Since graduating from Coastal with a business degree 21 years ago, Mike Pruitt has led a distinguished career as an entrepreneur in the Charlotte area. Among the companies he has founded or owned are Avenel Ventures, a technology and business development firm; Southern Cartridge Co., which he sold to MicroMagnetic, Inc.; and Pruitt Trucking Co. He also served as CEO of One Travel Holdings, an Internet-based travel company.

Unlike many pre-1993 Coastal graduates, Pruitt says he has never felt any sense of divided allegiance between CCU and the University of South Carolina. "I've always thought of myself as a Coastal graduate," he says, and he has proven his loyalty by donating substantial gifts of time and money through the years.

While on campus recently for a meeting of the Wall College Board of Visitors, Pruitt reminisced about his collegiate years. Most of his memories are connected to baseball, which he admits was his primary passion. Although he is now very close to Gerry Boyles, professor of finance at Coastal and a member of the advisory board of his new business, Chanticleer Holdings, Pruitt says that when he was a student at Coastal he wasn't eager to take Boyles' finance course. "Dr. Boyles' class was hard as heck, and I didn't want a low grade to keep me from playing baseball."

Pruitt (back row, second from the left) played baseball at Coastal.

Another challenging professor Pruitt remembers was Jim Eason. "He taught accounting, and the class wasn't doing so well—--not up to Eason's standards, anyway. He saw me outside of class one day and said: ‘You guys did terribly on that last test, but I've got a plan to shake you up and get you studying. I know you can take it, so I'm telling you ahead of time that I'm going to make an example out of you in class.' The next day he walks into class, slams his books down on the desk and really gives us the blues. Then he turns to me: ‘And you! You did the worst of all! Get the heck out of my class!' So I quietly got up and left. He saw me after class and said, ‘You should have seen the look on those kids' faces when you left that classroom. It really worked!' "

His fondest baseball memory goes back to the spring of 1983. The Chanticleers were doing well and had made it to the regional playoffs in Orangeburg. It was the 8th inning in a game against High Point University. Pruitt, who had been hitting well all season, was sitting on the bench for this game due to Coach Larry Carr's highly unconventional (and controversial) method of selecting his lineup. Carr, a phenomenally successful hitting coach and author of The Home Run Hitter's Handbook, formed his starting lineup for each game according to the team's "biorhythm," an astrologically-based calculation he used to gauge each of his players' physical, emotional and mental condition on a given day.

On this particular day, Pruitt's biorhythm readings were low so Carr benched him. In the 8th inning, some now forgotten circumstance caused Carr to send Pruitt in to pinch-hit. "I didn't even have my cleats on," remembers Pruitt, who promptly hit a 2-run home run. After the game he was carried into the dugout on the shoulders of his teammates. Pruitt recalls that one of Coastal baseball's biggest fans, Jean Casey, who was Athletic Director Walt Hambrick's highly respected secretary, cheered so enthusiastically when he hit his home run that she separated her shoulder.

Occasionally, sitting at his desk in Charlotte, Pruitt will be pleasantly and unexpectedly reminded of his glory days when he opens his mail and finds a note from former Coastal Chancellor Edward M. Singleton. "There will be an old newspaper clipping and a note from Dr. Singleton--—‘I ran across this and thought you might like to have it.' That's just like him," says Pruitt. "He gave us so much, as students and as ball players. When you're a young kid from out of state, away from home for the first time in your life, you look for someone to be a sort of father figure, and that's what Dick Singleton was to me. He was at every game. He told the team, ‘If you make it to the World Series, I'll give you a trip you'll never forget.' We did, and he rented a bus which took us to the world series in Lubbuck, Texas, stopping off for games at the University of Arkansas and Oklahoma State along the way. He was right: none of us ever forgot that trip. His sense of passion and caring has stayed with me all my life."

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