Terence Pratt was born in Massachusetts, and raised and educated in Connecticut. His family, including grandparents, could only be described as “working class folks” with strong social consciences. Even though no one in his family had attended college, his parents and grandparents passed on to him a love of learning and a strong sense of justice and humanitarianism. He remembers his paternal grandfather, with only a 6th grade education, teaching him at a very young age how to use a slide rule, how to construct a rain gauge, how important rights for the working man were and how reading Shakespeare could give one valuable insights into what it means to be a human being. He remembers boycotting lettuce and grapes with his family to show support for Caesar Chavez and the migrant farm workers, and at the same time reading John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath.
With this background, then, it’s no surprise that he has always been interested in how politics affects the least privileged in our society; it’s also no surprise that he became an English major. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree from Lyndon State College in Vermont and a Master’s from Mississippi State University in English, and then taught there for two years before moving to Arizona almost 14 years ago. He has been employed at Yavapai College for 14 years and from 2001 until August 2007 was the Assistant Dean and then Dean of the Liberals Arts and Social Sciences Division. He is now, once again, a full time English Instructor, having resigned from the Dean’s position last August. Teaching is his love, and his decision to return full time was one of the best he’s made. In his spare time, he reads just about anything he can, research politics, literature and esoteric subjects like Quantum Mechanics, collects junk metal and constructs “primitive” metal sculptures and writes poetry and short fiction.
He is very excited about Cottonwood and serving on the City Council and has much respect for our Mayor, colleagues, the city’s employees and all of our fine citizens. Oh, and his literary hero is Don Quixote, whom he sees as the quintessential optimist, hence his e-mail address. Quixote51@hotmail.com