Dr. Bruce Scott Brown of Lake Buel, New Marlborough, Mass., and Pittsford, N.Y., died in his hospital bed in Rochester, N.Y., on Sunday, October 18, 2015. His wife, Lois, was holding him in her arms when he took has last breath, and gently, quietly let it go. Their children Chris, Beth, and Oliver were around his bed. He had been fighting cancer for over a year, yet it was pulmonary fibrosis that took his life. He was 82 years old.
Quite some years before, during his Days of Innocence, Bruce had been a waterfront counselor at Camp Half Moon on Lake Buel. The summer before college, Lois’s mother (Lorna Weinberg, a long-time summer resident) said to her, “If you want to meet boys, take the canoe across the Lake and lose your paddle.” Lois waited until she could just glimpse waterfront counselors appearing on the big camp dock for swim time. She paddled over, and did as her mother had told her to do. It was Bruce who saved her. They fell in love almost immediately. It was the start of a romance that lasted more than sixty years.
Bruce had been drafted out of college into the Army in 1953, and after a year’s training was to be sent to Europe. So he and Lois were married just before Christmas, on December 22, 1954. After he was settled at his base in Germany, Bruce sent for his bride. Lois crossed the Atlantic on the S.S. United States, arriving in Bremerhaven, Germany where they were reunited. Europe is a lot smaller than one would think, so during the year they lived abroad, they traveled to ten countries.
After returning to the United States, and completing college, Bruce went to medical school in Rochester, N.Y. Upon graduation, he trained as a pathologist. Eventually, he became Chairman of Pathology at the late, great Genesee Hospital in Rochester where he remained for more than thirty years. Later, he worked at another hospital to which his department had moved. But after only two years, he retired completely.
He had discovered Country Music. He bought a very fine bass fiddle, and learned to play it. Soon, he became part of a new band called Wild Root. The group became very well known in the Rochester area. Often, they had their foot-tapping rehearsals in Bruce and Lois’s sunroom in Pittsford.
Retirement allowed him to spend his summers at Lake Buel. There, he fell in with other musicians of a similar ilk. Sometimes he would abandon his family for a week at Music Camp in Ashokan.
He fell ill in the summer of 2014 while at Lake Buel, despite having played tennis five days a week, at the end of August emerging as the overall winner in each of his groups. In October, at home in Pittsford, his doctors found a diseased kidney, which was surgically removed. But cancer spreads silently, killing its host.
He began chemo. Yet in the end, it was not cancer that killed him. He had developed pulmonary fibrosis, and was hospitalized. Soon it became clear it was the oxygen he was receiving that was keeping him alive.
At last, he yielded to his fate. He died on October 18, 2015, his wife’s arms around him, his children, Chris, Beth and Oliver at his bedside.
With his passing, a light went out in his family’s life. He was a wonderful husband, a terrific Dad, a loving grandfather. Everyone who knew him thought the world of him. He had a sweet, gentle disposition, a great sense of humor, a deep love for his family, a loyalty to his friends.
Nothing on Earth will ever be the same without him. He is with the angels now.
