Dec. 23, 2022 In his new memoir, Chick Pritchard—currently a law firm communications director— talks about what led him to go from being a Catholic priest to working as a Farmington police officer.
By Alison Cross Source Hartford Courant Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Chick Pritchard’s life did not follow a usual path.
Pritchard joined the seminary at age 14 and became an ordained Catholic priest 12 years later. But in his early 30s, Pritchard turned in his cassock for a blue uniform and started his second life as a Farmington police officer, husband and father.
Through these seemingly unalike professions, Pritchard learned the same lesson — life is very fragile.
That understanding of fragility and an appreciation for life, in all its joys and challenges, drove Pritchard to publish his first book, a memoir titled “Reflections of a Journeyed Soul: From Priest to Police.”
Pritchard’s pensive prose is part self-examination, part outward observation, detailing his life, brushes with death, the people that moved him and the faith that guided him.
Pritchard, who lives in Simsbury with his wife, took time off from his current job as the communications director at the Trantolo & Trantolo law firm to spend the last year and a half writing the memoir.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but the older I’m getting, the more I’ve realized that my tomorrows aren’t as many as my yesterdays and if I’m going to write this, I better get it done,” Pritchard said.
As a priest consoling grieving parishioners and as an officer applying first aid to the dying, Pritchard saw how fragile life was, how it could be here one day and gone the next instant, but he did not fully realize the same could be true for him until 1999.
That year, Pritchard’s career at the Farmington Police Department was cut short when a box truck crossed the center line and smashed into Pritchard’s cruiser head-on.
“I heard someone say, ‘I don’t think he’s gonna make it.’ And I just heard that, and I said, ‘No way, I am gonna make it,’” Pritchard recalled from his moments being pinned inside the vehicle as first responders worked to free him from the mangled, smoking wreck.
At the time, Pritchard served as Farmington’s first “bike cop” and first community police officer. He worked with local kids, organized community events, and held public meetings in his substation office inhabited by a giant pet iguana.
Because of his injuries, Pritchard never returned to the job. He was left with a severe concussion, torn ligaments and muscles, and spinal compressions that required many painful months in physical therapy.
After the accident, Pritchard felt changed.
“I was not a pleasant guy,” Pritchard said. “I’m still a guy that has a tough time accepting help from people… But then I finally realized that I need people, and that was huge. It was the first time in terms of my whole life that injuries or illness really forced me to say, ‘I need you.’”
“I loved being needed, and I think I still do to be honest,” Pritchard added. “There is a whole other side to that coin, and that’s being able to say ‘I need,’ and that was not something that was easy for me.”
Pritchard’s memoir includes a number of other revelations that are just as relatable as they are personal.
Pritchard explained what it was like to expose himself to that level of vulnerability in order to write the book.
“I often said that transparency is the ability to be psychologically naked, which is scary as hell,” Pritchard said. “Transparency, which means to be able to be seen as you are, not as you would like to be.”
This personal honesty is a value Pritchard said guided many of the changes on his life journey, including his decision to step away from the clergy.
“When I left the priesthood, that decision was very, very unpopular, but I had to make it,” Pritchard said. “I loved everything I was doing except the celibacy, to be honest with you… I can remember distinctly on Sundays after a Mass, everybody’s going home with their families, and I’m standing outside the church, and I often felt, ‘Oh God, do envy that…’ I often thought that with God, it’s not so much what he wants you to do, it’s who he wants you to be. And I don’t think he wants anybody to be as unhappy as I was.”
Pritchard’s hope is that the book will help others to be honest with themselves too.
“Somebody sent me a note and said, ‘Chick, you’re causing me to reflect on so much of my own life. It’s wonderful, thank you.’ [I thought] ‘Wow,’ you know, because I’ve been reflecting on my life, that’s what this [book] is about, but I’m finding that the people that are reading it are reflecting on their lives, which makes me feel great,” Pritchard said.
“It’s ‘Reflections of a Journeyed Soul.’ And the journey has been really an interesting journey for me. My hope is that it’s an interesting journey for other people.”