If destiny can be cast in the womb, then Jack Arthur Pritchard was ordained to become an obstetrician. During her pregnancy, his mother suffered from what appears (from his father’s description) to have been eclampsia (toxemia of pregnancy). At the time, the treatment for this disorder was to limit water intake and refrain from eating pork. Amazingly, mother and child survived.

The oldest of three children, Jack Arthur Pritchard was born in Painesville, Ohio, on 25 July 1921, to George Frederick and Marguerite [McKee] Pritchard. His father was a part-time brakeman and yardmaster for a branch line of the B&O Railroad. The family’s income fluctuated depending on the economy of the railroad which transported coal for use in steel production.

Like many families who lived during the Great Depression, the Pritchards struggled to make ends meet, and college was by no means a certainty. Lured by the possibility of a scholarship (which never materialized) and working whatever jobs he could find, in 1938, Jack Pritchard entered Ohio Northern University in Ada to study pharmacy. Pharmacy was one of the few professions where jobs were still available, and the virtue of this did not escape Jack or his father.

But a lifetime as a pharmacist was not in Dr. Pritchard’s future.

“Though I was not overwhelmed by the intellectual capacity demonstrated by small-town doctors, by this time I recognized that medicine was a more challenging field. I began to analyze the possibility of going to medical school or at least graduate school and obtaining a Ph.D. in Pharmacology.”

Lacking any formal premedical preparation and undaunted by the discouragement of the Head of the Biology Department, Jack Pritchard took the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). The medical school registrar at Western Reserve College (now Case Western Reserve University) was unwilling to accept an applicant who had not followed a premed curriculum. But, after seeing his MCAT results, the Dean insisted that Pritchard be accepted into medical school. So, following his graduation from Ohio Northern University with a B.S. in Pharmacy (May 1942), Dr. Pritchard was ready to enter medical school. But, he had been accepted too late to become part of the 1942 freshman class. And, then there was the matter of the war and the military draft.

Pearl Harbor had been attacked on 7 December 1941, and the United States was at war. Many of Pritchard’s classmates were drafted right after graduating from college. However, the military also needed trained physicians and had just created the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). Fortunately for Jack Pritchard, his orders to become a second lieutenant on inactive duty in the ASTP program arrived before he was scheduled to be sworn in as a Navy hospital corpsman. He entered Western Reserve College as a freshman medical student in 1943.

Western Reserve College also had a nurses’ training program — the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. As luck would have it, Cadet Pritchard attracted the attention of a nurse in the Student Nurse Cadet Corps, Signe M. Allen. The couple married in March 9, 1945, and subsequently had three sons — Jack Allen, David George, and Allen Jeffrey.

Receiving his M.D. degree in March 1946, Pritchard was offered an internship in internal medicine but turned it down in favor of one in obstetrics and gynecology. This 15-month experience left him disenchanted with the way obstetrics and gynecology was practiced. “Science was lacking to say the least. I wanted out,” he said.

While most ASTP graduates were placed on active duty after completing their internship, the military offered a year’s deferment to obtain additional training. Intended as a clinical training deferment, Dr. Pritchard took advantage of this program to pursue a fellowship in pharmacology and published his first peer-reviewed article on folic acid in 1948. He was hooked.

But there was still the matter of military service. The war had ended in 1945 and by 1948, the military was downsizing. Most of the ASTP-trained physicians expected to be released from the Army after their year’s deferment. As luck would have it, rather than discharge, Captain Jack Pritchard received orders to report for active duty in Japan.

That year spent serving as Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Sendai, reawakened Dr. Pritchard’s interest in obstetrics. After discharge from the Army of the United States in 1950, he returned to Cleveland to complete residency training in obstetrics and gynecology (1950–1954).

Dr. Pritchard had a long-standing interest in preeclampsia – eclampsia (toxemia of pregnancy). He described the management of women with this disorder as bordering on schizophrenia. Morphine was the medicine of choice. If the mother survived to be delivered, the baby would at best be severely depressed from the effects of the morphine. Mortality was high.

During his residency, Dr. Pritchard observed that the blood he had personally drawn from an eclamptic woman had hemolyzed. (Hemolysis occurs when red cells break open releasing hemoglobin into the surrounding plasma.) Partnering with Drs. Oscar Ratnoff and Russell Weisman, hematologists in the Department of Medicine at Western Reserve University, they identified a variety of changes associated with hemolysis. This research ultimately led to the use of magnesium sulfate to control the convulsions associated with this disorder. With the convulsions under control, the baby could be immediately delivered — and the mother’s eclamptic symptoms resolved.

By the time he completed residency, Dr. Pritchard had put his stamp on reproductive medicine. He had published four peer review articles. Three more — including one in the New England Journal of Medicine — appeared a year later.

Knowing of his interest in pharmacology and research, in 1954, his former mentor at Western Reserve University tempted Dr. Pritchard with the offer of a joint appointment in Pharmacology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale. But Dr. Pritchard turned it down and instead became an Assistant Professor and Oglebay Fellow in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Western Reserve University.

Then in March 1955, Dr. Pritchard received a call from the chair of a search committee at Southwestern Medical College. His name had been suggested as a possible candidate to fill the vacant chair of obstetrics and gynecology. Though intrigued, Dr. Pritchard refused. But Dean A.J. Gill would not take “no” for an answer and managed to persuade Dr. Pritchard to interview for the position.

What the Pritchards saw in Dallas was hardly enticing. The Department was housed in “the shacks” across the street from the Old Parkland Hospital. Outpatient care was provided in the basement of the hospital (dedicated in 1913) which was so hot in the summer that medical students operated fainting teams to revive pregnant women waiting to be seen. But, there was a new Parkland Memorial Hospital — and construction was about to begin on a clinical science building on the Southwestern campus next to Parkland. Dr. Pritchard accepted the offer. And at age 33, he became the youngest chair of obstetrics and gynecology in the nation.

“Both historically and philosophically, Dr. Pritchard, in 1955, assumed the chairmanship of this Department at a time when even those few institutions which indeed had full time Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology were principally if not exclusively dedicated only to service and resident teaching. Jack Pritchard, on the other hand, was one of the first, if not the first, chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology who introduced a truly academic environment into this specialty with a relevance to the basic and clinical research laboratories that had not existed previously.”

Following 15 years as chair, Dr. Pritchard asked to be relieved of his duties effective August 31, 1969. What precipitated this decision was a serendipitous moment in Dr. Pritchard’s history and that of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

While attending a meeting of the American Gynecologic Society in Homestead, Virginia, where he was a candidate for membership, Dr. Pritchard received an invitation to meet with Dr. Nicholson Eastman. Dr. Eastman was Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Johns Hopkins Medical School and was author/editor of the textbook, Williams Obstetrics.

John Whitridge Williams, Chief of Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University (1899–1931), had first published this textbook in 1903 and was responsible for its first six editions. After he died in 1931, the book moved to Cornell University Medical College when Dr. Williams’ protégé, Henricus Stander, M.D., became editor. Following Dr. Stander’s death from a heart attack in 1948, the book (now in its 10th edition) returned to Johns Hopkins under the editorship of Dr. Eastman and his co-author Louis Hellman, M.D.

Williams Obstetrics was THE obstetrics textbook. Dr. Pritchard had been a collaborator on the 13th edition published in 1966. Although he had seen Dr. Eastman briefly, he had never met him, and did not know why Dr. Eastman wanted to meet with him.

Over breakfast, Eastman announced that he planned to retire and wanted to transfer Williams Obstetrics to someone “worthy”. He had selected Jack Arthur Pritchard as that someone. To say that the Pritchards were astonished is probably an understatement. But, in order to assume this responsibility and bring the prestigious Williams Obstetrics to Southwestern, Dr. Pritchard needed time and asked to be relieved of his duties as chair. Paul C. MacDonald, M.D., was named Acting Chair September 1, 1969, and became permanent chair on September 1, 1970.

Between 1969 and 1985, Dr. Pritchard was responsible for four editions of Williams Obstetrics. He published the 14th edition in 1971 with Louis Hellman. Thereafter, his co-authors were all Southwestern faculty. The 15th edition was published in 1976, the 16th in 1980, and the 17th in 1985. (In his official portrait, Dr. Pritchard’s right hand is resting on the 15th edition of Williams Obstetrics which he co-authored with Dr. Paul C. MacDonald.) In addition to Williams Obstetrics, Dr. Pritchard continued his duties as Chief of Obstetrics at Parkland and successfully launched the Maternal Health and Family Planning Program in Dallas. In 1985, he passed the senior editorship of Williams Obstetrics to Dr. F. Gary Cunningham, and the 18th edition was fittingly dedicated to Dr. Pritchard.

“The residents held him in the highest esteem, his reputation for honesty was legend, and his straightforward approach became his trademark.”

Dr. Pritchard retired as a full-time faculty member in 1985 and divided his time between Dallas and Apache Junction, Arizona. He continued to work half time covering the obstetrical service at Parkland until he permanently retired August 31, 1990, and became the first Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynecology and also Ashbel Smith Professor Emeritus of the University of Texas System. In his final month as an attending faculty member at Parkland, a new intern — Dr. Steven Bloom, who would go on to become the Department’s sixth chair 15 years later, was assigned to his service.

In 2001, Jack and Signe Pritchard moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico where he completed his autobiography, Every Life Has A Story And This Is Mine.

While he received many accolades, those he cherished the most came from home. In 1972, he received the Dallas Southern Clinical Society’s Marchman Award “in recognition of his development of an outstanding academic department and for his own important contributions to research and his development of a Planned Parenthood program in this region.”

“He demanded excellence, and if you failed to perform, he didn’t tolerate it. He was an absolutely marvelous teacher, researcher, and leader.”

In 1975, the Jack A. Pritchard Professorship in Obstetrics and Gynecology was established to honor Dr. Pritchard’s contributions to the Department and community as well as his basic research on the hematological changes during pregnancy. (In 2004, the professorship became the Jack A. Pritchard Chair in Obstetrics and Gynecology as donors posthumously honored the man who had been their mentor, colleague, and friend.)

Modeled after the Oglebay Fellowship that supported Dr. Pritchard’s training at Case Western Reserve, the Jack and Signe Pritchard Fellowship in Maternal–Fetal Medicine was established in 1985 to honor the Pritchards by funding the research of an academically oriented maternal-fetal medicine fellow. The first recipient was Susan M. Cox, M.D.

And on November 28, 2001, ex-residents, fellows, faculty, and colleagues from around the country gathered at UT Southwestern to pay tribute to the man whom they called Papa.

Dr. Pritchard died at his home in Las Cruces on May 28, 2003. He was 81. To quote Wen Li, “A mighty oak has fallen in our forest.”