After Bruce Jon’s passing, I enrolled in the Parkinson’s Progressive Markers Initiative, a study founded by the Michael Fox Foundation. You can enroll also at https://www.ppmi-info.org/

BruceJon was very creative. In addition to music, he was an accomplished sketch artist and ceramicist. I think I still have a coffee mug he fashioned with a very artful face carved on the side. He was very proud and excited when he received an acting role in the school play “The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch”.

We often worked together in after school jobs. At 15 we worked for a TV repair business, hauling TV’s from the van to the shop and back, and stringing antenna wire in stifling hot attics during antenna installations. For those of you who don’t know, we used to get our television programs by snatching them from the air using big wire nets attached to our roofs.

We were never late for school, because we developed a habit of getting up early and walking to Duncan Donuts together, where we would drink coffee and smoke cigarettes before school.

BruceJon was always thinking of others. Once I remarked, probably after watching the 3 stooges, that I wondered what it would be like to be hit in the face with a pie. On my birthday that year, guess who rang my doorbell first thing in the morning, pie in hand?

Although I was a mediocre guitarist, I was very honored that BruceJon and Maggie requested that I accompany a vocalist in singing at their wedding. It was a very touching moment for me. And I know that BruceJon was very proud of his long marriage to Maggie and of their lovely daughters.

And I am very proud to be able to say that BruceJon was a friend of mine.