Arlene, Ashley, Eric and Heather, Family and Friends,
When Bruce was suddenly struck by illness last June, he and Arlene discussed his coming surgery, and they asked me to give this memorial eulogy. In shock, and on short notice, I scrambled for words and memories. Bruce thought that he would die during surgery but the crises passed and life went on. We were blessed, and in the end Bruce lasted a long time, because of which he got to hear his own memorial several times over, and he got to know his importance to our lives.
Only Bruce Unger could somehow announce his imminent death and then hang around for seven months to hear what people had to say. Bruce liked to be in control!
When Bruce went into surgery in June, Arlene gave the doctor some special instructions. When Bruce woke up after the surgery, his first encounter with Arlene was classic Bruce: he gave her a list of things to do. She said to him with great love, “I thought I told the doctor to cut out that bossy part?
Bruce lived his last months on his own terms, but within the extreme constraints of his illness. He never gave up trying to organize his life, and that of everyone around him, to talk when there were no words, and to communicate by any means possible.
Bruce lived and he died with integrity and independence, at peace with life and with his dignity intact.
Bruce also loved you all and asked me to tell you how wonderful you were to him: Wonderful! And wonderful! And wonderful!
When he said that, I told Bruce that he was scaring me because he sounded like an accordion player from North Dakota. Being from Brooklyn, of course, Bruce didn't believe that there was a North Dakota, he classified it in the mythological, along with Camelot, Brigadoon and Nebraska.
I am very thankful today that we have left January behind, the month that the Romans named for Janus, the double-faced head looking backwards and forwards. While we are here to look backwards and celebrate a life that touched us, the last few weeks have reaped a terrible toll in our community. And looking back reminds me that the Anglo-Saxons called January the wolf month because hungry wolves came into the villages in search of food!
Speaking of food!
I will come back to Bruce and food but since you have all heard the mileposts of Bruce's life at one time or another I will mention, but not dwell, on them. And because of the series of fall testimonials and memorial celebrations, everything that I planned to say last June was subsequently spoken, written and repeated, which I take as a license to be more personal.
Bruce's professional vita includes: multiple recipient of the Thomas Branch award for teaching excellence and faculty representative to the cabinet; recipient of the Samuel Nelson Gray award and the state of Virginia's outstanding faculty award; invited speaker or participant in conferences around the world; a member of, and often chair of, every committee known to man's the list of awards and scholarly achievements is long and distinguished.
On the personal side: Bruce was born and raised in Brooklyn as a Dodger's fan (he had a lot to overcome); educated in New Orleans; lucky in love; a New Deal liberal; grounded by life in the Center of the Universe and rounded by world travel (and maybe a few too many New York bagels.)
Bruce Unger was strong-willed but even-tempered; honest and direct; opinionated and well- informed; kind and caring; generous to a fault; without spite or vindictiveness; rational and unreasonable.
George Bernard Shaw said that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
In short, Bruce Unger was all of the things one would want in a college professor and in a friend.
Friendships are hard to explain but grow out of the circumstances of life. I come from a small family, far away, as did Bruce; we both grew up in big cities far different from Virginia; our children are the same age and friends; we both rarely kept our opinions to ourselves; and we were taught respect for fairness and working people.
When there were tight budgets in the 1980s, Bruce argued to mitigate the impact of low salaries and high medical costs for those staff members at the bottom of the pay scale. His Randolph-Macon included the entire community -- everyone!
Bruce could also be generous in time and energy. Not only did he give me orange jellybeans, he rarely ate more than half of them. In 1987, when I had both arms in casts and needed a passport to go to China, Bruce offered to drive me to Washington, D.C. How did one repay Bruce? You offered him lunch, and he picked the restaurant!
The lunch almost provided a true test of our friendship and it did leave a giggle that we shared again this summer: after eating, I told Bruce that I needed his help with something.
He looked worried, mumbled a bit and looked off into the distance. Then it dawned on me to explain: could he help me reach my wallet and that it was in a back pocket, not the front.
He smiled, looked relieved, and we went on home. Later I said to him, that wallet business wasn't what was really in your mind, was it? He confessed that what he feared that I wanted was help with the men's room.
As friends, we argued occasionally; worked together often; we walked together daily with Greg Daugherty; and shared many a holiday celebration. Bruce never celebrated Christmas, for some reason, but he did take my grandson aside last year in Ukrop's to advise him not to let mom con him into clothes for Christmas tell her, he said, that you want toys.
Bruce did enjoy playing cricket with us on the 4th of July, but I never did understand his serving kimchee at Thanksgiving.
Bruce loved to tell me that I was the "old guy" he was nine months my junior, and being that he was so young, I expected to have Bruce around for a while once I actually did get old.
But old or not, when Bruce, Greg and I walked, I was always in the middle position which meant that I had to tell the boof (burned-out old fart) on either side of me what the other had said.
As you may not know, Bruce loved to talk. He also tended to repeat stories. At some point, we assigned numbers to his stories and would interrupt him by saying, "Bruce, that is story 14, version B, and then tell him the punch line. It didn't matter, he just kept on talking.
When this happened more than once or twice in succession, Greg would eventually ask me, in an extra loud voice, what I thought of that week's NASCAR race. Bruce knew exactly what we were doing, but it would flummox him none the less. Wide as his knowledge was, the Brooklyn boy was never as redneck as Greg and I. Bruce did, however, invariably turn the other cheek and laugh.
Speaking of the other cheek: back in the 1980s, for a couple of years the students rated faculty on their mode of dress. In one memorable year, Bruce tied Art Conway for the worst-dressed faculty member. In those days Bruce wore blue jeans every day and he had a classic plumber's cleavage from the back.
The other classic Unger tale, of course, was Bruce's absolute love for good food. When Bruce got really wound up rehearsing a lecture on political theory or ranting about college politics the trick was to ask him for a restaurant recommendation, or even what he had eaten in a particular city. You could see his mind stop, wheels spin, a smile form. But try as he might he couldn't resist answering the question.
Bruce was, of course, passionate about garlic pizza at Anthony's, but there was never enough garlic for him. And he really did know good restaurants in numerous cities. His memory for food was fantastic. During this winter, while eating lunch with two guests, James Scanlon and Ginger Young, the topic turned to beef, and James mentioned beef Wellington. Bruce's eyes lit up and he struggled to tell a story:
It seems that Bruce remembered that on the third day of their honeymoon in 1966, he and Arlene had beef Wellington.
Now that isn't what I remember about my honeymoon.
But the story includes two of Bruce's three favorite subjects: food and his wife Arlene. He wanted Arlene with him in everything and they shared life to the very end.
Bruce's third favorite subject was his children. Bruce loved them and was proud to add Heather this fall. Ashley and Eric also fulfilled two of Bruce's aspirations in life: Ashley is a first-class pianist and Erica's career is in sports.
Bruce loved music. In addition to his rock and roll radio show, Stay Loose with Bruce, he loved cowboy songs and folk music, The Kingston Trio and Woody GuthrieI can almost hear Bruce singing now, badly but with gusto:
So long it's been good to know you
So long it's been good to know you
So long it's been good to know you
But I've got to be moving along!
Good bye, Bruce
It's been good to know you too!