Meet Mayor Jack Pratt Green Beret POSer and former mayor
Kerrville Texas: Jack Pratt Jr. narrowly won the mayor’s seat in 2012 by touting himself as a skilled financial consultant, former business exec and veteran of multiple Army tours in Vietnam with U.S. Special Forces. His military records indicate he spent nearly eight years in the Army but just seven weeks in Vietnam as a personnel supervisor before leaving the service as a Staff Sergeant in 1971.
Pratt claims to have a masters in business administration from the University of Hawaii. Officials there say they have no record of him attending its Shidler College of Business.Pratt, 73, denied that he embellished his resume but declined to provide documents to substantiate his claimed achievements.“I’m not going to help you with any of this because you’re trying to crucify me,” he said last week. “I don’t need to confirm my personal history.”He drew “Vietnam service combat pay during the years 1967, '68, '69 and '71,” he said in an email that also indicated he was “attached and/or TDY with Special Forces.”
National Personnel Records Center documents say Pratt was a radio operator in Germany in 1964, a personnel sergeant in Thailand from 1967 to 1969 and in Vietnam from May 25 to July 15, 1971.The mayor owes the community an explanation, City Councilman Gene Allen said, calling the inconsistencies “alarming.” “Certainly, I have heard and I communicated it to others that the mayor had served four tours in Vietnam with Special Forces,” Taylor said. “To me, that’s kind of awe-inspiring. It’s a pretty incredible record.”
But the vagueness of many entries in Pratt’s online profiles have long fueled skepticism.
Alan Hill, director of the Hill Country Veterans Center, says Pratt twice told him of serving four tours of duty as a Green Beret in Vietnam. A dubious Hill, himself a three-tour Vietnam veteran, obtained Pratt’s military records and now calls him “a wannabe Special Forces.”
Hill, 70, denied any political motive in his criticism, saying, “It has nothing to do with him being the mayor.”
“He needs to come clean,” Allen said. “If they can’t be adequately explained, it’s a sad day for Kerrville.