'Theater was always in his blood': Broadway Palm's Tom Prather dies at 85 in Fort Myers

He helped build Southwest Florida’s longest-running professional theater, Broadway Palm, and served as patriarch for a popular, family-owned theater company that includes a national touring division and another dinner theater in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

After a five-decade career in theater, Tom Prather has died at the age of 85, said his son and CEO of Prather Productions, Will Prather.

Tom Prather was diagnosed with stage-four bone cancer in January and had been receiving palliative care at Fort Myers retirement community Cypress Cove, Will Prather said. He died early Monday morning.

Despite his sickness, he had still managed to do what he loved in his final days. He saw two of his family company's musicals last month: The touring show “Million Dollar Quartet” at Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall and “Jersey Boys” at Broadway Palm.

They needed to bring along a nurse, Will Prather said, but they made it work.

“He wanted to see two more shows before he wasn’t able to see shows,” he said. “Theater was always in his blood.”

Tom Prather: A legacy of theater in Southwest Florida

People who knew and loved Prather said they’ll miss him and all he accomplished in Southwest Florida and beyond.

“It makes me so sad,” said Adele Dees Hatfield of Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, who previously worked as associate pastor for Fort Myers' Iona-Hope Episcopal Church, where Prather was a founding member and a church leader. “It’s such a loss for the community. He made such a big impact.”

Still, Hatfield called it a life well-lived.

“He has had such a full life,” she said. “He’s been able to do something that he loved, and what a gift that is, isn’t it? To have your life’s work be about giving people joy in some way and making them think.”

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Tom Prather co-founded Broadway Palm with his wife Deborah and son Will in 1993. The Fort Myers dinner theater opened inside a former Publix grocery store in Royal Palm Square.

Since then, more than 4.3 million people have watched plays and musicals there, according to the dinner theater.

Broadway Palm is part of Prather Productions, the family company that includes the Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and national touring company APEX Touring (also known as Prather Touring Company). They also previously ran another theater, Broadway Palm West, for 14 years in Mesa, Arizona.

Thomas Ross Prather ― affectionately known by some as “TRP” ― leaves behind a legacy of theater in Southwest Florida. After Broadway Palm opened, more professional theater companies soon followed in Lee and Collier counties, including Fort Myers' Florida Repertory Theatre and Naples' TheatreZone and Gulfshore Playhouse.

“I really think they set the standards for all the theater we have here now,” said Cape Coral dance studio owner Robin Dawn Ryan, who worked as a choreographer at Broadway Palm in its first decade.

Ryan credited a lot of that success to Prather.

“If it wasn’t for his love of theater, we wouldn’t have the quality of theater that we have now,” Ryan said. “They have quality stuff. They don’t mess around.”

A lifetime in the theater business

Prather was born in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, on April 7, 1937, according to his obituary.

He grew up on a cattle ranch run by his parents in De Beque, Colorado, and graduated in 1958 from San José State University, where he majored in theater.

Prather got his start in the theater business after enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1960. He worked as a radio announcer in Korea’s demilitarized zone in the morning and started a community theater in the afternoons and evenings with soldiers and female members of the American Red Cross. He later transferred to Army Headquarters in Japan and directed plays there, too.

After being honorably discharged and receiving the Army Commendation Medal, Prather eventually started working as a prop master for Southbury Playhouse in Connecticut. He later moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and founded the Arena House Theatre, a winter stock Equity house, in 1964.

That theater ran until 1968, during which time Prather met his future wife, Deborah Zimmerman of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, in 1965. Zimmerman was a TV news producer interviewing Prather for an arts-and-entertainment segment. They started dating and were married six months later.

Together, the couple opened an Equity summer-stock theater in a tent overlooking the Susquehanna River in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Then they built the Brookside Playhouse in Shamokin Dam, Pennsylvania, in 1971.

After that, they brought shows to 12 different Pennsylvania locations until 1987, when they opened the Dutch Apple Dinner Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

“Instead of chasing people, we would have them come to us,” Prather told news website lancasteronline.com in 2015. “And Lancaster was the core of the idea.”

That was followed by Broadway Palm in 1993, Broadway Palm West in 2001 and APEX Touring in 2005.

‘So many people thought we were gonna fail’

Prather and his wife had vacationed in Southwest Florida in the late '80s and fallen in love with the place. Soon, they started thinking about opening a second dinner theater in Fort Myers.

Will Prather says Broadway Palm wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for his father. In fact, his family had been thinking about abandoning the idea of a Fort Myers theater until they saw the former Publix grocery store in Royal Palm Square.

“We were walking away from opening this theater until my dad took a stroll in frustration and stumbled ― literally ― walked in to the back of a Publix supermarket that was being vacated,” Will Prather said. “He pokes his head in there, all by himself ― walking by himself through Royal Palm Square mall ― and says 'We can turn THIS into a dinner theater and we don’t have to build one from scratch.’

“And from that moment, in the fall of 1992, the entire vision of the Broadway Palm was created.”

There wasn’t much theater in Southwest Florida at the time, although there was a successful dinner theater in Naples and also Sanibel Island’s Pirate Playhouse. But nothing in Fort Myers.

“It was definitely a cultural desert when we decided to open,” Will Prather said. “And that’s why so many people thought we were gonna fail. … A lot of people did.

"And lo and behold, it ended up being a good decision.”

In 1999, Tom Prather retired and handed over the company's reins to his two sons, but he came out of retirement several times to help out during rough patches in the company’s history ― especially during the Great Recession, when they had to sell their money-losing Broadway Palm West dinner theater (later rebranded as The Palms Theatre) in Mesa, Arizona.

Prather finally retired for good in about 2015, Will Prather said.

His father was crucial to the theater company’s success, he said.

“None of what I am doing right now in my career, in my life, would exist without the initial decisions and drive to produce theater,” Will Prather said. “My mom and dad, they were great partners together. But the ultimate person who was driving the theater vision and the artistic vision of our theater, which drove the growth of our companies, is 100 percent on him.”

About 170,000 people see musicals, plays and sometimes concerts every year in Broadway Palm’s 448-seat main theater and its smaller, 100-seat black-box theater under the same roof, the Off Broadway Palm Theatre. Many of those people arrive via tour buses from Florida’s east coast.

The dinner theater started with only 25 employees. Now 174 people work there, plus another 135 at the Dutch Apple and 80 with Apex Touring.

Life in ‘Pratherland’

People who worked with Prather called him a hands-on leader who cared for his employees, loved to laugh and had a shrewd eye for what works and what doesn’t onstage.

“He could look at a stage and if there was something that stood out to him, he would know exactly what it was and how to fix it,” said actor-director Eliseo Roman of Harlem, New York. “And I was always mesmerized by that ability to do that.”

Prather did whatever it took to make sure his plays and musicals were top-quality, said former Broadway Palm choreographer Ryan. He knew exactly what he wanted onstage and how to make that vision come to life.

“He was always very nice, very cordial and friendly,” Ryan said. “But when it came down to business ― business was business. And when it came down to the show being right, he didn’t monkey around.

“This is the way he wanted it, and this is the way it had to be done.”

Ryan remembers doing a Christmas show one year with the famous Rockettes “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” number ― which typically requires a cannon. Only Broadway Palm didn’t have one.

“I told him I had to have the cannon,” Ryan said. “Well, the cannon was in Pennsylvania. But he didn’t even think twice about it. He said, ‘OK!’ And he got the cannon down here for me. He had it shipped down.”

On top of that, Prather was a great boss, too. Current and former workers say the Prathers created a place that many actors, wait staff and other employees call more than just a job.

It’s a family.

They even have an affectionate nickname for the place they love so much: Pratherland.

“There’s this sense of being taken care of, being thought of, in a familial way,” said actor Annie Freres of Memphis, Tennessee, who’s worked for Broadway Palm, the Dutch Apple and the touring company. “It feels like a family.”

The company also helped a lot of people get their start in the theater business, Ryan said. The dance instructor had already started her own dance studio when she worked for Broadway Palm in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, and she said the experience definitely helped her become the success she is today.

“If it wasn’t for that experience with him and the fact that he took a chance on me, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing now,” Ryan said about Prather. “I owe him a lot for that.”

Not just the boss: A Broadway Palm fan, too

More than anything, though, Prather was a theater fan. He and his wife were often at Broadway Palm for tech rehearsals or opening-night performances, and Prather laughed and clapped more heartily than just about anybody, Freres said.

“I can see him smiling right now,” she said. “I don’t think I ever saw him not smiling. He was just so happy to be alive, happy to be around.”

After the final curtain, Prather would always show up afterward to congratulate everyone on a job well done.

“On opening nights,” Roman said, “he would make sure to congratulate every actor that came out and say, ‘Thank you so much,’ ‘Congratulations,’ and ‘We’re so proud’ ― all of those things. It was one of those things that you remember.

“He would come out and he would pat their backs. And with me … he would put his arm around me and say congratulations.”

Prather even tried his hand at writing shows, himself. He wrote and collaborated on three plays: “Christmas Thru the Century”, “Voices from Sanibel” and “Second Chances: The Thrift Shop Musical”, which saw five U.S. productions, including its 2015 premiere at Broadway Palm.

Roman called Prather a “storyteller at heart” who loved “what the beauty of theater brings to people.”

More than anything, Prather loved the joy that theater could give to audiences, said Hatfield, who worked with him on several Bible Camp plays at his church in about 2007. Prather wrote and directed several plays as part of a music, arts, theater-focused camp.

“Gosh, what a creative, enthusiastic, collaborative person he was to work with,” Hatfield said. “We just had a great time.”

Sure, they were just church plays. But Prather still gave it his all, Hatfield said.

She called Prather a creative person who would light up and get excited whenever he talked about art and theater and upcoming shows at Broadway Palm.

“He was always so excited about the shows,” Hatfield said. “He was always excited about possibilities. … His enthusiasm was pretty contagious.”

Funeral arrangements for Tom Prather

Prather is survived by his wife of 58 years, Deborah; sons Will (Maureen) Prather of Fort Myers and David Prather of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and grandson TJ Prather of Brooklyn, New York.

A memorial service begins at 11 a.m. Monday, April 17, at Iona-Hope Episcopal Church, 9650 Gladiolus Drive, in south Fort Myers. It will be followed by a Celebration of Life at Broadway Palm.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the Thomas Ross Prather scholarship fund at Florida Southwestern State College. To donate, visit fsw.edu and click the Give Now button. Checks may be sent to FSW Foundation with Thomas Prather in the memo line.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1). You can also call at 239-335-0368.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Tom Prather of Broadway Palm, Dutch Apple theaters dies in Fort Myers