Alan Pruitt was a smart, artistic type who did many things well. He wrote poetry, played guitar and built things with his hands.
"I'm sitting in my family room looking at a book on quantum physics," said Anson Whealler, a childhood friend who lives outside Boston. "He suggested that I read that. He was just interested in so many things."
In recent years, Mr. Pruitt had started a business out of his home in the Persimmon community of Rabun County. It specialized in birdhouses and bird feeders, hence the business name Mountain Laurel Birdfeeders. He also used copper and mixed metal to adorn his work.
Rabun County's Globe Gallery and Turning Creek Artisans carried some of his creations. Most times, though, business came word-of-mouth. Somebody would buy one. Someone else would see it and inquire.
"You can spot them all over North Georgia," said a brother, John Pruitt, anchorman at Atlanta's WSB-TV. "They are unique and almost too pretty to put bird feed in. He never went into mass production because he wanted to make each one himself."
"One lady in Colorado who received one sent us a picture with the snow and the birds on a birdhouse he'd built," said JoAlice Ray, his wife of 31 years. "It seems a lot of people enjoyed his work, and he enjoyed doing it. "
In June, Mr. Pruitt began having problems swallowing, and four months later he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Alan Leighton Pruitt died from complications of the disease on May 17 in the North Georgia house he designed and built. He was 60. A private ceremony will be held at a later date. Beck Funeral Home in Clayton is in charge of arrangements.
Mr. Pruitt was born in Emory Hospital and grew up on Emory Road. The 1968 Druid Hills High School graduate earned a bachelor's degree in English from West Georgia College. He wrote poetry and penned prose for two nieces when they got married.
"I always thought he should seek to be published," his brother said, "but he never had much interest in that. He was a talented man. I would say gifted."
For a decade or so, Mr. Pruitt was enamored with technology. During that spell he worked as a computer technician for Habersham County Schools, Drake Software in Franklin, N.C., and the now-shuttered Fruit of the Loom plant in Rabun Gap. He also was an adjunct computer tech instructor at North Georgia Technical Institute.
When the technology bug passed, he nurtured his creative side. Mr. Pruitt salvaged mountain laurel that had been uprooted to make room for development. People would contact the nature lover if they knew where wood was available.
"He was very conservation-minded," his wife said. "He never cut down a mountain laurel to make his stuff."
In 1978, Mr. Pruitt and his wife spent their honeymoon hiking and camping in Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. Two years later, he and a friend drove from Atlanta to Alaska, camping and hiking in national parks along the way. His wife joined them in the Canadian Rockies.
"Hiking is the thing he missed most when he got sick," she said.
Additional survivors include his mother, Sara Nickles Pruitt of Decatur; and another brother, George Pruitt of Cleveland, Ga.
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