Pruit is Longest-Serving U.S. Sheriff
Editor’s Note: The following is from a feature article, “Glasscock County’s Pruit is longest-serving U.S. sheriff,” by Bob Campbell, which ran in the Jan. 27, 2008 issue of the Midland Reporter-Telegram, and is used here with Campbell’s permission. The article will also be used in the “Texas Lawman,” journal of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas.
-------------------------------------------------------------
The people of Glasscock County took to a man called Booger 49 years ago and never changed their minds.
Actually, the relationship dates to when Royce “Booger” Pruit was an Odessa High sophomore visiting his sister Eunice Rowe in the southwest part of the county.
One of 11 children of Gulf Oil pipeline gauger Chester Pruit and Annie Matthews, the big kid from Penwell liked this town 35 miles southeast of Midland and stayed.
He graduated from high school here, married sweetheart Beverly Cox and was an oilfield roustabout and service station attendant before Sheriff Buster Cox (no relation to his wife) gave him his career.
“I worked at the station across the street,” said Pruit, “and Buster asked me to go to work for him. I had never planned on it, but I told him I’d try it.”
He spent three years as a deputy and had been with the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office in Lamesa for two months when Cox resigned and commissioners named him sheriff Jan. 22, 1962.
Unopposed Since 1962
Unopposed in that year’s election and every one since, Pruit is the longest tenured sheriff in the nation, according to references – just ahead of 75-year-old Dwight Radcliff of Pickaway County in south central Ohio. Radcliff took office in 1965 and is seeking another term this year, Radcliff’s secretary said.
“I came to visit Eunice for a week and ended up staying,” said Pruit, 70. “It was the people. You know them and they all know you. You know the kids from the time they’re born and with a lot of them even the names of their dogs.”
“The best thing I have going is the young people and the parents are a big help. These kids come off ranches and farms and when they get out of school, they’ve got work to do. To me that’s about as important as education, teaching them to work.”
The soft-spoken Pruit does not seem like a “booger,” but the nickname stuck after his twin, Joyce McFarland of Arlington, called him that when they were 2 – 3 years old.
‘You Can’t Stay Here’
But he is vigilant in protecting his people, recently making suspect driveway pavers retreat down Highway 158 upon finding a widow about to pay them more than $7,000.
“They were supposed to put on 3 inches of pavement and had come to get their money,” he said. “It might have had an inch. I wouldn’t let her pay. I told them, ‘You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.’ “
Sterling County Sheriff Don Howard, Pruit’s deputy in the early 1980’s, said, “ I never saw Booger lose his temper. He taught me you have to make decisions but don’t want to lose your cool.”
This is one of a dozen counties in Texas whose sheriffs also serve as tax assessors, but the duties are now being separated with assessor’s clerk Nancy Hillger seeking the office. Deputies Ken Zunker and Keith Burnett are running in the Republican primary to succeed Pruit.
The sheriff and his siblings rode a school bus 20 miles east from Penwell to Odessa and with their father were involved in rodeo. Eunice and Roy are deceased, but the rest survive – twins Donald Ray Pruit of Fort Worth and Donna Kay Lawton of Greenwood, Ark., Hollie Harwell of Menard, Tommy of Woodward, Okla., Iretta Felkins of Odessa, Bobby of Louisville, Ky., and Dick of Spencerville, Okla.
“With 11 kids, if you wanted anything, you had to work,” he said. “Daddy was more like a brother than a daddy. He played with us a lot. He roped mostly and rode broncs and saddle broncs. We had Sunday ropings and bull riding and the girls barrel raced.”
The Pruits had trying times two years ago, when their son Lonnie of Christoval died of a liver ailment and the sheriff was hospitalized for six months with an abdominal infection.
He was in Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo when his son died there. “2006 was terribly bad,” he said. “It’s tough to bury one of your kids.”
The couple’s other son is Van of Stanton. They have three grandchildren, including twin granddaughters.
Pruit also lost his best friend a few years ago – U.S. Agriculture Department official and Borden County rancher Glen Kingston, a part-time deputy for 33 years.
“Glen was like a brother,” he said, smiling. “He’d help kids work on their cars and help people who were stranded. He wasn’t very big but was wired pretty tight. You didn’t have to hunt him, either. He’d be there.”
When asked what he taught his deputies, Pruit said, “Mostly to treat people like they’d want to be treated.
“We’re public servants and we work for them.”