Victor Prather

Shortly after Prather's death, President John F. Kennedy phoned Prather's widow, Virginia Merritt, and she arrived at the White House with her children, Marla Lee Prather and Victor A. Prather III. Kennedy posthumously awarded Victor Prather the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross for 'heroism and extraordinary achievement'. The balloonists were also awarded the 1961 Harmon Trophy for Aeronauts. The altitude record for a manned balloon flight set by Prather and Ross in 1961 is still officially recognized by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. As of 2021 three balloonists have traveled higher into the stratosphere. Nicholas Piantanida, claimed to have reached 123,800 feet (37,643 m) with his Strato Jump II balloon on February 2, 1966, and Felix Baumgartner, reached 128,100 feet (39 044.88 meters) on 14 October 2012 as part of the Red Bull Stratos project. In ballooning, as in mountain climbing, completing the descent by the same method is required to set a record. Piantanida did not claim the balloon altitude record because he jettisoned his balloon at the flight ceiling and returned to Earth in the gondola without the balloon. Similarly Baumgartner jumped at the apex of his flight. The third person, Alan Eustace, reached an altitude of 136,000 ft where he then performed a supersonic jump in 2014.

On May 4, 1961, at 7:08 am, Victor Prather, along with Cdr. Malcolm Ross, ascended in Strato-Lab High V from the flight deck of the USS Antietam (CV-36) to an altitude of 113,720 feet (34,668 meters) to test the Navy's Mark IV full-pressure suit.

In 1960, Prather was transferred to Project RAM, a government program to test prototype space suits, at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He was commissioned to test how the suits worked underwater, and later commissioned to see how the suits would function at extremely high altitudes.

In 1954, Prather rejoined the United States Navy in the Navy Medical Corps. He was stationed in Pensacola and then transferred to San Diego, CA. While at San Diego, Prather completed courses in Aviation Medicine and qualifications in fixed wing and helicopter aircraft. He was stationed as a medical doctor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La until 1957, when he was assigned to the U.S. Naval Air Station in Port Lyautey, Morocco as Flight Surgeon for VR-24. In 1959, Prather was reassigned to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

Lieutenant Commander Victor Alonzo Prather Jr. (June 4, 1926 – May 4, 1961) was an American flight surgeon famous for taking part in "Project RAM", a government project to develop the space suit. On May 4, 1961, Prather drowned during the helicopter transfer after the landing of the Strato-Lab V balloon flight, which set an altitude record for manned balloon flight which stood until 2012.

Prather was born on June 4, 1926, in Lapeer, Michigan, to Victor Prather Sr. and Gladys May Furse. He attended Tufts College in 1943, and became part of the V-12 program stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii from 1943 to 1945. He returned to Tufts at the end of WWII and attended Tufts University School of Medicine, graduating there in 1952.