Philipsburg Mail, 27 June 2013
“I practice at the office.” said Stu Pritchard, MD.
These days Pritchard inquires informally after his friends and acquaintances when he bumps into them
around town like at the Post Office. He listens to what they say and then points in right direction, medically speaking.
But Pritchard took the long way getting his practice to the casual inquiries he makes while retrieving his mail at the Philipsburg Post Office.
Pritchard was born in the small town of Lander, Wyoming in rudimentary conditions. His father was a “tie hack” — a crew famous for hand-hewing railroad ties with axes. In the 1930s the family “moved from the sublime to the ridiculous: Gary Indiana.”
Gary had 40% unemployment during the depression and Pritchard’s father was unemployed for three years. For a time they lived with Pritchard’s grandmother he and his sister slept on the floor of their parent’s bedroom.
Eventually Pritchard’s father became a sales representative for the South Bend Bart Company, working
his way up to travel all around North and South America selling rods and tackle. Twenty years after his death, Pritchard’s father was honored by the International Sports Fishing Hall of Fame in Wisconsin.
When he graduated high school, Pritchard became the first in his family to attend college when he matriculated at Purdue University.
Pritchard had just been accepted to medical school, when Pearl Harbor was bombed in WWII.
“I didn’t want to go to medical school. But young men had no choices then — ‘shut up. you’re going,'” they told him. The army sent him to Northwestern University in Chicago for
