Bruce Alan Ross died peacefully on March 1, 2026, just four days shy of his 94th birthday.
Bruce was born in Denver, Colorado on March 5, 1932 — though not, technically, as a Ross. He came into the world as Bruce Alan Rosenbaum, the middle child of Marion B. Rosenbaum and Beatrice Lifshutz. His older brother Harvey Myron was about two years ahead of him. His younger sister Barbara Mae came about two years after. By his own account, Bruce was "probably the ugliest baby you ever wanna see in your life" — black and blue all over from a difficult delivery.
The family lived in Denver, at 2524 Glencoe Street near Park Hill School, and for a time in Greeley, where Bruce's father worked as a grocer. Bruce's earliest memories were a jumble of cousins, mischief, and the particular chaos of a large Jewish family in Depression-era Colorado. His grandmother Molly Lifshutz and her sister Fanny Lorber were women of consequence — together they helped found the National Home for Jewish Children in Denver, which grew over the decades into a major institution, which today is known as National Jewish Health. Bruce grew up surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins, including his cousin Dina, with whom he got into regular trouble. Once, the two of them snuck into a Catholic church across from their house and lit every candle in the place. When the church told his mother, she informed Bruce that if he ever did that again, he wasn't going to be Jewish anymore.
When Bruce was about seven years old, the family piled into a 1938 two-door car and drove to Miami. There were five of them crammed into that car — three kids fighting in the back seat. His mother bought them comic books to keep the peace.
It was somewhere on that drive that Bruce's parents told the children they were changing their name. Rosenbaum was becoming Ross. The reason was Jewish prejudice — his parents didn't want to deal with it in Florida, and they didn't want their children to have to either. Bruce was seven. He didn't care. "They could tell me my name was Shithead," he said later. "I wouldn't have cared." But the decision would echo through his life in ways none of them could have predicted.
The family moved to Miami because Bruce's older brother Harvey had developed a mastoid — a hole behind his ear — and the doctor said a warmer climate might help. It did: Harvey went straight into the salt water the first chance he got, against all medical advice, and the hole closed. But the other reason for the move was family. Bruce's aunt May and uncle Sam Luby had already relocated to Florida, where Sam had opened Luby Chevrolet. Bruce's father Marion went to work there, starting on the used car lot and eventually becoming general manager when Sam's health failed after a series of heart attacks. Marion ran the dealership through the war years — the rationing, the scarcity of cars, the temptation to gouge customers. He refused. He wouldn't cheat anyone out of a dime. Bruce remembered that about his father with unmistakable pride. Honesty, Marion believed, was not situational.
In Miami, Bruce found his cousin Chester J. Luby, Sam and May's youngest son, who was about eight months older. Chester became the closest thing Bruce had to a brother — closer, really, than his actual brother. The two of them would take jitneys to Miami Beach, pile into Sam Luby's cabana at one of the hotels, and spend entire summer days swimming.
School in Miami was a culture shock. On his first day at Coral Way Elementary, a teacher asked him a question. He answered "Yes." She corrected him: "You mean, yes ma'am." This was the South. Bruce adjusted, as he always would, but he never quite stopped being startled by the rules other people lived by.
By junior high, things got harder. Bruce was Jewish, and in 1940s Miami, that mattered. He was bullied — badly. A kid would come up to him before school and hit him on the arm as hard as he could, every single day, until another student finally confronted the bully and it stopped. Girls would flirt with him and then say, relieved, "Oh, I'm so glad you're not Jewish" — not knowing that he was. His wife Jackie later pointed out that Bruce had a habit, throughout his entire life, of telling people he was Jewish within minutes of meeting them. He'd learned early that it was better to get it out in the open than to hear what people said when they didn't know.
Despite all of it, Bruce never wavered. He had a bar mitzvah, having crammed his Torah portion into roughly two weeks of study. He stood up on the bima, looked down at the Torah scroll — no vowel markings, no pronunciation guides — and essentially improvised his way through it. His mother laid out a huge spread in the temple basement afterward. By the time Bruce finished shaking hands and got downstairs, the food was mostly gone.
Bruce's first date was in elementary school — a girl named Sandra. He told her to meet him inside the movie theater so she'd pay her own way. He never had any money. His allowance was twenty-five cents a week, and when it was raised to fifty, it was, as he recalled to his grandson, "a big fucking deal."
Bruce's father Marion was from Centerville, Iowa. His mother's family was rooted in Denver. There was tension between the two sides — Bruce's paternal grandmother once told Marion he could visit anytime he wanted, but to leave Beattie at home. As a result, Bruce never knew his father's parents. The fractures in family were something he understood from a young age, and it shaped the way he thought about loyalty and chosen bonds for the rest of his life.
After high school and college, Bruce served in the United States Army. He counted it among the formative chapters of his life, alongside his education and his career in sales — work that suited his natural ability to connect with anyone and make them feel like the most important person in the room.
Over the course of a long and colorful life, Bruce lived in several places before eventually returning to Colorado and settling in Boulder in 1986, where he became a well-known and beloved presence in the community.
Bruce believed life was meant to be lived with curiosity, kindness, and a healthy skepticism of authority. A lifelong Democrat with a classic liberal hippie spirit, he cared deeply about fairness, community, and people living freely as themselves. He kept a quote close that summed up his worldview: "I love the life I live and I live the life I love."
He studied theater, loved the arts, and had a deep appreciation for drawing and visual art. He spent time in a poetry society in Boulder — a group of about a dozen men who called themselves the Poets. The roster included friends like Bob, Dave, Fred, Jeff, Joe, John, Karl, Steve, Terry (whom Bruce labeled in his contacts as "ARTIST!!!!!"), Tom, Vince, and Bill. The group was part poetry, part philosophy, part politics, and entirely about the pleasure of good conversation. For Bruce, those friendships were a cornerstone of his life in Boulder.
His favorite animal was the wolf, which he admired for its independence and loyalty — so much so that he had one tattooed on his body.
Before moving to Boulder, Bruce and his wife Jackie spent five years sailing their boat, the Easy Lady — including time in the Virgin Islands — an adventure that reflected their shared love of exploration and living life outside the usual boundaries. But sailing was only part of it. Bruce and Jackie were tireless travelers. They weren't the kind of people who took vacations. They lived adventures.
Bruce shared his love of tennis widely. He served as tennis coach at Justice High School for several years, later coached at Boulder High School, and worked as a USTA tennis referee. He wrote detailed guides for his junior varsity players on everything from match tactics to doubles strategy, and he clearly loved being on the court and helping young athletes find their game. Tennis also brought him one of his closest friendships — his friend Ellen, whose daughter played tennis, became a fixture in Bruce's life and one of the people he trusted enough to include in his inner circle, the small group who received his regular dispatches of political commentary, jokes, art, and the occasional Shakespeare quote.
He was a man of many interests. He played chess. He studied Spanish. He cooked with real enthusiasm — paleo muffins, cloud bread, smoothies, slow cooker beef stroganoff, pork chops with apples and onions, oven-baked French toast. He kept his mind sharp with brain training exercises well into his nineties, and he stayed physically active on a treadmill even in his final years. He was not a person who sat still easily.
Helping others was a constant thread in Bruce's life. For five years he served as a volunteer probation officer. He also served as a CASA volunteer — a Court Appointed Special Advocate — supporting children in the court system who did not otherwise have someone in their corner. His case notes show the kind of advocate he was: thorough, attentive, and fiercely focused on what was best for the child. He attended meetings with caseworkers, foster homes, and psychologists. He pushed for staffing meetings when information wasn't being shared. He wasn't there to fill a role — he was there to make sure a kid had somebody fighting for them. Through CASA, Bruce supervised two volunteers who became dear friends: Melinda and Clint. What started as a professional relationship turned into years of regular dinners together — Melinda and Clint would show up at Bruce's door with takeout from Chez Thuy or Snarf's, and they'd spend the evening talking. They sent him photos from their travels and left him books they thought he'd love.
That instinct to look after others extended well beyond formal roles. Bruce spent years giving thoughtful, detailed advice to people navigating difficult relationships, career crossroads, and personal struggles. He didn't lecture. He listened, and then he offered something useful.
Bruce and Jackie enjoyed being with young people and offering guidance, food, and friendship. Among them were Libby, Regina, and Crissy, teenagers who Bruce and Jackie took under their wing and who became, over the decades, something much closer to family. Those relationships never faded. The group — along with friends like Amy and Joe, George, Becky, and Dawn— stayed close for the rest of Bruce's life, gathering regularly for potluck dinners they called the South Street Gang. Even in his nineties, Bruce was trading emails full of love and quiche reviews with Crissy, swapping "I love you"s with Libby, and showing up to Regina's parties. The bonds Bruce and Jackie built with those young people didn't just last — they deepened with every passing year.
That same spirit drew people to Bruce throughout his life, not just in the early years. His friend Melissa — without being asked — took it upon herself to shop and deliver groceries to his door during COVID. Bruce was so moved that he wrote a letter to her mother. "I believe your daughter is one of the special human beings in this world," he told her. "She is kind, thoughtful, dedicated to whatever she chooses to do and does it all with such a joyful spirit. To be one of her friends is an honor." Melissa helped him through a surgery, sent him exercise routines to keep him steady on his feet, and checked in on him regularly.
In the week before he passed, many of those people — some who had known Bruce since they were teenagers — returned to say goodbye. It was a powerful reminder of just how many lives he had touched.
Bruce also had his own philosophy about family. He believed respect shouldn't automatically come with a title. Because of that, his grandchildren didn't grow up calling him "Grandpa." They called him Bruce, because he wanted relationships built on knowing each other as people.
That didn't stop him from creating nicknames of his own. His grandson Ross spent most of his life affectionately known as "Little Shit," a nickname delivered with the humor and warmth that perfectly captured Bruce's style of love.
One of Bruce's great regrets was that Jackie never wrote her story. She had wanted to, and he'd waved it off — "Oh, screw it, why do you want to do that?" — and she let it go. He was sorry about that for the rest of his life. "That woman had a lot of wisdom," he said.
In the last years of his life, Bruce reflected on aging with the same directness he brought to everything else. At 91, he wrote: "I suddenly discovered I am 91 going on 92, which means I am in my 93rd year, not putting too fine a point on it. Realizing that in the scheme of things I am but a grain of sand on a very large beach." He marveled at how every stage — high school, college, the army, work, his forty-year marriage — all seemed, looking back, like it had lasted about five minutes.
He wrote about how people talk to the elderly differently, the way they talk to babies, and how it never made sense to him. "Elderly people are not as feeble as people think," he wrote. "It's a natural course of things for a body to get older, but that doesn't mean your brain is suffering."
He was right about that. His mind stayed sharp. His opinions stayed strong. And his ability to see people clearly — to recognize what they needed and offer it without being asked — never faded.
Bruce's wife Jackie, whom he loved deeply, died in 2007. Their forty-year marriage was, by his own account, one of the great gifts of his life.
He is survived by his son Michael Ross; his daughter Mindy Logan; his son-in-law Ray Logan; his grandson Ross Logan; his granddaughters Alisha Ross and Anna Doolittle; grandson-in-law Mason Doolittle; and great-grandson Tatum Doolittle.
Bruce would probably prefer not to be remembered with too much solemnity. If you're thinking about him, he'd likely suggest you laugh, tell a good story, question authority a little, and spend time with the people you love.
That would make him happy.