{"id":1269,"date":"2016-01-05T13:08:53","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T18:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2016-01-05T13:08:53","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T18:08:53","slug":"bruce-brown-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/2016\/01\/05\/bruce-brown-52\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Brown ’52"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bruce<\/a>It is with acute sadness that I tell you my beloved husband Dr. Bruce Scott Brown (class of 1952) died in my arms on October 18, 2015.\u00a0 He\u2019d had a cancerous kidney removed exactly one year earlier, and I thought we were home free, though probably he knew otherwise. \u00a0That accursed disease lurks.\u00a0 Four months later other smaller cancers showed up on X-ray, and Bruce began chemotherapy.\u00a0 But in the end, it was pulmonary fibrosis that took his life. \u00a0To have the one person you love most in the world die in your arms in his hospital bed is sad beyond the telling.<\/p>\n

Bruce and I were married when we were but twenty-one years old.\u00a0 Our wedding pictures show two young people, madly in love, clutching each other\u2019s hand as we, beaming, emerged from the Church.\u00a0 We were eighteen when we met.\u00a0 It was love at first sight. \u00a0We loved each other so much for so long. \u00a0Well, he was a wonderful guy.<\/p>\n

After Williston, Bruce was drafted into the Army in the middle of his sophomore year at Syracuse University.\u00a0 After a year’s special training, he was to be sent to Germany.\u00a0 That\u2019s when we got married.\u00a0 My Dad arranged passage for me on the S.S. United States so I could join him.\u00a0 At dusk, when the ship arrived at Bremerhaven, I spied a lone person on the pier huddled up against the cold.\u00a0 It was Bruce.\u00a0 He was dressed in a hodgepodge of borrowed clothing.\u00a0 He hated the Army so much, he would not greet me in uniform.<\/p>\n

When I cleared customs, and we were together again, he took me to where we would spend the night.\u00a0 The only room he could find at the last minute was upstairs over a bar.\u00a0 If we stood on our bed and opened the tiny window above it, cigarette smoke just poured in from below.\u00a0 The one bathroom was down the hall.\u00a0 Women went in and out of it all night long.\u00a0 Years later,\u00a0innocents that we were, it occurred to us he had booked a room in a whorehouse.<\/p>\n

We lived in Germany for one year, traveled to ten countries.\u00a0 That was 1955.\u00a0 When we returned home, and he was discharged, Bruce decided to repeat his sophomore year at Syracuse University, and went on to graduate with honors.\u00a0 We lived in Married Students\u2018 Housing in those days, had our first child, a son Chris.\u00a0 Then we moved to Rochester, NY where we still live.\u00a0 Bruce had been accepted at the University of Rochester Medical School, and he achieved his M.D. in 1962.\u00a0 We had by then a baby daughter, Beth, later a second son, Oliver. \u00a0After Bruce was handed his medical degree at graduation and I watched him shake hands with the presenter, I was teary all day.\u00a0 It was because I had a new name: \u00a0Mrs. Dr. Bruce Brown. \u00a0And the toughest years were over.<\/p>\n

Bruce loved Pathology.\u00a0 For forty years he was Director of Pathology at The Genesee Hospital in Rochester, now boarded up.\u00a0 He held this position until he retired, yet continued to work part time at another hospital until he decided he wanted to play tennis more than he wanted to look through a microscope.<\/p>\n

Bruce was generous, kind, honest, truthful, honorable, and loving.\u00a0 In fact, after he died, and I had arranged not a funeral but a \u201cRemembrance\u201d at the University of Rochester Chapel, the building was packed with friends, some of whom had come hundreds of miles just to say into the microphone what they had loved about Bruce.\u00a0 We laughed, we sighed, we wept salt tears. \u00a0It was two and a half hours before the last person spoke, a joyous celebration of a fine man\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

It will be a long time before I come to terms with losing Bruce — if I ever do.\u00a0 On reflection, though, I realize he and I were blessed all our lives together.\u00a0 We worked hard, we achieved our goals, we raised three fine, loving children, and have three fine, loving grandchildren. \u00a0We had a good life, a fine life, together.<\/p>\n

I often have said, \u201cYou get back what you give in Life.\u201d\u00a0 Bruce gave of himself to all who knew him.\u00a0 Everybody loved him. \u00a0He was a Prince among men, a loving husband, adored by his children, and by me.\u00a0 He was the Love of my Life.<\/p>\n

For you who did know him, keep his smiling face in your mind\u2019s eye.\u00a0 You, I, were privileged to have known such a man.<\/p>\n

Lois (Sam)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is with acute sadness that I tell you my beloved husband Dr. Bruce Scott Brown (class of 1952) died in my arms on October 18, 2015.\u00a0 He\u2019d had a cancerous kidney removed exactly one year earlier, and I thought we were home free, though probably he knew otherwise. \u00a0That accursed disease lurks.\u00a0 Four months … Continue reading Bruce Brown ’52<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[396,62,63],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1950s","tag-bruce-brown","tag-class-of-1952","tag-williston-academy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1272,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/1272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/obituaries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}