Victims React To Indictments Of Pritchards
By Deborah Fitts

Bill Day will never forget his stunned feeling in 1996 when Russ Pritchard Jr. told him that his great-great-grandfather's uniform, a frock coat and pants, was worthless.

"He said it was just a costume - an SCV [Sons of Confederate Veterans] type thing, and they'd given it to Goodwill," he recalls.

At his mother's urging, Day had asked Pritchard to authenticate some of the textiles that were stashed in chests in his family home in Memphis. He was preparing to open the Hunt-Phelan Home, on Beale Street, as a house-museum - the former residence of Confederate Col. William R. Hunt, Day's great-great-grandfather. It was Pritchard Jr.'s son, dealer and appraiser Russ Pritchard III, who had concluded that the uniform was without value. The Pritchards and George Juno were principals in the American Ordnance Preservation Association (AOPA) military antiques business.

Pritchard Jr. confirmed his son's view that the uniform was worthless.

Day couldn't believe it. A member of his museum board suggested he contact the authorities, and soon he reached the FBI in Philadelphia.

"I hadn't hung up the phone five minutes before they called me back and said, 'We've been trying to catch this man [Pritchard III] for a long time,'" Day recalls.

He didn't locate his ancestor's uniform till last year, when a niece hunting for a wedding dress on the Internet idly checked a site with the family name and discovered the uniform for sale by a private collector in Arkansas.

"I called him up and said, 'I tell you what: That's my uniform and I want it back,'" Day remembers. But he was too late. The Arkansas collector had just sold the uniform to the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, which paid $80,000.

Day learned that Pritchard had sold the uniform to a Stone Mountain, Ga., dealer for $45,000, who in turn had sold it to the collector in Arkansas for $55,000.

Day has been talking to the Tennessee museum about the uniform. "I'm not opposed to it being there," he says. "But our family wants compensation."

He has seen the uniform. Pritchard added "newly made gold stars" on the collar, in the words of the indictment, and fixed the coat's lining. "They wanted to make it as fine as possible," Day says wryly.

Several other uniform items that Pritchard Jr. took with him, including cadet items from the Virginia Military Institute and elsewhere, were never returned. "All of it's gone," Day says.

Day's mother, at 75, has been badly hurt, he says. She feels responsible for the family's loss. He closed the house-museum last year and has put the home up for sale.

The Pritchard episode has left a bitter taste. "I had people all over the country who called me and said, 'With relatives like these, who needs enemies?' "The sad thing is that there's people all over the country that they've screwed. They would go to museums and get their donor cards and call the people and tell them that the museum wasn't taking proper care of their things, and then they'd pay them a pittance for them.

"Now I hope they [the Pritchards] roast. I would say to them, pack your toothbrush, because that's all you're going to need."

The Zouave Switch
It was only six weeks ago, when the FBI came calling, that George Hicks, executive director of the new National Civil War Museum at Harrisburg, learned that what was supposed to be a Union Zouave jacket on display was actually a Belgian jacket.

Pritchard III had sold them the original jacket in 1995. But according to the indictment he had returned in 1997 to switch it with the Belgian one, which was described as being "of negligible value."

Pritchard and partner George Juno later sold the authentic jacket again, this time to a private dealer, for $20,000.

"This bothers me tremendously," says Hicks. "It offends my sense of fair play. These people victimized individuals, they victimized the public at large, and they victimized the City of Harrisburg. They also victimized cultural institutions, and caused their integrity to be impugned. They had no scruples." Hicks acknowledges that Pritchard and AOPA had purchased a "signi ficant" proportion of the museum's collection. He notes that the curatorial staff is now working to catalog and inventory the collection, and so far "we have not turned up any other problems."

The inventory effort is being led by the museum's chief curator, Howard Madaus, a nationally recognized expert on flags, uniforms and firearms of the period. Neither Hicks, Madaus nor the rest of the staff was on the scene when the alleged theft was perpetrated.

The Belgian jacket was placed on display when the museum opened in February, and it remains on display. The FBI has possession of the Union one, Hicks says. "We're anxious to get this one off display and replace it with our own property."

"A Lifetime's Passion"
Yet another alleged victim is Elaine Patterson of Salisbury, Md. Her husband was Don Patterson, who as a reenactor was a highly respected top Confederate commander up until his death by suicide in October 1995.

Among the sad tasks that Elaine Patterson faced was getting an appraisal, for her husband's estate, of the Civil War relics that the two of them had collected over 20 years. For them the artifacts represented what she called "a lifetime's passion," and they had created a small museum in their house. The collection was also an investment for their retirement.

Several months before his death Don contacted Juno to ascertain the value of some of the items. "Juno came here to the house," Elaine recalls. "When he left I remember Don saying, 'He's way off base. I don't trust him.'"

When a letter came from Pritchard III and AOPA following Don's death, Elaine says she didn't realize that Juno was associated with Pritchard, or she would never have responded.

She was told that AOPA was buying items for the Harrisburg museum, and they offered to do a free appraisal.

"They mentioned Antiques Roadshow [public television's most popular show on which Juno and Pritchard III appeared as appraisers] in their letter," Elaine remembers.

She invited Pritchard to come and do the appraisal. When he and an associate arrived and began going through the collection, "white gloves and all," she felt assured that they were "very professional."

But Elaine would come to find out that the items never went to Harrisburg, and that the rest of her collection, which Pritchard was only supposed to authenticate and stabilize, had been sold. Items in that group included two pairs of surgeon's pants (one with an identified owner), a tarred kepi, a handmade Confederate kepi, a 9th Virginia Cavalry revolver, Union officers' capes, a rare Confederate saber, and Confederate swords and frock coats, among other things.

"Most of these were things I would never have sold," she says. Stung, and realizing that she had been paid far less than the value of the collection, she called a lawyer. But Pritchard's lawyer countered with a story of their own, she says. "He said I said to sell it all and get what I could for it."

She now knows that the money she received from Pritchard represents possibly only 5 percent of the value of the items that he took.

Elaine, 56, works at marketing and publishing out of her home. She is active in two reenacting units. She wishes she could get all the items back. "But I can't afford a lawyer. I don't know what the next step is. The collection was a cushion for us, and I no longer have that."

Of Pritchard III, she says, "I was devastated that I was taken in by him. I thought I was doing something that Don would have wanted me to do. This has been very wearing, emotionally. My heart is cut to the quick."