John Pruett, who wrote about sports in north Alabama and around the state for more than 40 years in The Huntsville Times, has died after a long illness. He was 83.

Pruett’s death was confirmed to AL.com by Mark McCarter, his longtime Huntsville Times colleague and close friend. During his tenure at The Times, Pruett became an institution in Huntsville and north Alabama, and something of a moral authority in the community, McCarter said.

“He came up during that era where as a columnist, you did all the big-time stuff,” McCarter said. “He went to the Masters, he went to the Olympics, he went to all the big college football games. But when John would talk about his career, he said the most fun he ever had was early on covering local sports, high schools. That was the ‘big-time’ stuff to him. Those people that John wrote about when he started out in his career in the 1960s, those are the guys who became his circle of friends as the years went on.

“… Through much of his career, there were other ‘screaming’ columnists who were just consistently, constantly ripping institutions and teams and coaches. With John it was more like with your parents, where you’d much rather for your parents to yell at you than to say ‘I’m disappointed in you.’ When John wrote something negative about a team or institution, it was like, ‘uh oh.’ Those people paid attention because John was disappointed in them. It had more impact than all the yelling of a dozen other columnists.”

A native of Cullman and a graduate of Auburn High School who had a bachelor’s degree from Auburn University and a master’s from the University of Georgia, Pruett first went to work at the old Huntsville News before being hired at The Times in 1966. He covered high school and college athletics and other local sports before being elevated to sports editor upon Bill Easterling’s departure in 1974.

Pruett served as the Times’ sports editor and primary columnist until his retirement in 2008. Among many other honors, he was named Alabama’s Sportswriter of the Year 17 times by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association (now the National Sports Media Association).

The late Don Mincher, a Huntsville native who played 13 seasons in Major League Baseball and was later owner of the Huntsville Stars minor league baseball team and president of the Double-A Southern League, once called Pruett, “the most interesting, fair and entertaining columnist I’ve ever read anywhere.”

“He’s just a delight,” Mincher said upon Pruett’s retirement from The Times in 2008. “Throughout the years, I’ve just enjoyed him so much.”

Pruett’s final column, titled “A final offering, humbly served,” appeared in The Times on Monday, March 31, 2008. Bill Bryant, then the paper’s executive sports editor, wrote that headline.

Bryant joined the Huntsville Times as a high school sports writer in 1993 and eventually moved into management during a 19-year stay at the paper. Now a teacher, Bryant said he and Pruett — whose parents were both career educators — connected well.

“I’ve never met anybody who could put you more at ease than that guy,” Bryant told AL.com. “Our business, it could be sort of cutthroat, and there’s a lot of egos — you need that confidence and things like that — but John was just unique in that he didn’t have an ego. He knew what he was writing was important to fans, but you never got that sense that it was about him, ever.

“… He had the respect of everybody, and that’s something that’s also not easily achieved. He was our rock in the newsroom. It’s funny, there would be people who didn’t get along with each other at all, but they all loved John. … If I ever wanted someone to write my obit or write a column about anything, John would be my pick. Whenever there was a big event, I always looked forward to his column. He was something special.”

Philip Marshall, who worked with Pruett at The Huntsville Times for 17 years and now writes for AuburnUndercover.com, said he visited his old boss Tuesday. Marshall first met Pruett when he went to work at the Huntsville News in 1969, and later joined Pruett’s Huntsville Times staff following a stint in Montgomery.

“He is the most selfless, kind, genuine man I think I’ve ever known,” Marshall told AL.com. “He was willing to do anything to help people and, of course, he was a terrific writer and friend. … We were friends and colleagues the whole time I’ve been in the business, which is a long time.”

Pruett, Marshall and photographer Robin Conn made a memorable road trip by car from Huntsville to upstate New York to cover the 2001 Auburn-Syracuse football game, the first college football game played in the state of New York following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. During the trip, Conn snapped a wonderful photo of Pruett lying down reading the newspaper in the back seat, with Marshall at the wheel.

“We decided to drive to Syracuse not so much because we were afraid as much as we were concerned that planes were going to be disrupted, which turned out not to be the case,” Marshall recalled. “We drove from Huntsville to Syracuse — John and me and Robin Conn. We had a great time. We went to Niagara Falls on the way up there, but it’s a long drive. John liked to do that. He would get in the back seat and lie down sometimes.”

Pruett was also remembered as a loyal supporter of sports journalism in the state, even of those who were considered the competition. Paul Finebaum, who spent many years as a sports writer and columnist at the Birmingham Post-Herald before transitioning into radio and television for ESPN and the SEC Network, recalled Pruett being a constant presence at the November 1982 trial in which the Post-Herald — including Finebaum and sports editor Bill Lumpkin Jr. — was being sued for libel due to its coverage of alleged recruiting irregularities involving Huntsville high school basketball star Bobby Lee Hurt.

“Every single day during an almost two-week trial, I would look in the back of the courtroom and sitting in the final row was John Pruett,” Finebaum told AL.com. “I asked Lumpkin about it one day and he said that John took vacation. By the way, we aren’t talking about a down time of the year. The trial ended on the Wednesday before the Iron Bowl and started the previous week. John took vacation time, and he did it not to cover (the trial). He did write about it when it was over, but on a daily basis it was covered by the court reporter. John was there to support Lumpkin and support journalism because he believed in what we had done even though it wreaked havoc in his community.

“He made sure to be seen talking to us in the hallway, and I know it was intentional. He wanted anyone who was looking, including the jurors, to know that the most influential sports figure in local media was supporting us, and that was critically important. It may have helped us overcome long odds. When you think about that sacrifice, he didn’t do it for personal gain. He didn’t do it for anything other than he believed in what we were trying to do. And at that time, it wasn’t easy to support someone going against the grain, and we were definitely bucking the system involving a player directly and indirectly who had already enrolled at Alabama.”

David Housel, the longtime sports information director at Auburn who later became the school’s athletics director, remembered Pruett as a “good, good man” and “of the best professionals I’ve ever known in my 79 years on this earth.”

“He was objective,” Housel told AL.com. “He could ask the sharp, probing questions, but he was always humane in how he did it. The people who worked with him respected him. The people he interviewed and who had to answer those tough questions respected him. In his day and time, he was one of the best, always will be. In this day and time, he would have been a rare commodity in journalism.

“They don’t make them like John Pruett anymore. That is journalism’s loss, sports’ loss and the country’s loss. I don’t know I ever heard John say a bad word or a negative word about anybody. He could disagree without being disagreeable.”

In 2014, Pruett and George Smith of The Anniston Star were the first recipients of the Mel Allen Media Award by the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. He was twice the recipient of the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s Herby Kirby Award for story of the year, winning in 1978 and 1986.

Pruett is a member of the ASWA Hall of Fame, and in 2022 was named one of the organization’s 50 Legends. He is one of three people to complete the ASWA “Grand Slam” — Hall of Fame, Herby Kirby Award, Bill Shelton Award (community service through journalism) and serve as the organization’s president.

Pruett survived a bout with prostate cancer in 2001, which he wrote about in the pages of The Times. He was inspired to get tested after chronicling the recovery of Hall-of-Fame high school basketball coach Jack Doss, who had battled the same disease the previous year.

For many years, the winning team of the Huntsville City Classic basketball tournament (previously the Huntsville Times Classic) has been awarded the John Pruett Championship Trophy.

“I had been here a year or so and really hadn’t met John Pruett,” said Doss, who has won nearly 900 games and 10 state championships during stints at Hayes, Butler, J.O. Johnson, Mae Jemison and Grissom. “John called me about doing a story. I said, ‘John, I never felt I was a part of Huntsville until you wrote an article on me.’ After that, we were good friends. Great writer.”

Long after his retirement, Pruett and fellow former sports writers Clyde Bolton and Wayne Martin of the Birmingham News would be special guests at Jacksonville State football games. Gamecocks athletics director Greg Seitz and sports information director Josh Underwood reserved seats for the trio in the front row of the press box at Burgess-Snow Field (now AmFirst Stadium), though they rarely stayed until the game’s end.

“John Pruett was a giant in Alabama sports journalism and a true friend to so many of us in the athletics world,” Seitz told AL.com. “His words captured not just the scores, but the stories and the spirit of the games we love. For decades, John told those stories with integrity, grace, and a touch of wit that was uniquely his. He had a remarkable ability to make both the legendary and the local feel equally important. I will miss his friendship, his wisdom, and his voice in our state’s sports conversation. He leaves a legacy that few can match.”

Pruett served more than 20 years in the U.S. Army Reserve, rising to the rank of Master Sergeant, the second-highest rank for an enlisted service member. A longtime member of Huntsville’s Sherwood Baptist Church, he was a part of the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1989, as well as the Athletic Booster Club of Huntsville Hall of Fame (1986) and was presented the Distinguished Alabama Community Journalist Award by the Auburn University School of Journalism in 2007.

Pruett’s wife of 57 years, Barbara Macomber Pruett — known as Bobbi — died in 2022. John and Bobbi Pruett had three children — sons Tom Pruett and Patrick Pruett, and daughter Afton Pruett Travens — seven grandchildren and two step-great grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are not yet complete.