In Memory

Bruce Wilkinson



 
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04/24/18 02:31 PM #1    

Patrick Potter

Bruce and I met in PE at Stripling in the 7th grade. We were only casual friends through the years, but became  good friends our senior year at Heights. Toward the end of that year, he had a party at his house. It was the first time I ever had a drink!  Gene Hemphill made me a Wild Turkey and coke. 

We went to UT, and lived in the same dorm, the Goody Woo, with Tres Ross, Chappie Riise, Jim Cozby and Charlie Dewees. We did stupid things, like pour crap on the SAE's cars from the 6th floor balcony. We joined the same frat, then he fell for the gal he later married. In time, we both left the frat and didn't see each other much for a couple of years. I attended his wedding in the summer of '73. He graduated and went to law school. I think he went to SMU for that. We sort of lost track of each other for awhile. He and his wife had, and raised three kids. 

Bruce eventually moved back to Ft. Worth. I came back in '94, and we started meeting Tres, Chappie and Charlie for drinks every couple of months. He liked to talk about politics, and he and I continued to meet-up for a few years after the others stopped coming. 

One day Tres came by and told me that Bruce had died the night before. He had had a mild heart attack in the early 2000s, and it finally caught up to him.

As they say, he was a great guy. In Bruce's case, that doesn't begin to tell the story. I wish everybody could have known him. He was, and still is, the first close friend I've lost. And I miss him...


06/22/18 09:32 PM #2    

Tres Ross

Bruce always loved to “stir the pot.”  He would bring up a controversial subject and step back and watch the heated debaters take sides. It’s funny, I would get so emotionally wrapped up in the subject, I never heard Bruce’s position on the subject. I remember that after lunch and before the next bell he would hold debating sessions along some outside stairs. He and Coy Clement would really get into it. We had a 2 week debate on the Texas Death Penalty, a really hot subject our senior year. Another debate was about Selective Service and the draft. A huge subject for us 17 year old boys.  One of the most lasting debates, it lasted a year, was about Paschal. Our junior year, some Paschal vandals painted our school purple and wrote some nasty things about our coaches. Bruce was really worked up about this, the debate topic was “what are we going to do to Pascha?”

It was fun to dream about what we would do to them, but if we did something, about 15 people would know it was us.  No retribution occurred from us. But it was fun to talk big about it.  Ha.  Thanks Bruce for those sessions. 

 


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