On a snowy night in 1969, Edwin was shot in his home, while Miriam and her mother, Bettye, were inside.
“I remember, I heard my mother cry ‘Edwin!’ and I sat up in the bed, and I was immediately engulfed in fear,” Miriam, now 55, tells Jean.
Jean and her mother were Pratts’ neighbors. They rushed over after receiving a phone call from Bettye.
“When I saw that front door was open, I knew. I knew,” says Jean, who was 21 at the time. “I’ll never forget walking into that family room and I could see your dad laying there and, of course, he was totally still. He died instantly.”
Jean Soliz and Miriam Pratt raise fists a few months after Edwin Pratt’s assassination in 1969. Inspired by Edwin and his wife Bettye, who had been a social worker, Jean went on to have a career in social services.
Jean ran and got Miriam from her room. For Miriam, that’s when “I knew everything was going to be alright,” she says.
Edwin had spent his last day playing with his daughter. “He played snowballs with you and took you on your little sled and spent that whole day with you,” Jean tells Miriam. “Which I think is a marvelous thing.”
After his death, Miriam’s mom didn’t talk much about Edwin, because it made her sad. Miriam was able to learn about him through a photo album that Bettye had put together. It was filled with newspaper clippings, obituaries, and personal pictures of Edwin.
What’s different about this story is what this little girl did all because she walked past a plaque for Edwin Pratt
