Cactus Pryor, humorist, radio personality, author and long-time columnist, died, Tuesday, Aug. 30. He was 88.
Pryor died from complications from a recent fall earlier this month while living at an assisted living facility in Buda, the Austin American Statesman reported. Suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Pryor died at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House, where he was recently moved, according to the report.
Pryor went public with the news that he had Alzhiemer’s in 2007 in interviews aired on KLBJ radio, where he worked for many years, in the Statesman, and later in the South Jetty.
The interview in the South Jetty read in part: Cactus said he used his Alzheimer’s disease to play a little joke on a doctor’s assistant in a medical office’s examination room he visited not long ago.
“I took off my coat, my shoes, and I started taking off my clothes, and she says, ‘Oh, you’re not supposed to do this!’ I said, ‘I thought you were my doctor!’ And she yells, ‘No! No! No!’ ”
Cactus laughed at the recollection.
“I like to kid them. They’re really gullible,” he said.
Humor is “Cactus’s best defense” against Alzheimer’s, Peggy said. “People will never really know when he has finally gone over the edge, the real edge, because he has always acted like he went over the edge all these years.”
Services will be at 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, at Riverbend Cemetery in Austin.
