Preserving their voices - Salt Lake Tribune

The life of Hershell Pruitt was remembered in bits.

His five children each hold a piece. This week, they gathered at the hospice to say goodbye to their 86-year-old father, a World War II veteran of the Pacific campaign, who passed away Friday after a bout with Alzheimer's disease.

But before he died, his family began putting those stories together to form the arc of a spectacularly full life.

There to preserve Pruitt's story on a digital recording was a volunteer from Salt Lake County's Silverado Hospice who interviewed the family, part of a new program to capture the details of terminal patients' lives. The recordings are then pressed onto CDs and given to surviving family members.

"Getting us all together, we each added a little piece to the story," said son Charles Pruitt, 46, Salt Lake City. "Each of us in turn told a story, and we were engaged and just sitting on the edge of our seats. It was a different perspective on my father's life."

Since the Memory Catcher program started earlier this year at Silverado, a handful of volunteers have recorded the stories of terminal patients for about 15 families, said volunteer Eileen Allen, who interviewed the Pruitts for their father's history. It's a free service offered by Silverado, which houses the hospice center for Alzheimer's patients.

"We did not do that with my father, and we should have done it," Allen said. Her father was a veteran of World War II, the Korean

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and Vietnam wars. "That's why this program appealed to me when I was looking for an avenue to volunteer."

The Memory Catcher program was inspired by University of Utah English professor Meg Brady, who initiated an audio history program for terminal patients at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.

Brady helped train hospice volunteers in interviewing techniques. Preserving a loved's one voice is significant, said David Pascoe, the hospice center's chaplain. "And when they pass away, you've got this record -- not a written history, but Mom or Dad's voice."

"We've been doing this for the last several months, and some of these stories are just amazing," Pascoe said. "Some are World War II vets who haven't told these stories before, and they tell these amazing tales of marching across Europe or through the beaches on D-Day."

Hershell Pruitt was reluctant to talk to his family about his war days. "He told us it was not something that he thought was pleasant conversation," Charles Pruitt said. "In fact, he had a very hard time watching any movie or television show that looked at war in any sort of light way. I remember watching 'M*A*S*H,' and he said, 'War is not funny, there was nothing funny about it.' "

But Pruitt, who served on a naval destroyer that once escorted Gen. Douglas MacArthur, occasionally would recount certain stories to his children.

"We all know sort of a few anecdotes," Charles Pruitt said. "He would mention someone he met in basic training in Hawaii, and he would tell small stories about people, and a little bit about places."

The siblings' two-hour recording session at the Alzheimer's center proved to be emotional and exhausting. "At the end, we were just tired, but in a pleasant way," Charles Pruitt said. "It was in a way sort of cathartic."

And very much worth it, the son noted, because he and each of his siblings now have a CD that captures the essence and details of their father's incredible life that they can pass on to their children.

"This is something that's going to be in our family forever and will be very important to us," Charles Pruitt said. "I can imagine my daughter listening to it. I hope she'll treasure it and listen to it as often as she likes."

vince@sltrib.com

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Catching memories

For information about the Silverado Hospice, call chaplain David Pascoe at 801-827-3671.

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