Walt Pruitt

Hardware merchant

Owned the building. Never saw a thing.

Walt lent them the room because Ada asked and because it was empty on Tuesdays. He sat through every meeting for twenty-two years, made the coffee, and never reported a sighting of any kind.

Asked in 1968 why he stayed, he said: "Because they're not lying, and somebody ought to be in the room who hasn't got a stake in it."

The Institute's rule that an account is recorded exactly as given, never corrected and never improved, is his.