Catholic deacon a willing servant

LITTLE ROCK — Every year, deacon Joe Bruick would meet with a certain parishioner to honor the man’s late wife.

“Dad would meet him at the cemetery ... and do prayer with him or a Communion service for him at his wife’s grave site,” said his son, Larry Bruick. “There’s so many of those stories.”

Bruick, a Catholic deacon for 20 years, died Wednesday at Hospice Home Care in Little Rock from renal cancer. He was 77.

Bruick graduated from St. Joseph High School in Conway in 1952 and attended his 60th class reunion in the summer.

“I’m just proud to be part of the tradition of St. Joseph’s that’s still going on today,” Bruick said in a June Arkansas Catholic newspaper article.

In 1961, Bruick and his wife, Barbara, moved to Texarkana, where he managed Miller Bowie Supply, a farm co-op store, for almost 50 years.

“Dad was a people person and in that position, he was able to meet and interact and deal with lots of people,” said another son, Bob Bruick. “He enjoyed helping people.”

In 1990, Joe Bruick, with the support of his wife and three children, started three years of training to become a deacon.

“He always felt like he had a calling from God,” B ob Bruick said. “He couldn’t be a priest or anything like that, but felt like he was called to do more with his faith.”

Bruick spent years officiating countless marriages, baptisms and funerals for parishioners of St. Edwards Catholic Church in Texarkana, where he became “part of everyone’s family,” Bob Bruick said.

“He was just always so willing to do whatever it took to help out the parish and help out people,” Bob Bruick said. “Those that were sick and homebound and unable to go to church, he was the first to volunteer to visit them ... take them Communion.”

Approachable and helpful, Bruick was always ready to listen and steer someone gently in the right direction, his family said.

“He had a heart of gold,” said the Rev. Paul Worm, who has been pastor at St. Edwards for 2 /2 years. “He just seemed to have a real down-to-earthness about him, a real humble servant.”

In 2006, Bruick “lost a part of him” when his wife died, Bob Bruick said.

“My dad was hard of hearing. ... Mom was really his ears later on in life,” Bob Bruick said. “In a group, you could always see Dad look out the corner of his eye and look at Mom and she’d repeat it for him. That was always touching to us, that bond they shared with each other.”

Despite the loss, Bruick’s faith was “unending,” Bob Bruick said.

“Every morning, he’d get up and he’d have his spot on the couch in the living room. He’d read the newspaper and he always said his prayers,” Bob Bruick said. “He included family and friends ... and made sure he mentioned all those people by name.”

In March 2011, Bruick was one of 136 people who went on a 10-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

“The one place that I really enjoyed was the Garden of Gethsemane,” Bruick said in an April 2011 Arkansas Catholic article. “The time of meditation and the opportunity for confession, along with prayer and thought of the sorrow of Jesus, so painful that he sweated blood, really touched me. The mysteries of the rosary have become very real.”

Even after his cancer spread, Bruick never gave up the hope of returning to his ministry, his family said.

“In the Lord’s Prayer it says, ‘Thy will be done,’” Bob Bruick said. “So he’d say, ‘If we don’t believe it, we shouldn’t say it.’ He was forever the optimist.”