An American Original

"Wildman" Warren Pruitt and I pose in front of Ellsworth Hall at Western Reserve Academy, in Hudson Ohio, where we were disciplinary problem students. The guy playing with Wildman's crossbow is Dave Frazier, younger brother of the writer Ian Frazier, who wrote movingly of Hudson in his book Family.

Wildman had made this hangman's noose and we thought it would be amusing to stage a hanging. We hung it from the 3rd floor railing so he was hanging on the stairs below and he was adjusting it so it would look like he had hung himself, except that in the process he did hang himself -- at least he cut off the blood supply to his head -- I didn't realize he wasn't just playing until his eyes started bugging out and he started twitching. He was too heavy for me to lift him up with one arm and loosen the noose with the other. So I went running frantically into the TV room yelling that I needed help because Wildman had hung himself and everyone laughed, this sounding like just another day in the life of Warren Pruitt. I had to physically drag someone down -- a chap named Art Goddard I think -- to help hold him up while I loosened the noose. Wildman came too and sat down on the stairs and moaned, "That was really intense."

A few days later we posed with the rope. "You're lucky," he pointed out. "Not many white guys get to lynch one of us any more."

Wildman had a sore neck for a while, but recovered and went on to survive riding his motorcycle off a mountain in Tennessee.

Some memories from other students have been filed since I first posted this page.

He got his nickname the old fashioned way -- he earned it. But he was not just wild; he was quite a wonderful human being.

My friend Warren Pruitt perished for real in a car wreck in Skokie, of all places, in the Spring of 1981. His mother called me in Tucson and as I realized what she was saying, everything seemed to go into slow motion and her voice was far off.

A lot of us still think about him.

G. D. Stone
St. Louis, MO