May atmore 2020

In His Father's Footsteps
Chris Pruitt, Travis Pruitt
Don
Fletcher
When Travis Pruitt was growing up in Atmore, he
dreamed of becoming a soldier, just like his dad. He
dreamed, too, of becoming a policeman, also just like
his dad. Now that Travis has grown up, he's been able
to realize both dreams.
The younger Pruitt is currently in the early stages of a
three-year Alabama Army National Guard deployment.
When the citizen soldier was activated, it forced him to
vacate, at least temporarily, his job as an Atmore Police
Department patrol officer.
His father, Chris, was soldiering overseas as a military
policeman when Travis was born in a Stuttgart, Germany
Army hospital. When Chris’ enlistment ended, he and
wife Erica (nee Crenshaw) — who were high school
sweethearts at Escambia County High School before
he began his military service and she became an Army
wife — brought their only child back to grow up in the
same town in which they had.
When the couple got back to Atmore, their son soon
developed a craving to wear a uniform other than just
the one his dad wore as a military law enforcement
officer. The toddler acquired a desire to one day wear
the blue uniform of the Atmore Police Department, the
uniform his dad wore to work every day.
“My dad has always been my hero and an example of
a man to follow,” Travis said of Chris, whose career as a
city patrol officer was almost ended barely two years
after it started. “He was a military police officer, then a
civilian police officer, so I was pretty much raised up in
law enforcement. I always wanted to be just like him —
to be in the Army and to be a cop.”
The elder component of the father-son combination
said he had no doubt through the years that Travis
would be a police officer, and probably a military man,
and that he would be successful at both.
“To say that I am proud of Travis is an understatement,”
Chris said. “It was no surprise when he expressed a
desire to serve his country and his city. I thank God that
Travis has become the man he is. He will be successful
at all he does, provided he does what he knows is right.”
As a young man, Chris Pruitt fell deeply enough in
love with policing that he volunteered to wash police
cars just to be around cops. He worked part-time as a
police dispatcher and turned his duties there into a Boy
Scouts project for which he gained the rank of Eagle
Scout.
“It was like having a bunch of daddies,” he said. “They
taught me how to dispatch and got me a part-time job
that turned into full-time. That's how I started, and that's
what I wanted to come home to when I got out (of the
Army).”
Years later, Chris was in his second year of patrolling
Atmore's streets, and things were going well until a
fateful February1997 call to the intersection of East
Nashville Avenue and Presley Street.
“I had exited my vehicle at a three-vehicle traffic
accident and had been out of my car for about 30
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