Douglas statesman, author Robert Pruett dead at 99

A memorial service is 11 a.m. Saturday at Mottsville Cemetery for author and former Douglas County commission chairman Robert Lloyd Pruett, 99, who died Easter Sunday.

Mr. Pruett was born Jan. 20, 1911, to Robert Lee Pruett and Josie Baugh Pruett in Los Angeles. The Pruetts had been Christian missionaries in Japan for more than 20 years. His three brothers and sisters were born in Japan. Mr. Pruett attended school in Hawaii and Los Angeles.

Mr. Pruett enrolled in the University of Nevada in 1931, where he played football and boxed. That's where he met his future wife, Margaret Park. After two years in Nevada he returned to Hawaii and worked for his sister Elizabeth Farrington, publisher of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. He received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Hawaii in 1935. He returned to Nevada and married Margaret Park.

Mr. Pruett was called Lloyd by his family and Bob by the Park family in Carson Valley. He was a successful rancher with more than 6,000 head of sheep at one period. In 1948 he was elected as the assemblyman from Douglas County to the Nevada Legislature.

His slogan was "cowmen should vote for a sheep guy once in awhile."

He served in the Nevada Assembly from 1949-51 and spent four terms on the Douglas County commission, serving from 1964-68 and returning in 1982 for a three-term stint that ended with his decision not to seek re-election in 1994. He served as chairman of the commission for two terms.

Mr. Pruett asked George Whitell for the land that became Whitell High School and the Round Hill Sewer Improvement District plant. He was a founding member of the sewer district and served from 1955 to 2009 (54 years) on its board of directors.

In 1964 when the Park Cattle Co. was creating the Edgewood Golf Course, several plans for the clubhouse presented by architects were turned down. Mr. Pruett then built a 3-by-4-foot model of his vision of a clubhouse.

Mr. Pruett was a writer and published seven books, and he loved to paint. He was an avid big game hunter and made three safaris to Africa. He has trophies taken from the Amazon basin and from the Himalayas. In 1965 a movie "Wild is The Wind," was made on the Pruett Ranch south of Gardnerville, starring Anthony Quinn as a sheep rancher. Mr. Pruett played the role of a Basque sheepherder. It was not his first movie experience. In 1930, he worked in Hollywood as a double for Douglas Fairbanks.

He was a pilot with several thousand hours time in small planes. Mr. Pruett spoke fair Spanish and some Basque, he was entertaining, could play the piano and sing well.

He spent years pursuing his dream by building hundreds of models of a perpetual motion magnet machine. He also experimented with every combination of food and vitamins possible.

He was almost never sick and always refused to go to the doctor. In college he ran a 4:23 mile. At 98, Mr. Pruett got a traffic citation for no plates on his Jeep.

Mr. Pruett is preceded in death by wife Margaret, who died in 1992; and son Robert Lloyd Pruett Jr., who died in 1969.

He is survived by son David; daughter Zoe; five grandchildren, Greg, Kelly, Stacy, Cindy and Jeff and 14 great-grandchildren.

Walton's Funerals and Cremations is in charge of final arrangements.