It’s sad when you go looking for people you knew to see where they are and how they have spent their lives and find they have moved on to the next level. Steve lived in Asia House on Soi 12 and would borrow my albums. I ran into his mom at a Salt Lake reunion many years ago and knew that he lived in Park City. I reached out once but never heard back from him. He was just a nice guy from a great family.
Steven J. Pratt Obituary 1955 – 2026
Steven James Pratt lived a life full of curiosity, generosity, and a quiet confidence that made the people around him feel steady and safe. He passed away on January 19, 2026, at home with his wife and daughter by his side—exactly the way he lived, surrounded by the people he loved most.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 3, 1955, to James Pratt and Darlene Hardin Pratt (later Purles), Steve grew up with a sense of adventure that only expanded when his family moved to Bangkok, Thailand where they lived for two years between 1967 and 1969. This sparked a lifelong love of travel and a deep respect for people from all walks of life.
After graduating from Cottonwood High School in 1973, Steve attended the University of Utah and quickly found his way into sales, working first in Utah and then settling into car sales in California in the 80’s. Then, on Ponto beach in Carlsbad in 1984, he met Janis Shepherd Newkirk and her young daughter, and the next chapter of his life began.
Steve and Jan married in 1991 and moved to Park City, Utah. Steve was so happy to bring his “California girls” home to the mountains he loved so much. Particularly to one of his happiest places on earth, his family cabin in Holiday Park. Every summer Steve and Jan spent as much time there as possible, soaking in the peace of the mountains and sharing that love with their family and close-knit Holiday Park community.
Upon moving back to Utah, Steve began his career in real estate. Steve was a member of the Park City Board of Realtors for 35 years and approached his work the same way he approached life; with loyalty and a genuine desire to make things easier for others, often helping clients sell cars from their garages or filling his truck and taking a load to the landfill for them. Alongside his real estate career, Steve and Jan designed and remodeled more than 20 homes in Park City—projects that blended their creativity, shared love of building something beautiful together and making every house feel like home. In 2004, Steve’s daughter Erin joined him in the real estate business and, after raising her like his own since she was five, working alongside one another was something that brought him immense pride.
The role Steve may have cherished most of all was being Grandpa to Reece and Laney. He loved seeing the world through their eyes, teaching them patience and wonder – especially at the cabin or on a family beach vacation in Hawaii or Mexico. They have an unbreakable bond that was built while constructing river dams in Dry Creek and jumping over waves in Cancun.
Steve is proudly survived by his wife, Janis Pratt; daughter Erin (RJ) Smith; grandchildren Reece Smith and Delaney Smith; his mother, Darlene Purles; his sisters Colleen (Steve) Sorensen and Jolleen (Rusty) Larson and his brother Mike (Jana) Pratt and their children and grandchildren. He was proceeded in death by his father, James Pratt. A celebration of Steve’s life will be held on February 23, 2026, from 4-7pm at The Jeremy Ranch Country Club. Please come enjoy some great music and raise a glass to a Renaissance man who made the world better simply by being in it.
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Mark Beach, 65, of East Petersburg, passed away Thursday evening, September 17, 2020 at Hospice & Community Care in Mount Joy.
He was born in Darby, PA on April 1, a fitting date, probably, as he had a keenly developed sense of the sublime and the ridiculous.
The fourth of seven children, he was preceded in death by his parents, Bob and Edna Beach, and older brother, John Beach.
He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Naomi; children, Audrey and Wesley; brothers, Bob, David and Chip; sisters, Deborah and Grace, as well as several nieces and nephews.
Mark was a globe-circling photographer, writer and videographer and a nonprofit communications manager and strategic planner.
He was a loving family guy and a loyal friend with a bear hug, an irresistible laugh and a creative soul. He would always stop whatever he was doing to get the perfect shot.
There is an old picture of Mark from southern Africa; he’s leaning casually on a railing, sleeves rolled, mountains rising up behind. He might be just starting to grin. Some cool vista lay ahead. Some unsung, poignant narrative.
It was his formula.
Travel, art and social justice were Mark’s lifeblood. Raised in Warminster, he spent several formative years (1967-69) in Thailand, where his dad had been transferred. The Vietnam War was burning. Mark’s heroes were photographers, historians, reporters – the people who held the power brokers to account.
He snapped away at first with a Brownie fixed lens camera. Back home and graduated from Messiah College and Temple University with a degree in radio, TV and film, he launched a freelance photography business. He went on to show his work in fine art galleries in Lancaster.
Mennonite Central Committee brought Mark to Lancaster in the 1970s — and dispatched him to document its ministries around the world. He packed light, carried a small camera and got in close.
He employed this same intimate MO as a freelance Lancaster Newspapers “photog” in the 1980s, and as a staff writer for the former Sunday News in the early 1990s. At the Sunday News, he penned sensitive, compelling stories on just about everything under the Lancaster County sun.
In 1992 this dedicated news junkie reinvented himself. He studied international journalism at Baylor University and flew to South Africa to complete his master’s. Most happily, life reinvented him right back.
Letters home mentioned a “dear friend.” Mark and Naomi Vlok Beach, now a teacher, met in an exchange student program in 1993. The couple married in 1995.
Audrey was born five years later and Wesley in 2003, coincidentally the same time period when Mark’s hair started to gray.
The family settled in Lancaster, where Mark became MCC director of communications in 2000. Mark kept moving, sometimes filing reports from earthquake zones and remote African villages where he slept on the ground. A journalist buddy who favored five-star hotels joked: ‘Mark Beach never travels anywhere there’s indoor plumbing.’
But in 2006, the Beaches relocated to the geopolitical epicenter of Europe — Geneva, Switzerland. Mark, the new director of communications for the World Council of Churches, now moved in a rarefied milieu –Pope Benedict XVI, for example – and enjoyed an epic view of Mark’s beloved Alps from his apartment balcony in Genthod.
The Beaches explored Europe before returning to Lancaster County at the end of 2014. Mark served three and a half years as communications director for Mennonite Disaster Service.
Art remained his passion, inside and outside of the job.
A Mark Beach picture or a Mark Beach story was a thing of grace, said retired LNP photographer Dan Marschka. “He was an early adopter of using video at MCC.” He had rare talents for visualizing scenes, listening patiently and “seeing deeper inside you than you might see inside yourself.”
And he moved people to action, including Marschka, whom he recruited for numerous MCC trips in the early 2000s. “I became something I hadn’t been” before experiencing the “unpredictability” and beauty of the Developing World, Marschka said. “A citizen of the earth. It was a gift he gave me.”
An avowed pacifist, Mark was eternally boyish, insatiably curious and widely read. He cared deeply about his family, the world’s dispossessed and the menace of climate warming, which he documented a few years ago amidst slowly drowning islands in the Pacific.
Mark played a mean Gordon Lightfoot on his guitar. He began writing a novel.
Near the end of his life his mantra was “Eat, walk, love.”
One afternoon this past summer, he made the best cheesesteaks anyone has ever tasted.
Goofy humor was another of Mark’s strong suits.
“It’s good to laugh,” he often said, after relating some hilarious incident he’d experienced or witnessed.
It was. And when remembering this gentle, one-of-a-kind man and his stories from the road, it always will be.
Because of Covid-19 restrictions, a Celebration of Life will not be held at this time.
In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that memorial contributions be made in Mark’s honor to Hospice & Community Care, 4705 Old Harrisburg Pike, Mount Joy, PA 17552 or the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, 2102 Harrisburg Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601.
To send a condolence, please visit Mark’s Memorial Page at www.CremationPA.com.
LNP Media Group, Inc.
Former World Council of Churches (WCC) communications director Mark E. Beach was honored at a commemorative prayer service on 22 September.
Beach, who died 17 September in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, served the WCC from 2007 through its 10th Assembly in 2013 and to the end of 2014. He then returned to the USA to work with the Mennonites as director of communications for Mennonite Disaster Services (MDS).
The virtual prayer service gathered former colleagues and friends online for moments of prayer, recollection, and appreciation for the former WCC staffer.
Beach was an award-winning photographer, videographer and feature writer who spent his whole career in church-related media, news writing and international reporting. Prior to joining the WCC, in his work for the Mennonite Central Committee (2000–2007), he received an Associated Church Press award for his development of the MCC’s magazine, A Common Place, and his DVD portraying post-war Iraq earned a prestigious CINE Award. With colleague Julie Kauffman he co-authored a very popular children’s cookbook, Simply in Season.
“It was with sorrow that we received the news about the passing of Mark Beach,” said Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, interim general secretary of the WCC. “Through his tireless ministry for communication, justice and peace, Beach leaves behind an inspiring legacy of material for the global ecumenical movement.”
Said WCC’s present director of communications, Marianne Ejdersten, “We are deeply saddened by the news of Mark’s passing. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends. The ecumenical movement has lost one important global peace journalist with a special passion for photo journalism and audio visual production. “
Beach’s time at the WCC overlapped the general secretariats of Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia and the Most Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit. His tenure brought increased attention to news and social media, as well as video production and a new visual identity, and he negotiated a successful publishing arrangement with journals giant Wiley Blackwell. Financial pressures also entailed inventive yet sometimes painful revamping of WCC communications functions, including overhauling distribution of WCC Publications, closing Ecumenical News International, consolidation of the WCC Library to the Bossey Institute, reworking of translation services, closing the onsite bookstore, and moving toward external technical maintenance of the WCC website.
A highlight of Beach’s communications era was the communications operation he led at the WCC’s 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea, in late 2013. The pastel assembly symbol was omnipresent there in banners and signage. He brought several dozen journalists to Busan, joined by an equal number of Korean journalists. Alongside an intense news-writing schedule, the team published a daily newspaper, issued frequent video reports and features and interviews, issued a stream of social media posts, made arrangements for the dozens of media attending and reporting on the assembly, and mounted an onsite bookstore with hundreds of titles from WCC Publications and the Christian Literature Society of Korea.
Personable in manner, and an inveterate traveler and photographer, Beach’s work took him around the world, especially in Africa and Asia, where he documented people, churches, and cultures for relief agencies and international organizations. As director of communications for MDS, he travelled frequently to sites of disaster and recovery in the US, spotlighting the difficult work of MDS’s dedicated volunteers.
Mark Beach was the fourth of seven children, and he is survived by his family, including his wife Naomi Vlok Beach and their children Audrey and Wesley Beach, along with his siblings and their families.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made in Mark’s honour to Hospice and Community Care, 4705 Old Harrisburg Pike, Mount Joy, PA 17552 or the Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute, 2102 Harrisburg Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601.
To send a condolence, please visit Mark’s Memorial Page at www.CremationPA.com.
Additional tributes to Mark Beach:
“Mark was always a staunch supporter of the concept of ‘communication for all,’ recognizing that WACC acted as a bridge between the ecumenical movement and civil society. He supported WACC’s efforts to draw young people into the ambit of genuine communication and dialogue for peace and he collaborated with WACC on the ‘Busan Statement’ on communication that preceded the WCC Assembly in South Korea where WACC and WCC encouraged participation by radio journalists from the global South. Most recently, Mark accepted involvement with WACC North America as a member of its standing committee. WACC will always be grateful for Mark’s sharp eye and ear for detail and his generosity of spirit.”—Philip Lee, general secretary, World Association for Christian Communication
“Mark’s integrity and care for others made us see the crucial value of healthy and mutually supportive communication team dynamics. His skills in communication, with a unique approach to the use of images to promote churches’ work for justice and peace, and his vision about the importance of bringing younger and more international communicators to contribute with WCC are some of the highlights of the legacy he leaves behind. Besides professional collaboration, we built a solid friendship. I already miss him very much.”—Marcelo Schneider, WCC communications officer
“Among Mark’s major contributions to the ecumenical movement were hiring decisions he made while at the WCC. And his strategy to create a much younger-than-customary newsroom staff at the Busan assembly is helping to shape the future of the council.”—Theodore A. Gill Jr., former senior editor, WCC Publications
“When a dear friend passes away, the first instinct is to mourn. Sometimes that’s the right thing to do. In the case of Mark Beach, mourning would not suffice. Mark lived. Mark loved. Mark forgave. Mark laughed. Mark packed a lot of living into a relatively short life. When he found out his time here was limited, his top priority was to make sure his family would be taken care of. He reached out to friends and family and made them part of his final journey. In his dying moments, so I was told, he had time for a funny remark. I won’t mourn my friend, I choose to celebrate a life that was fully lived. Mark, I learned this lesson from you – Get on with living.”—South African videographer Coetzee Zietsman, longtime friend and collaborator
“A fluid writer with a journalist’s standards and a photographer’s appreciation for the telling detail, Mark Beach also saw the bigger picture. Many of his initiatives positioned WCC Communications well for the emerging media landscape and for its present flowering. I have especially appreciated his vision for publications.”—J. Michael West, former publisher, WCC Publications
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Robert Friis Obituary FRIIS WINSTON SALEM Robert A. Friis 1955 – 2010 Robert A. Friis “Sonny”, Has departed on his last deployment to sail the seven seas for all of eternity He passed away Saturday evening, May 22, 2010 at the Hospice of the Piedmont. Mr. Friis was born in Millington, Tennessee on January 14, 1955. He is survived by his loving wife of 27 years, Auralie Friis “Sugie”; his children: daughter, Jennifer (husband, Travis) of London, England, Kenny (wife, Allison) of Atlanta, GA, and their daughters, Kayla (5) and Lexi (1); and his parents Robert A. A. Friis and Mary Frances Friis of Macon, GA. Mr. Friis proudly served our country in the United States Navy for 23.5 years before retiring in 1998 as a Senior Chief Petty Officer. After retiring from the Navy, he continued to serve our country at Oceana Naval Base working on ships and naval equipment. He also worked at GEICO, Custom Tops and Towers, and Vanwin Coatings of Virginia. Upon retiring, he enjoyed spending time with his wife, children, grand-daughters and close friends. The rest of his time was spent doing what he loved so much, watching NASCAR and College Football and actively fishing and playing golf. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and fought hard to beat the odds with a strong spirit and positive attitude. He was greatly loved by all and will be deeply missed. Funeral Service will be Saturday, May 29, at 2 p.m. at J.C. Green and Sons Funeral Home, 10301 N. NC Highway 109 in Winston-Salem. His family is most grateful for the ongoing love and support of his family, friends, and the kindness and generosity of Hospice of the Piedmont. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Hospice of the Piedmont – 1803 Westchester Drive High Point, NC. www.hospice-careconnection.org. Online condolences may be made to the Friis Family at www.jcgreenandsons.com. Family and friends are invited to 5513 Summer Hill Lane, Winston-Salem, NC immediately following the Service for his Life Celebration.
Published by Winston-Salem Journal from May 25 to May 28, 2010.
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HAYES – Helen Pierce Morgan, 61, died August 29, 2016 at her home. Helen was born in Arizona to Lyle and Betty Pierce. She was preceded in death by her father. Helen was an avid reader, an accomplished pianist and she was most passionate about cooking. She enjoyed having her friends and loved ones gather for cookouts. She always had a smile for everyone she met. She is survived by her daughters, Ashley Nortness (Brandon) and Taylor Morgan; mother, Betty Pierce; brothers, Richard Pierce, Bruce Pierce and Dale Pierce; grandchildren, Natalie and Elliott; the father of her daughters, John Morgan; and her companion, Donald Bray. Arrangements by Hogg Funeral Home and Crematory, Gloucester Point. Family and friends may share condolences and memories at:
This past Sunday, Dad passed away at home surrounded by family. He is finally at peace.
For those unaware of his story, Tommy was unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in July. He faced his prognosis with courage, even choosing to undergo multiple rounds of chemo. He fought a long and hard battle up until the very end. We are all so very proud of him.
Mom encapsulated Dad so perfectly the other day when she said “Tommy was a force.” Dad was a force; he loved life and took every opportunity to live it fully.
Tommy will be buried at Arlington National Cemetary outside of Washington D.C. (date unknown).
In the meantime, Devon Mack and I are working diligently on securing the best plot there is (per dad’s requests, a plot on a hill with a view and a tree for shade) ❤️
Erin Mack is with Tom Mack
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Dad will be buried with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on July 6th at 3pm. Long before his cancer diagnosis, dad often spoke about how honored he felt to be buried at Arlington. This day will be incredibly special to us, as it was to him. We welcome anyone who would like to share it with us.
Following the funeral at Arlington, there will be a reception at a nearby location (details provided later).
For those interested in attending the reception after Arlington, we kindly ask that you message me or Devon Mack so we can book an appropriately sized space.
To those who have texted, called and sent cards to share their kind words and memories of dad over the past 5 weeks, we thank you ❤️
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Carol Willis Strahan LUBBOCK-Family and friends will gather to celebrate the life of Carol Willis Strahan, RN, MSN, CCRN and CEN, of Lubbock, at 3 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19, 2012, at Lake Ridge Chapel and Memorial Designers with a time of visiting and sharing one hour before and after the service. Our beloved Carol went to be with the Lord on Oct. 13, 2012, at the age of 56. Carol was born Oct. 28, 1955, to Harlan and Fannie Jo (Hester) Willis in Sasebo, Japan. She graduated high school from the International School of Bangkok. Carol received a bachelor’s degree from Baylor University and a master’s degree from LCU. Carol was a registered nurse and was employed as an instructor by Texas Tech Health Science Center, where she greatly loved her students. She married the love of her life, Wesley Strahan, on Sept. 27, 1991, and Dr. Strahan preceded her in death on Sept. 3, 2011. Carol was a member of the Iota Mu chapter of the Sigma Theta Tau honor nursing society. She was vitally involved in many community pursuits, including the Friends in Training triathlon group, and was the nursing director of the Half Ironman medical tent. She was a member of Lake Ridge United Methodist Church. Carol is survived by her parents, Harlan and Jo of Lubbock; two sisters, Kaye Miller and husband Mark of Little Rock, Ark., and Robin Wood and husband Andy of Lubbock; a brother, Paul Willis and wife Sarah of Amarillo; five nieces; three nephews; and numerous great-nieces, nephews and cousins. Memorials may be made to the Missionary Kid (MK) Endowment, 100 Missionary Ridge, Birmingham, AL 35242, or the American Heart Association, 2514 82nd Street Suite B, Lubbock, TX 79423. To send your words of encouragement to Carol’s family and view her life and service tributes, visit
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