Pratt Attends Teenage Son’s Graduation

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. — At a school nestled in Marin County’s rolling hills, about three miles from San Quentin, where he was locked up for more than 15 of the 27 years he spent behind bars, former Black Panther Party leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt attended his son’s graduation from middle school Friday.

The irony was not lost on Pratt, 49, a beaming and proud father sitting in the brilliant afternoon sun as his son, Hiroji, 14, and about 40 classmates graduated from San Domenico Middle School.

“This is a big class,” Pratt said with surprise during the procession of graduating eighth-graders. His own high school graduating class in Morgan City, La., consisted of 18 students.

“Look at that,” he said thumbing through the graduation program. “Hiroji Pratt, First Honors.” He turned to his wife, Ashaki, asking what first honors meant.

“It means he was a good student,” she said calmly.

Pratt briefly held his head in his hands, laughing and sighing before the ceremony, thinking of the proximity of his son’s school to one of the several prisons where he served more than half his life for a murder he insists he did not commit.

Pratt’s murder conviction was overturned May 29. He was released on $225,000 bail Tuesday while the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office appeals the reversal.

Parents of other San Domenico students, faculty, staff and students made their way to Pratt’s seat at the outdoor exercises to congratulate him, wish him well, shake his hand.

“Geronimo, my daughter has been such a fan of Hiroji for eight years,” one parent said. “She’s heartbroken that they are not going to the same high school.”

One of Hiroji’s counselors, warmly smiling and shaking Pratt’s hand, told him: “We love Hiroji. He drives us crazy sometimes, but we love him.”

Hiroji, resplendent in a suit that had belonged to the late rap music star Tupac Shakur, chose to keep his own counsel, only saying to reporters: “I’m OK.”

Pratt was Shakur’s godfather. The rapper died Sept. 13--Pratt’s birthday--after being gunned down in Las Vegas. Shakur’s mother, Afeni, a former Black Panther colleague of Pratt’s, wanted his son to wear her son’s suit to the ceremony.

The procession of well-wishers continued, with a school administrator saying San Domenico was “delighted” to have Pratt at the graduation exercises.

The transitions have come in a blinding succession for Pratt, who celebrated his fourth day of freedom Friday. Three weeks ago he was an inmate at Mule Creek State Prison, awaiting a ruling on his fifth petition to reverse his conviction.

He had been sentenced to 25 years to life in 1972 for the murder of school teacher Caroline Olsen and the critical wounding of her husband during a 1968 robbery on a Santa Monica tennis court.

Pratt has steadfastly maintained that he is innocent, that he was in the Bay Area attending Black Panther Party meetings at the time of the attack. The FBI knew he was in Oakland, he says, because it had him under surveillance--an assertion that retired FBI Agent M. Wesley Swearingen supports.

Pratt walked out of the Orange County Jail on Tuesday to the cheers of hundreds of supporters. That evening, he made stops at rallies and celebrations in South-Central Los Angeles, the Crenshaw district and West Hollywood.

On Friday, at the exclusive 500-student school located on 600 lush acres, he could not help but be impressed by the contrasts four days have brought. And he is looking forward to more this weekend when he returns to Morgan City for a reunion with his family--especially his 94-year-old mother.

As he mingled after the ceremony, parent after parent approached to again congratulate him and welcome him home.

As one told him: “We’re so proud of you.”