With the passing of Bruce Kramer, Morning Edition’s Cathy Wurzer takes a look back at her conversations with Kramer as he battled ALS. Bruce Kramer would always say he was, first and foremost, a teacher. He said that ALS taught him many things, and as difficult as those lessons were, he was grateful for them.
For more than four years, Wurzer conducted a series of candid discussions with Bruce Kramer as he led an incredibly full life despite ALS, an insidious motor neuron disease that slowly paralyzes and ultimately kills its victims. Kramer was diagnosed with the disease in December of 2010. He died at his home in Hopkins of complications of ALS. He was 59 years old.
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SPEAKER: For more than four years, Morning Edition's Cathy Wurzer has conducted a series of candid conversations with a Twin Cities man who has led an incredibly full life despite ALS, an insidious motor neuron disease that slowly paralyzes and ultimately kills its victims. Bruce Kramer was diagnosed with the disease in December of 2010. He died this afternoon at his home in Hopkins of complications of ALS. He was 59 years old. Here's Cathy Wurzer with more.
CATHY WURZER: If asked to describe himself, Bruce Kramer would always say he was, first and foremost, a teacher. Teaching was in Kramer's DNA. Both parents were educators, as were two of his grandparents. Teaching was a calling that took the Indiana native to schools in Norway, Egypt, and Thailand, and ultimately to Minnesota and the University of Saint Thomas, where he became the dean of the college of education, leadership, and counseling. He taught leadership ethics at Saint Thomas with his close colleague, Deb DeMeester.
DEB DEMEESTER: He was always learning. He was always growing. And as a result, I was always learning and growing, as were our students.
CATHY WURZER: Bruce Kramer used to say that ALS was the toughest, most demanding teacher he had ever had. Kramer said that ALS taught him many things, and as difficult as those lessons were, he was grateful for them. This was from our first interview in June of 2011. We are all temporarily able-bodied.
BRUCE KRAMER: We're all facing some form of disability in some way, shape, or form in our lives.
CATHY WURZER: We just don't know it yet.
BRUCE KRAMER: We just don't know it or we do know it. And we probably carry a fear that it defines us. So then I started thinking to myself, well, you know, probably the greatest thing that I have learned that I could give back is that it doesn't have to define us. We are who we are. And then we are who we are with the condition that we have. So rather than fighting it, own it. It's just a part of you.
(SINGING)
Breathe. Breathe.
CATHY WURZER: Music was a key part of Bruce Kramer's life. He majored in music education and vocal performance at Ball State University.
BRUCE KRAMER: (SINGING IN LATIN)
CATHY WURZER: His musical tastes were eclectic, ranging from his beloved choral music to rock, jazz, and classical compositions. Throughout his life, but especially as he lived with ALS, Kramer continued to find meaning and a greater sense of himself in music.
BRUCE KRAMER: I find that music is more expressive, is more communicative of how I feel, and in some ways of who I am than the words that I write or the words that I say. The words seem really bounded right now. And the music that I listen to feels much broader and bigger and it feels like me.
CATHY WURZER: By any measure, Bruce Kramer was a person of enormous energy. He was a whirlwind of movement prior to his diagnosis, an athlete, avid bicyclist, in the center of action as a University dean, an accomplished musician, church choir director, and a culinary whiz in the kitchen.
Even as ALS methodically rendered his muscles useless and made breathing possible with the help of an external ventilator, Kramer kept a vigorous, almost exhaustive schedule, holding meetings with health care industry leaders, doctoral students, organizers of ALS fundraising events, and a small army of friends. He wrote two books in the last year of his life, kept writing a blog, and found time to keep talking to a radio audience about living fully, even while dying, and how dying brings clarity to what's important in each remaining day.
BRUCE KRAMER: This life is such a beautiful gift, and I. I've come to realize more and more what I suspected long ago. And this sounds very idealistic and very romantic, but what I suspected was that in the end, it was friendship and love that really mattered. And what I'm discovering is that in the end, it is friendship and love that really matters.
CATHY WURZER: Bruce Kramer turned 59 just a few weeks ago. He died at home with his family and close friends at his side. I'm Cathy Wurzer, NPR News.