Gene Bruce McElroy Jr. Plumber fixed up world around him

— Gene Bruce McElroy Jr. had one bit of advice to give throughout his life: “Always leave the job site better than you found it.”

Whether it was through his plumbing business, the baseball teams he coached or his efforts through the Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority, he strove to make a difference, his wife, Kellye McElroy, said.

Bruce McElroy died Tuesday at Circle of Life Hospice in Springdale from kidney cancer.

He was 49.

Born in Fort Worth on April 30, 1961, Bruce McElroy spent much of his youth traveling around Texas because of his father’s job with the Montgomery Ward company.

Eventually, the family moved to Little Rock, where his best friend helped spark his interest in hunting and fishing, which he “took onto and never looked back,” his wife said.

McElroy aspired to be an engineer, attending the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. However, after going back to Little Rock during the summer, McElroy began working with a plumber and eventually received his master plumber license, his wife said.

The couple, who met as students at Parkview High School in Little Rock, married May 29, 1982. They had two sons.

In the early 1990s, he started his own small business, McElroy Plumbing. During this time, he installed the plumbing for the Poultry Science building at the University of Arkansas, Kellye McElroy said.

In 2002, he became a project manager in Springdale for Nabco Mechanical and Electric Contractors Inc., which is based in Conway, overseeing as many as 20 plumbers at a time, his wife said.

Away from work, he kept busy remodeling the family’s ranch home, including designing and installing an oak staircase, she said.

McElroy was an active conservationist as the Springdale representative and treasurer of the Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority, which he had been since 2004.

“He had so much knowledge about plumbing and wanted people to have a good water supply,” Kellye McElroy said.

Though McElroy was a “burly man,” standing 6 feet tall with “tree-trunk arms” and a deep voice, his wife said, he had compassion when coaching both Kiwanis Kids’ Day Football and Springdale youth baseball.

An avid Razorbacks baseball fan, he loved coaching kids aged 6 to 14, “helping them gain their skills,” Kellye McElroy said.

At the First United Methodist Church in Springdale, McElroy helped out in many areas, including as a member of the Children’s World Board - a community daycare center in the church - even replacing old water heaters in the playrooms after the issue was discussed at a meeting.

“He went to the supply house with his money and replaced them that day because he would not take a chance for a child to be hurt,” his wife said.

To spend more time with family, he retired in spring 2008. Kellye McElroy said her husband enjoyed hunting deer and bass fishing on Beaver Lake with his beloved black Labrador Lucy by his side.

“We would get in his truck, roll the back windows down so Lucy could stick her head out, and we’d drive all around and check out the construction that was going on around town,” McElroy said.

Six months after McElroy retired, he was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer.

Though his health deteriorated, he continued to persevere, even making a trip in October 2009 to Yellowstone National Park for the first time, friend Johnelle Hunt said.

“He loved seeing the big elk and the black bear; we all got so excited when we saw a black bear in a tree,” Hunt said. “I had so much admiration for Bruce because as sick as he did become, he never stopped going.”

Arkansas, Pages 16 on 02/11/2011

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