Ivy and I are thinking of you during this difficult time.

Uncle Dale will be missed and always loved. He was the Uncle that would do stuff with the havelock bruno boys and tell us not to tell our mom and dad. We love him so much. He looked so much like our dad Joseph Bruno.
From Teresa and Randy Bruno family we will always remember our favorite Uncle.
Love you Uncle Dale and your family will always be in our hearts.
Love and miss you.

On Uncle Dale.

I have always known my uncle Dale. He was only four years older than me; so in a way, he was like an older brother. He was born in August 1944, just a few weeks before my own father, his brother, Russell shipped out to serve under General Patton in the war through France, Germany and Austria.

My earliest memory of Dale was when I was three or four. He had a new bike. He decided to sit me on the handlebars while he raced on the dirt road in front of the old farm house. Cows had just been moved across the road from the east pasture to the barn, and they left gifts of “cow pies” in the road. Well, Dale hit a bump, and I went flying over the handlebars, landing face first in a fresh cow pie. I cried, mostly out of humiliation rather than hurt. Dale was worried. He kept telling me to not tell anybody. It was okay. And it was. He put me back on the handlebars and we tried again. I enjoyed it, and my only problem came when I had to tell my mother how I got cow muck all over my clothes.

For every Christmas and birthday, my folks made sure that Dale got a nice gift. I remember he was about eight years old, and my parents gave him a nice, large yellow metal toy road grader. I wanted it, and later I asked my mom why I didn’t get such nice gifts. My mother explained, “You have a mother. Dale does not have a mother. He needs these things to make him feel special.” My grandmother Mable Phipps Bruno had passed away from cancer on July 19, 1952, when Dale was not yet eight years old. I never asked about getting nicer toys after that. I was only three when grandma Mable died, but I remember her. I recall running up to her, and she scooped me up in her arms and smothered me in kisses. I knew she loved me. She loved Dale and all of us.

In about the spring of 1957, we were visiting. Dale and I were walking down the dirt road. The county road grader had just passed by, and something odd popped out of the ground. It was a granite Indian axe head. Dale handed it to me. He told me he wanted to give me something special. Maybe it was meant to make up for the bike incident. It was special. I still have it, and I treasure it. That axe head sparked my interest in archeology and history. I asked adults about what happened to those Indians. Of course, they did not know.

In 1959, My grandfather, Domenic Bruno remarried to a widow, Myrtle Mayes Cochrane. Grandma Myrtle had been my grandfather’s nurse when he was injured in a railroad construction accident on the Bevier and Southern Railroad. Myrtle had no children of her own, but she was an excellent step-mother to my uncles Dick and Dale. They came to love her, as did everyone in the family.

Years pass. We each live our own lives. We grow old and have our own families. I knew Dale was not well, but in my mind, I did not picture him dying. We last contacted Dale and Judy in May. Nancy called Judy to tell her she checked on the graves of Domenic and Mable Bruno at Union Cemetery north of College Mound, Missouri, the same cemetery that holds the graves of many generations of my grandmother’s family. The cemetery is well kept. Judy said Dale only had a few months to live, but he would be pleased to know about the graves of his parents. Now he is gone. He was the last of the children of Domenic and Mable Phipps Bruno.