Thomas Masters Pringle (May 31, 1921–March 16, 1995)

By Katherine Thurlow

EarlyLife

“Society,” The Pittsburgh Press, June 19, 1896

Thomas Masters Pringle was born on May 31, 1921, in Portage, Pennsylvania. Pringle’s family has a long history of military participation, including ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.¹ His parents, Thomas Morrow Pringle and Emma Masters, were married on March 19, 1920, in Kentucky, and Thomas was their first child.² Due to the lack of available information regarding Thomas Masters’ life before service, the majority of this section focuses on his father, Thomas Morrow, as his life likely informed Thomas Masters’ childhood experiences. Thomas Morrow Pringle grew up in Portage, Pennsylvania, and he worked as a coal miner in 1880 at the age of ten.³

Thomas Morrow Pringle left the Portage area around 1890 after an altercation when he “allegedly stabbed another young man with a pen knife over a game of ball.”⁴ He adopted a stage name of T.H. Ford and became a sharpshooter in various shows including Beveridge’s Montana Wildest West, Texas Jack’s Wild West, and Buffalo Bill’s Congress of Rough Riders.⁵ An article in The Pittsburgh Press acknowledged his talent in 1896, calling him “the champion fancy shot of the world,” as seen here.⁶ After his father’s death he returned to Portage and lived with his mother, Margaret, where he worked as a clerk and liveryman.⁷ Margaret passed away in 1913 due to acute gastritis with pneumonia also contributing to her death.⁸ Thomas Morrow Pringle registered for the World War I draft on September 12, 1918. He noted on his registration that he had a “stiff knee joint” on his right leg.⁹

Thomas and Emma had a second child, a daughter named Lois, in 1925. By 1930, the Pringle family owned a home in Portage valued at $12,000 and owned a radio.¹⁰ Thomas Morrow Pringle worked as a salesman at a grocery store with Emma staying at home and Thomas Masters Pringle attending school.¹¹ In 1940, Thomas Masters Pringle was eighteen and completed his first year of college.¹² He worked his first job as an assistant store keeper.¹³ His father worked as a superintendent of a coal company, and his mother did retail millinery out of their home.¹⁴ On September 5, 1942, Thomas Masters Pringle married Helen Gray in Winchester, Virginia.¹⁵ Helen was a student nurse in 1940, and by the time of their marriage was a practicing nurse.¹⁶

Service

“Promotions—Transfers,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 15, 1943

On October 17, 1942, Thomas Masters Pringle joined the Army in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.¹⁷ On October 30, 1942, his father passed away at the age of seventy after a four day hospital stay, ultimately dying of cardiac failure.¹⁸ Pringle “trained as an expert mechanic” at Keesler Field in Mississippi, as shown in this newspaper article.¹⁹ By mid-1942 Keesler Field focused on training mechanics for B-24 Liberator heavy bombers, receiving the first B-24 towards the end of that September; it is likely that Pringle worked with those.²⁰ He left the service June 26, 1943, at Keesler Field after eight months in domestic service.²¹

Life After Service

After his service, Pringle returned to Pennsylvania. Thomas and Helen had four children: Lydia, Becky, Helen, and Thomas.²² Pringle worked as vice president-treasurer at the Crichton Coal and Coke Company in Johnstown, West Virginia, before his death, as noted in a September 14, 1967 article from The Indiana Gazette of him discussing the expansion of a mine with others from the company.²³ Sometime after this, he moved with his wife Helen to Florida, following a larger trend of Sunbelt migration that “boomed in the decades after World War II.”²⁴ Thomas Pringle passed away on March 16, 1995 in Alachua, Florida, at the age of seventy three.²⁵ Thomas was initially buried or cremated at the Pringle Hill Cemetery, where the Pringle family is buried in Pennsylvania.²⁶ He was memorialized in the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell on August 3, 1995.²⁷ Helen passed away on July 27, 1997 in Gainesville, Florida, and is buried in Pringle Hill Cemetery.²⁸

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