A spotlight to remember with PFC Charles Pratt, Jr., US Army 1943-1945

Multifaceted actor and Hollywood maestro Cole Hauser is five feet away—Yellowstone, Dazed and Confused, Good Will Hunting to boot—and yet the star of the Community Hero Suite is World War II veteran PFC Charles Pratt, Jr.

Handshakes, thank yous and respects pour in for Pratt, who’s the Lightning’s Military Appreciation Night guest of honor at 99 years young. He’s happy to oblige all of it—jovial even. You’d be forgiven for mistaking him for someone two-thirds his age. It’s a vibrant and special room of people, including the evening’s Hero and President of Special Operations Warrior Foundation Clay Hutmacher. In the thick of it all, one might forget that the Lightning and Blackhawks are still playing just behind us in a primetime packed house.

That was the scene Thursday night. Charles Pratt’s history is all the more inspiring.

Pratt joined the military in 1943 a mere nine days after attending his high school graduation (nine days), wherein Pratt reported to Camp Blanding Army Base in Starke, Florida. He then shipped off to Fulton County, Illinois for Basic Training, where Fulton’s Camp Ellis was widely used for the training of engineers, medical staff, signal corps and quartermaster troops during World War Il.

From there Pratt traveled to New York City for staging area where troops prepared to go overseas. At that point in the war, overseas meant the heart of battle in France and England, where Germany had already started bombing.

Pratt boarded ships to South Hampton on the English Channel and on to Normandy to fight the Germans near the Rhine River. Assignments to Holland and Belgium followed, before being re-deployed back to France to prep for the Japanese advance.

Then in 1945, the war ended.

Pratt returned to New York, where servicemen were sent back to the camps at which they started in order to get discharged. So he returned home to Florida at Camp Blanding. Once discharged, he attended Florida A&M University where he earned a BA Degree in music. He started a life and a family.

74 years later, Pratt is on the ice at Amalie Arena alongside that family, leading our country’s national anthem with fellow veteran Sonya Bryson-Kirksey and more than 19,000 people. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. If you bottled up the energy in the room, you could keep the lights on for a year.

It feels like in the Internet of Things, when the History Channel is a little less World War II In Colour and a little more Pawn Stars, maybe stories and nights like these hold more weight. The passion, the emotion, the camaraderie and purpose all on display. The Lightning lost 5-3 to the Blackhawks Thursday night, but it’s tough to care too much about hockey after moments like that. The night was already won by Pratt and the service members and veterans who have sacrificed and served for our country.