Tia Sofia, my heart goes out to you and your family. You are in our prayers. May you have peace and strength through our lord and savior.   
         Love, Sara Ramirez & Family

He knew the folklore of the old land, the land of wild persimmons, briar, and bois d'arc. Uncle Perry was my go-to uncle for learning the mysteries of old-time Oklahoma.

When I was a boy of 6 or 8 I remember Perry plowing a piece of land about a quarter of a mile SW of our house.  I would go over there and walk behind him and the mule and listen to the stories he would tell.

   He once told me that country music was the voice of the poor.

   I will always remember his kind and gentle nature.

    I am very glad that I was able to get by and see him last summer.

Growing up in Hugo, Oklahoma during the Depression was not easy, but my dad is an amazing man as demonstrated by his ability to plow at 5 years of age and, at the same time, collect the arrowheads he unearthed.  He has been wise since his youth, and his professionalism is paralleled by his devotion to his family.  A lover of nature and tales of the olden days, Perry Bruner leaves his family with a love of learning and with great sensitivity to the beauty of nature.  A hard worker and a good listener; he listened because he wanted to know things, and he could get anyone to start talking to him.  He had a thirst for knowledge and learned from everyone he came in contact with, coaxing stories from his elders which he passed down to the younger generations.  His mother and father, Irene Bell Bruner and Alfred “Doc” Bruner, who preceded him in death, knew that they could count on him to pull his share or more of the work on the farm.  Their little boy was a wonder in school as well, excelling in all subjects but spelling.
 
My dad grew up with a little sister.  I think this is why he has almost supernatural patience.  He and Georgia grew up together working in the fields.  Georgia remembers that her brother always walked each row behind the others or ahead because he wanted to think.  When he took his thinking to Oklahoma Presbyterian College, he lived with Georgia and her husband Bert during the time their first child Adrienne was born.  While Adrienne will recall looking under the door to his bedroom to see if a stick of gum would slide out, Georgia remembers that he initially was hesitant to hold baby Adrienne.  Instead, he would stand around and look at her making comments like, “the roof of her mouth sure is high.”  It did not take long for Tio Perry to bond with Adrienne as well as with her brother Stephen and her brother Tim.  He had always had a way with children; Georgia recalls seeing 3 or 4 children following him all the time because he would tell them stories; stories that would be continued and that would keep the kids coming back.
    
The virtue of patience is what made my dad a natural teacher.  He was willing to explain things again, and in different ways, no matter how many times it took.  He could and did teach about a wide variety of things; he taught us about the Depression, the business world, fishing, native American history, military history, squirrel-hunting, math, biology, music, and the craft of spinning a good yarn.  He shared his love for the wilderness with all the children he met.  Daddy knew the names of the trees, plants, wildlife, and, as some of you might remember, he was pretty sure he knew how to get honey out of a hive without disturbing the bees.  He always obeyed laws designed to enrich the wilderness.  When Georgia was 10 years old and she tried to go squirrel-hunting out of season, her brother stopped her and explained why she couldn't go.  Such things really stick in a child's memory, and give us respect for the beauty and power of nature.  I remember riding through southeastern Oklahoma with my dad and brother.  Daddy told Clayton and me to look out the window of the car, and when we did, we saw an eagle soaring across the little valley.  “Take a good look, kids," he said, “because by the time you are grown there won't be any eagles left.”  Not all of his predictions came true, but the important thing was that he knew how to teach children to observe their surroundings and respect the beauty he saw there.

My brother Clayton remembers him also as a prankster—Daddy once threw a skunk-soaked little dog Cricket into Clayton's bed—and a great social asset as he was fun to be around and he planned unbelievably exciting parties and gatherings.  When Clayton turned 12, my dad taped dollar bills all around inside the windowless barn and sent Clayton and his friends down there to search for money in the pitch darkness.  The boys all loved it so much that they literally begged my dad to hide something else, so he then hid oranges in the briars around our grove of pine trees.  As for me, on my 14th birthday Daddy took me to a nightclub in Texarkana and talked the band into letting me sing with them for the best birthday I ever had. He always welcomed our friends and even the animals we brought home, teaching us how to be gracious to people and how to nurture other beings.  Most things he taught by example, and the one way he taught us what not to do was in his path as a businessman.  He worked hard and created a comfortable lifestyle for his family by sacrificing many hours he would rather have spent sharing spooky legends with kids or building tree-houses.  Clayton and I both decided that, while we could emulate his honesty, his people skills, and his industry, we would choose jobs that brought us joy.  Fortunately, that worked out, and because of our father's lessons we both work in careers where we use all of the assets he so generously provided us with.  May our own children be so lucky.

 My memories of my father begin with stories; there are a few things I think I remember because I have heard them so many times.  One of the first is that when I was a baby he let me play with the parts of the newspaper he had finished, and my mom would come home to find both of us smeared with black newsprint ink, as happy as could be.  I also hear I locked all the house doors one morning in Durant so he couldn't go to work.  He made my childhood as happy as it could possibly be by sharing with me everything he knew, especially his love for nature and music.  When the weather was stormy, he calmed our fears by teaching us to count the number of seconds between thunder and lightning, and when the rain was gentle he encouraged us to go outside in our underwear and dance like Indians.  Clayton and I often saw my dad dance with our mother in our living room; his love for her is what taught us to love each other, and to love our spouses—Amy Easter Bruner and Anthony Kable.  We watched our dad love our mother for 50 years as he treated her as the joy of his life.  He met Sofia Jimenez at OPC in 1959 and immediately recognized her not only as a ravishing beauty but as a proud, intelligent woman from a strong family; he loved sharing jokes and telling stories with her little sisters Linda and Irene.  He respected her parents and all her siblings and made sure we had the opportunity to enrich our lives by spending time with our mother's family.  My dad shared with our mother memories of picking fruit and cotton, and he made sure Clayton and I experienced this as well, from the strawberry festival in Stilwell, Oklahoma, to renegade excursions into random cotton patches we would see near the side of the road while traveling on family vacations.

Despite my dad's spelling problem he was a prolific letter-writer, and he and my mother were in constant contact by mail when they had to be apart.  He wrote on many subjects, great and small; he wrote about what it means to be a man, about marriage and love and religion and sharing.  In his spare time he wrote lyrics to country and western songs; one of my favorite memories is co-authoring with him a sequel to Tanya Tucker's hit “Delta Dawn” and then again working with him on my 8th grade graduation speech.  I learned from my dad about writing and truth.  When I struggled to reveal a controversial point, he asked me:  “do you really believe that?”  When I answered yes he said, “Then write it down.”  I have kept this message with me throughout my career as a writer.  Some of you may know me as a singer, and you know Clayton and I inherited musical ability from our beautiful mother.  What you may not know is that my father instilled in me the passion for music and he taught me my first song; I sat on top of him outside at night as he taught me to sing at the moon, pitch for pitch and word for word:  “the stars at night, are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.”

With the end of my father's life on earth, many of us will feel a loss—not only the loss of a great man, but loss of a connection to the old ways of the old days.  We need not worry, because we are all a family of story-tellers, and we will make sure that Jordan Bigelow, Felicity Bruner, and Lila Schwelm are recipients of Perry Bruner's great legacy, a legacy of love, of music, of laughter and sharing; a legacy of virtue and generosity, and most of all a legacy of the love of nature, and of the past.  We see beauty in our surroundings, just as my dad did, and we will teach that beauty to the littlest people; his stories will become their stories, and they will go on forever. For my dad, like his vast arrowhead collection, is not lost, but is now in the hands of those whose lives he touched.

AVIS DE DÉCÈS

Perry A. Bruner

5 janvier 1935 – 4 février 2012

Lloyd James Funeral Home

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