OCEAN ISLE BEACH — Curt Pritchard, who served as the Police Chief for the Town of West Jefferson for the majority of the 1980s, passed away on Feb. 6 at the age of 76 in Ocean Isle Beach.
Pritchard, a West Jefferson native, served in the United States Marine Corps Infantry during Vietnam for two years as a “tunnel rat” that routinely completed missions searching and destroying the underground tunnel network of the Viet Cong during the war. According to military history, “tunnel rats” were often armed with nothing more than their service handgun, which at the time was a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and a flashlight, to accomplish their missions.
Following the completion of his military service, Pritchard began his law enforcement career as a detective with the Pompano Beach Police Department in Florida. Pritchard then returned to his hometown in the early 1980s, where he took the position of Police Chief for the West Jefferson Police Department in 1982. He served in this position until 1988 when he became the Police Chief of the Ocean Isle Beach Police Department until his retirement in 2010…