Thomas Frederick Prenger

Thomas Frederick Prenger was born June 27^th, 1945, in Jefferson City, Missouri, to Ralph Benjamin and Esther Ann (Williams) Prenger and died just months after his 80^th birthday, on November 7, 2025.  “Tommy” to his childhood friends and “Tom” in later life, he enjoyed playing baseball, basketball, and football, in which he especially excelled—co-captain of his Helias High School team and Missouri-All-State as a guard. Despite being adored by his younger sister Marilyn, his older brother Steve kept him humble by painting Tom’s beloved ’49 Buick with red house paint and tricking him into doing all the Saturday chores that were meant for the both of them… every week. After graduation in 1963, Tom matriculated to a local college that proved too small for his ambitions, although appropriate for his football talents as a 5’9” (disputed) player. He soon transferred to the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he pledged Sigma Nu fraternity and volunteered to be a tackle dummy for the Mizzou Tiger football team. Tom also joined Air Force ROTC, recognizing that he would likely be drafted anyway and might as well receive some tuition in the process. Tom was very proud to have paid his own way through college, spending summers digging sewers by day and officiating Little League—and putting up with the parents—in the evenings. His kids are all familiar with his habit of asking if they needed any cash, which was his way of making sure they didn’t have to experience the same hardships.

Upon leaving college with a BA in history and an MA in political science, Tom entered the US Air Force as a second lieutenant and started a short, but eventful career in active duty. During survival training at Fairchild AFB, WA, Tom reflected on the beauty of the area from top of a mountain and was sad he would never see it again. Little did he know that ten years later he would live thirteen years in a small mountain town nearby. He made it through additional jungle and sea survival courses, despite admitting that "sinking like a rock" was an accurate description of his swimming abilities. He was soon deployed to Thailand where he was assigned to the 7th Airborne Command and Control Squadron (call sign "Moonbeam”) that was providing nighttime airborne command, control, and communications over North Vietnam and Laos. Tom was under the impression that his volunteerism would earn him a sweet assignment stateside and boy, was he wrong (or right, if you ask his wife of 52 years). Tom was to finish out the remainder of his service obligation at SAC Headquarters, Offutt AFB and met fellow Air Force officer Sallye Kerr on a 4th of July barbeque, proving, despite popular opinion, sometimes something good does happen in Omaha.

His drive to become a lawyer waned following his experiences in the war and Tom decided to apply to medical school instead, necessitating many pre-med classes at Creighton University before being admitting to the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Following a residency in family practice in Rockford, Illinois, Tom moved his family to Silverton, Idaho—a suburb of Wallace. He became a pioneer in the area, serving as the first and only physician to go underground in the Silver Valley mines to tend to the injured miners on-site. For a time, he was also the only doctor delivering babies between Missoula and Coeur d’Alene. Despite the demands of a small-town practice and four children, Tom felt the need for adventure and joined the Washington Air National Guard, where he would go on to serve as a flight surgeon and the Commander of the 141^st Medical Group, retiring as a Colonel. He achieved the coveted “Top Knife” status after training in the F-16 Fighting Falcon—an experience he always claimed made him feel “like Tom Cruise.” Tom was particularly proud of his military medical service in Panama where he treated the local indigenous population, although he was also deployed to Saudi Arabia (first Gulf War), and Qatar (OEF).

Besides his work with the National Guard, his day jobs were with Spokane Valley Family Medicine, Spokane Valley Good Samaritan Village, the Spokane Veterans Home, and a short stint as doctor to jockeys on race days at Playfair Racecourse.

A lifelong athlete, Tom particularly enjoyed distance running, golfing, and downhill skiing. Once during a snowshoe race in Wallace, ID, Tom was so slow he didn’t see the jackrabbit front runners take a wrong turn, and he came in first place. He always said 90% of success was just showing up. He developed gardening skills working on a Missouri truck farm, one of the many manual labor jobs of his youth and he maintained several plots at his parish, his daughter’s house, and his own yard from which he donated produce to local shelters. He loved to read atlases, dictionaries, and the thesaurus. He said it was necessary to learn one new thing each day. He developed a love of cooking, reading cookbooks like they were novels. Tom was a passionate and inventive cook who loved improvising and never wrote down the ingredients (not all were successes). The kids grew up thinking good barbeque was charred on the outside and raw in the middle. He spent his retirement years cooking up pot roasts and ribs and delivering them in zip-lock baggies to all the kids, whether they wanted them or not.

He was the smartest person his wife Sallye says she ever knew. Yet this brilliant mind was totally incapable of operating any electronic device though he was an expert in getting others to use theirs to get what he needed. His way of answering his beloved flip phone, once he figured out where it was and how to open it, was a bright “Hello! Hello! Hello!” He loved teaching others but did have a slight problem with mansplaining. And boy! Did that man like to talk—especially when you were trying to do the crossword or watch television or do anything at all. Most of all he loved being a grandpa—and he was the very best.

Tom was preceded in death by his parents, his older brother Stephen R. Prenger and his sister-in-law, Claudette (Tait) Prenger. Survivors are his wife Sallye (Kerr) Prenger of Spokane; three daughters—Dimity Kerr Prenger of Olympia, WA;  Abigail Lynn Prenger and Molly Marie (Joseph) Prenger of Spokane; one son, Andrew Thomas Prenger and his fiancé, Sam Kopp of Spokane; three grandchildren—Ruby Lynn Weichman, Gracie Mae Weichman, and Tyson Thomas Weichman  of Spokane; one sister, Marilyn A. (Johannes) Keeven of Jefferson City, MO; and one brother-in-law, William  (“Uncle Bill”) Stuart  Kerr and one sister-in-law Julie Reahard of Jemez Springs, NM.

There will be a private interment at the Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake WA the morning of December 26, 2025. A celebration of Tom will be held that afternoon from 2:00-5:00 p.m. at Fête, 120 N Stevens, Spokane, WA. All are welcome and encouraged to come.

In lieu of flowers, Tom was a supporter of Doctors Without Borders (doctorswithoutborders.org) and the Fistula Foundation (fistulafoundation.org).