Donald Bruce Coryell

After decades of surviving car crashes, shipwrecks, knife wounds, gun shots, and occasionally his own cooking, Donald Bruce Coryell died peacefully on January 1st at his son’s home in New Braunfels, Texas.

Born in 1941 in Hollis, Oklahoma, Bruce, a true Texan, quickly corrected this oversight by relocating to Galveston. He spent his childhood on the island with cousins and siblings, running wild and nearly parentless, adventuring, eluding authority, and learning the joys of minor mischief. In 1959, he joined the Air Force. Stationed in Alaska at the height of the cold war, he met spies and Russian agents, fished and fell into pristine lakes, and skidded sideways and eventually barefoot 8000 feet down from the top of a mountain in an attempt to report into base before his leave ran out. He made it.

After the service, Bruce’s adventures continued. He earned his degree at Lamar College, played semi-pro Football, was the City of Beaumont’s Doubles Tennis Champion, did a stint as a high school coach, and another in law school. He worked as a wildcatter, helped build offshore oil platforms, and knew where to catch the biggest shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico. Bruce could prioritize. Even in the midst of all that, he still found plenty of time for the beach.

On a New Jersey beach in 1971, Bruce met Chris, who was to be the love of his life. He and Chris would charm, infuriate, and cherish one another through hard times and easy ones, through four children, and then as many more children as they could take into their lives; through hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and every kind of Brucian adventure for the next four decades. It was not enough time. He never stopped missing her.

A longtime resident of Beaumont, Texas, many of Bruce’s proudest moments happened on local ball fields there. He led countless Little Dribblers basketball teams to glory in the 80s and early 90s, coached t-ball and baseball, and most important to him, helped a lot of kids learn to love good sportsmanship and team play. He also helped open up girls’ sports in Beaumont, coaching both softball and soccer at a time before that was completely accepted.

As a representative for Helena Laboratories, Bruce spent years crisscrossing the United States, South and Central America. During his travels, he was mistaken for a drug dealer, a priest, and a CIA agent. He once escaped Trinidad just ahead of the February Revolution by putting down his KFC, shedding his jacket, and ducking down an alley. Forty years later, he still regretted losing that chicken.

Bruce was an artist. Entirely self-taught, he learned to draw from pictures torn out of Life Magazine. By the time he was a teenager, his eye was accurate enough for portrait work. Setting up on the beach with a pencil and a pad of paper, he found he could earn a good side income while being paid to look at pretty girls. With an incentive like that, he continued to develop his talent for most of his life. Years later, his portrait sketches, done initially on cloth napkins nicked from the Beaumont Hilton’s restaurant, were a popular feature of Helena’s training programs. Later, the napkins were ordered in for him by the gross, but he kept right on drawing even without the thrill of petty theft.

Bruce was a storyteller. Tales of his adventures kept family and friends rapt, and everyone guessing what was true. Did he really wrestle a shark with his bare hands? Could he really swim the length of Galveston Bay? He did. He could. Later in life when he was adventuring less, Bruce settled down to write books. From his retirement home in the mountains of North Georgia, he began writing about a wild, handsome, suspiciously tall hero and his beautiful, coincidentally blonde wife. That first book inspired another, and another, a book a year, over two states, and many houses. Every novel that he wrote was full of exciting stories, but the strangest, wildest, most amazing ones weren’t in his fiction. He saved those for the memoirs. Even Bruce couldn’t have made that stuff up.

Bruce was a father. His family grew, and grew, and grew: with biological children; with children who needed a place to live; with children who needed a dad for a moment, or a month, or forever. The heart of the man had no boundaries. Some part of him was always the wild boy from Galveston, unparented himself. That part of him took care of every parentless child he ever met.

Bruce loved life. He is survived by children, Christi and Scott Ali of Beaumont Texas, Kara Coryell and Joshua Lee-Center of Stone Mountain, Georgia, Don and Marci Coryell of New Braunfels, Texas and son Michael Coryell of Martindale; grandchildren, Bay Berger of Houston, Texas, Myra and Dylan Coryell of New Braunfels, Texas, by Ron and Nikki Phillips of Houston, Texas; twin sister, Kathleen Jamison, sister Ginny Scheer, brothers, Bob, David, Richard, and Steven Applegate, by many nieces and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, and by countless people whose lives were made richer, and stranger, and more adventurous, for knowing him.

It was not enough time. We will never stop missing him.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Bruce and Christine Coryell Memorial Endowed Scholarship at Lamar University. This scholarship will be awarded annually to a student-athlete pursuing a degree in education.

Memorial gifts can be made securely online through the Lamar University Foundation at www.lamar.edu/give

If donating by check, please make it payable to Lamar University Foundation and mail it to:
P.O. Box 11500
Beaumont, TX 77710

When making your gift, kindly specify that it is in honor of Bruce and Christine Coryell.

For any questions or further assistance with donations, please contact Lamar University at 409-880-2117.