Bruce Anderson, a community volunteer extraordinaire and longtime chief engineer at Four Corners Broadcasting, died Wednesday night at Four Corners Health Care Center.
He was 67.
Anderson suffered a severe stroke in 2011 while working at Four Corners Broadcasting that caused paralysis on his left side. He was taken to a Denver hospital on an emergency helicopter after the stroke, then brought back to Durango after a community fundraiser. He had lived at the health-care center since returning from Denver after the stroke. He never regained full use of his left side, and the stroke affected his ability to swallow.
“He knew just about everyone in town,” said friend Nancy Workman, who looked after Anderson after his stroke. “He loved Durango. Passionately.”
Several of his friends visited him Wednesday when it appeared his condition had become dire, said Ward Holmes, regional manager at Four Corners Broadcasting and a friend of Anderson’s.
“I like to think he’s in a better place. Not in pain anymore,” Holmes said. “He’ll be missed.”
Holmes said there wasn’t a community cause that Anderson ever turned down when approached.
Among the causes Anderson helped were Big Brothers Big Sisters, the United Way, the FFA and the Boys & Girls Club of La Plata County. He was a huge fan of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge train, having loved trains since he was a little boy.
“Bruce was just an awesome guy,” said Trish Solomon, who met Anderson soon after she and her husband, Trip, moved to Durango in 1987. Anderson played with their son, Tanner, as he grew up.
“He volunteered for everything,” Solomon said. “That man didn’t get paid for anything.”
Workman said Durango was “his family.” His two main causes were helping young people and the train. She met Anderson when he came to her house with Dick Mullen to help her build a deck. Anderson told her, “I thought it would be fun to help somebody I didn’t know.”
“He was there at the drop of a hat,” Workman said. “He heard of somebody who needed some help or some guidance or some mentoring ... he was there. He was very unselfish with regard to giving up his time. He gave an awful lot.”
Like all transplants, Anderson had a life before Durango.
While broadcasting under the name Anderson, his mother’s maiden name, his given name was Bruce Plasse. He grew up in Whittier, California, where he graduated from La Cerna High School.
“The start of his broadcasting career was doing the third period update in high school,” his sister Leslie Fisher said. “He would talk about the next football game and that kind of information. He also had a ham radio.”
Anderson went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting and communications at California Polytechnic University at Pomona in the late 1960s before becoming a station manager at a radio station in Newport Beach, California.
And then he had his big adventure, walking across the country in the early 1970s.
“He walked from Newport Beach to Newport, Rhode Island,” Fisher said, “He wintered in Hutchinson, Kansas, because he couldn’t walk in the snow. It took him a year, and I remember my mother sent him several pairs of shoes because he kept wearing them out. He said people came out and shot at him when he walked across private property.”
Fisher said the Plasse family had often vacationed in Colorado, and she and her brother loved the mountains, which may have been what brought him to Durango.
johnp@durangoherald.com
Memorial service
Cremation has occurred. A memorial service for Bruce Anderson is in the planning stages and will take place in the next couple of weeks.
Anderson was born to William B. and Audrey C. (Anderson) Plasse on Dec. 4, 1946, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. His family moved to Whittier, California, when he was a little boy.
He is survived by his sister, Leslie Fisher, of Port Angeles, Washington.
Memorial contribution recipients will be designated at a later date.
