Bruce Lee Felter

A child can only know their parents from when the child was born. There is a whole life that existed before me, that I rely on others to fill in.

If you knew him before I did, add those memories to this.

Bruce served twenty-four years in the United States Air Force as an Engineer, a career marked by dedication, discipline, and service. During that time, he earned several medals, including a Bronze Star for his support during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Service to his country was not simply a job—it was a defining commitment, one that came with both honor and personal cost.

After retiring from the Air Force, he pursued a master’s degree in social work and spent the remainder of his professional life as a Mental Health Therapist. This work occupied the later years of his career and reflected a continued engagement with people and their struggles.

He was a lifelong learner with wide-ranging interests. He could lose hours to astronomy, political history, cars, and the study of human behavior. An avid sports fan, he remained unwaveringly loyal to the perpetually struggling New York Jets and could tell you just about anything you wanted to know about anyone who ever played baseball or football professionally. He never had a great reason as to why he wasn’t as passionate about college sports-but he’d watch those, in a pinch.

Music mattered to him. He loved metal and hard rock, with a particular affection for Asian metal bands such as Seikima-II and Dir En Grey. His tastes were strong, his opinions often stronger.

He is preceded in death by everyone who died before him and survived by everyone still living after him. He’d have agreed and liked this statement. His four children didn’t know him well; his grandchildren, even less. Pity him, not us.

His life was not without hardship—much of it shaped by service, circumstance, and his own choices. He made those choices, lived with his regrets, and truly loved only once. He suffered sometimes quietly, sometimes not, but held firmly to beliefs that steadied and guided him. A man with a man’s faults, he accepted them and bore his self-imposed punishments largely in solitude, accompanied by YouTube and his thoughts.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.” ~Carl Jung

As humans go, he was alright. And I loved him.