Leaders We Lost in 2023: Kent Bratton

This story has been edited to correct Kent Bratton's date of death.

Editor’s note: As part of a year-in-review series, the Southeast Missourian is remembering some of the notable community leaders or public servants who died in 2023.

Kent Bratton

Throughout his 20-year career as a city planner at Cape Girardeau City Hall, no one knew the landscape of the city better than Kent Bratton.

Bratton died April 27 at the age of 81.

"(Bratton) would lay out in his mind what the city could look like, where streets would go or would speak up about where they shouldn't be because he knew so well the lay of the land," said Charlie Herbst, a current Cape Girardeau County commissioner who served on the Cape Girardeau City Council from 2002 to 2010. "He was always thinking out loud, (and) there's no doubt city personnel continued to call him after his retirement. He loved the city."

Bratton, born and reared in Dodge City, Kansas, is credited with fostering Cape Girardeau's transition from purchasing water from a supplier to operating its own municipal water system in 1996.

Bratton, the second-born of three children, understood adversity at a tender age, having endured 13 corrective surgeries for a cleft palate.

The native Kansan studied geology at Fort Hayes College in Kansas. Later, Bratton earned a master's degree in the same subject at Southern Illinois University.

Hired by the city in 1988, Bratton refined and implemented ideas in Cape Girardeau's first comprehensive plan.