Former Mayor of Bellefonte. Longtime publisher of the Centre County Gazette. Husband, father, neighbor, friend.
The Honorable Robert Lawrence Prescott, eighty-seven years of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, passed peacefully into his eternal rest on Monday morning, April twenty-eighth, in the home he had shared with his wife Eleanor for fifty-one years. He was surrounded by his family.
Robert was born on May third, nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, in the second-floor apartment above the Centre County Gazette offices on West High Street, the only son of Lawrence T. Prescott (1908–1974) and Margaret O'Hara Prescott (1912–2001). He attended the Bellefonte public schools and graduated valedictorian of the Bellefonte Area High School Class of 1957. He received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Pennsylvania State University in 1961.
Upon his graduation, Robert returned home to Bellefonte and joined his father at the Centre County Gazette as a reporter. He covered the borough council beat for seven years, the state-house race in the 76th District for three election cycles, and the 1969 Bellefonte historic-district preservation campaign that he would later credit as the work of which he was proudest. He was named editor of the Gazette in 1970 and publisher in 1974 upon the death of his father. Under his stewardship the Gazette won three Keystone Press awards and grew its circulation from four thousand to eleven thousand readers across Centre County. He sold the paper to its longtime employees in 2004 in a cooperative trust that ensured local ownership in perpetuity.
In 1985 Robert was approached by a delegation of Bellefonte business owners and asked to run for mayor. He had refused similar overtures twice before; the third time he accepted on the condition that he would serve no more than three terms. He kept that promise exactly. He was elected mayor of Bellefonte in 1986, reelected in 1990, and reelected again in 1994. He declined a fourth term and returned to the Gazette full-time.
His twelve years as mayor were defined by an insistence that Bellefonte's character be preserved against the pressures of suburbanization. He led the 1991 expansion of the historic preservation overlay zone to include the East Linn Street corridor (an action of which the Albright family is the direct beneficiary), oversaw the 1994 restoration of the Centre County Courthouse, and convened the 1996 Bellefonte Tomorrow planning study whose recommendations still guide borough development thirty years later.
Robert also served as a trustee of the Centre County Historical Society for thirty-one years, a director of the First National Bank of Bellefonte for twenty-four years, an elder of Saint John's Lutheran Church, and a member of the American Legion Post 33 in honor of his late father's service in the Pacific theater.
Robert is survived by his wife of fifty-eight years, Eleanor Prescott (née Donovan); by his three children, Margaret Prescott Hollister of Bellefonte, Lawrence T. Prescott II of State College, and Eleanor Prescott Marsh of Philadelphia; by seven grandchildren; and by two great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents and by his younger sister Catherine Prescott Walker (1942–2018).
He was a quiet but unfailing presence at every Bellefonte Area High School football game for sixty-one years. He read the New York Times every morning, ate breakfast at the Hofbrau every Saturday, and walked the length of South Allegheny Street every evening at sunset. He was a devout Lutheran, a Penn State football season-ticket holder since 1962, a competent fisherman, and an indifferent golfer.
A visitation will be held at Albright & Sons Funeral Home, 124 East Linn Street, Bellefonte, on Friday, May second, from 4:00 to 7:00 PM.
A funeral service will be held on Saturday, May third, at 11:00 AM at Saint John's Lutheran Church, 230 East Lamb Street, Bellefonte. The Rev. Dr. Karen Sundstrom will preside. Robert's longtime friend and colleague Thomas O'Brien of the Centre County Gazette will deliver the eulogy.
Burial will follow immediately at Union Cemetery, Bellefonte, with full graveside honors by American Legion Post 33.
A reception for family, friends, and the public will be held following the burial at the Bellefonte Community Center, 130 West High Street.
The family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions be directed to the Centre County Historical Society Preservation Fund, 203 North Allegheny Street, Bellefonte, PA 16823, or to the Bellefonte Community Food Pantry.
The Prescott family is being cared for by James R. Albright and Andrew J. Albright of Albright & Sons Funeral Home.
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