M. V. Pruett

Here is the official obituary as it appeared in The Dallas Morning News.  "Pruett, Bro. M. V. Born on June. 15, 1925 Departed on, August 23, 2011 Resided in Mesquite, TX. Bro. M. V. Pruett, of Mesquite, Texas, passed away peacefully at Beacon Hospice in Longview, Texas on August 23, 2011. Following a public burial at The Mesquite Cemetery at 12:00 noon on Saturday, August 27, 2011, a service of worship and celebration will be held at 2:00 pm at Wildwood Baptist Church. Family will receive friends at the Wildwood Baptist Church Friday evening from 6:00PM - 8:00PM. "




I first met Bro. Pruett, when I was taking piano lessons from Beth Bassett  and working for Mr. Bassett.  I met two of his daughters (Kelley & Paula)  as they were taking piano lessons there also.  If I was mowing when they would arrive for piano lessons,  I would try to find a way to get close enough to say hi to them.  Bro. Pruett would come over and just spend time talking to me ( as a  Pastor and friend and not as a parent), if he was the one who brought the girls.  He just loved people.  


After I started driving, I started attending Wildwood Baptist Church where he was Pastor.  His compassion for people was maybe his biggest quality.  He had a presence about him that just seemed to calm those around him.  I know that when my 1st son was born, my wife was in labor all night.  It reach a point the next morning when the Doctor saw the need to perform a c section. My mother and mother in law had both been there all night also and were fit to be tied by early in the morning. So about 5 am I called Bro. Pruett and he came down to the hospital and as soon as he walked in everyone started calming down.  After Jarrod was born and everyone else went home, Bro. Pruett took me to have breakfast with him and to talk.  He told me that he appreciated getting to sleep that night, but he would have been down there with me from the start if I had called him. 


 That was the way he was with everyone. He is the only preacher that I have ever known that would call his Deacons a hour or two before the service was scheduled to start to tell them that they needed to fill in for him because he needed to be with a family at their time of crises. 


He was the Pastor that baptized me after my salvation experience that had occurred years earlier.  He also performed Virginia's and mine wedding ceremony and over saw me being ordained as a Deacon when I was 25.


While I will not put him on a pedestal and worship him, nor will even describe him as a great man of God, I will say that the man that we knew and loved and that meant so much to us was Christ in M. V. Pruett and that was true about him always-even on his worst day.