Nina Michelle Pratt was born on October 20, 1970, in Carroll, Iowa, to Dan and Angela (Kusel) Pratt, and then moved shortly to Manhattan, Kansas, where her father was stationed at Fort Riley. In 1972, the family moved to Wichita, Kansas, where Nina attended school and graduated from West High School in 1989.

At the age of 3 Nina suddenly lost her sight due to a cancerous tumor on the optic chiasm. Following extensive treatment at M.D. Anderson in Houston, Texas, she returned home to continue treatment for 2 years. Declared cancer-free, she attended a preschool for the blind in Wichita until school age, at which point she was integrated fully into regular classes until her graduation. Following graduation, she attended Iowa State University, majoring in French. Later she moved to Missoula, Montana, and attended the university there. For the past 20+ years, Nina has lived in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. She has lived independently for the past 30 years with the help of 3 wonderful guide dogs: Joli, Rosie, and Haagen-Dazs.

Nina participated in Girl Scouts throughout her school years, selling hundreds of boxes of cookies, attending Scout camp, and taking several memorable Scout trips to Kansas City and Galveston, Texas. She loved to read and used both Braille and audiobooks to do so. She also participated in BOLD, a snow-skiing program for blind persons, as well as SKAVI camp in Dodge City, Kansas, for visually impaired children.

Nina was an avid music lover, playing violin during her school years, and was currently learning to play the harp. For her 51st birthday, her parents purchased a full-size harp for her. She also loved to travel, and during high school traveled with other foreign language students from across the United States to visit Spain, France, and England. During the past 3 years, Nina and her mother took 2 mother-daughter trips to visit all of the homes of Laurel Ingalls Wilder.

Nina also volunteered for a number of programs to assist others, including a hotline for those grieving over the loss of a pet (at Iowa State), and later helping adults who had recently lost vision through Vision Loss in Minneapolis. She had a great sense of humor, was a deep thinker about many topics, and was a masterful writer about her life experiences.

Nina was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer in November 2021. She entered a hospice program in St. Paul, and at the end of January, moved to Boone to live with her parents. She passed away on March 16 at the age of 51 years, 4 months, 28 days.

Nina is survived by her parents Dan and Angela Pratt, and one brother, Sean Pratt, as well as her beloved cat Tucker.

She was preceded in death by her grandparents, Ray and Helen (McGrath) Pratt, and Amos and Dorothy (Ehrichs) Kusel.

Memorial donations can be made to the family and will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund since Nina was a lover of animals, and to the American Printing House for the Blind to assist with Braille materials for other blind persons.

Funeral services will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, March 21, 2022 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Boone, with Rev. Max Phillips officiating. Visitation will be before the funeral service from 9:00 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. Burial will be at Nishnabotna Cemetery in Manilla, Iowa at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 22, 2022, with Pastor Jonathan Conner officiating.

The funeral service will be live-streamed on the Schroeder-Stark-Welin Funeral Home Facebook page, which can be accessed at: https://www.facebook.com/SchroederStarkWelin

Online condolences can be left at Schroeder-Stark-Welin Funeral Home