the service has been called a celebration, rather than a memorial, as the speakers' remarks will be upbeat.
"We hope that those who come who knew Ed well will say, 'Yes, that's what he was like; how lovely to celebrate this together,'" Keohane wrote, "and those who did not know him but know of the impact of his life will say, 'What a wonderful man; I wish I could have known him.'"
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