Biography of Bruce Deere

My name is Maggie and I’m a bird dog.  Not just an ordinary dog, mind you, but that’s a story for another time. My story today is about the man who suffers under the delusion that he is my master.  However, his training is coming along well, and before long I will have him brought to heel. Being a female and red-haired at that, I know how to do that.

Shortly after the completion of the Brownwood Memorial Hospital on Coggin Avenue , a boy was born there on March 9, 1939 to B. F. and Mary Belle Deere.  He was their first child and they named him Bruce.  Five years later they gave him a little sister, Rebecca, and three years after that a brother, Douglas.

The country was just emerging from the Great Depression and was still in the grips of the Dust Bowl with World War II looming on the horizon.  Although a stock farmer by choice, B.F. was also a qualified construction foreman and followed the work wherever jobs opened up, including the construction of Camp Bowie .  For the first eight years of Bruce’s life, the family would stay in one place anywhere from two months to a year.  He attended first grade in Childress, second grade in Abilene, moved back to Brownwood and attended third grade at East Ward, fourth grade at Woodland Heights and Coggin Ward, fifth grade at Coggin, and sixth and seventh at Woodland Heights. Then on to Brownwood Junior High, where Bruce met the rest of the friends that he would be graduating with in 1957.  Except for making some good friends and meeting some wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) teachers, there’s nothing remarkable to tell about his school days.  

From the age of four, when he and his cousin decided to go rabbit hunting along the Red River breaks and getting switched all the way home for wandering off, he has loved the outdoors.  He spent many happy hours roaming the country along Willis Creek and the Pecan Bayou, alone or with friends, and usually accompanied by a dog (none of which could hold a candle to me). Since then he has fished in several states, four oceans and seven countries.

 He joined the Air Force right out of high school with dreams of flying off into the wild blue yonder.  Instead, he wound up in Russian language school, then a cryptologic school at NSA, followed by a year on a two by three mile Aleutian Island called Shemya, home of the world’s worst weather.  Glutton for punishment that he was, he remained in the Air Force for 20 years, working and teaching in the communications intelligence field.  He served in several countries, usually in some remote area.  On fishing trips in Turkey , he encountered people who had never seen a white person.

 At home on leave in 1958, he made a trip to Fort Worth with a friend, who introduced Bruce to his cousin.  Things got serious pretty quick, and in 1960 Linda Carole Clark became Mrs. Bruce Deere.  She has given him three fine children, beautiful grandchildren, and a lifetime of love and unwavering support.  A series of autoimmune diseases in 2002 robbed her of a good deal of her health and physical strength, but she is still his encourager and good right arm.

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