Bruce Ewing
Brother Bruce Ewing. I first met Bruce in September 1964. He was just down the hall from my room on the 4th floor of the 835 Building. Up there was Sam Dallessandro, Syd Brestel, Brother Billy "SleepNaked" Bray, Steve Hawthorne, Jim Fenton, Rodney (Rod the Bod) Bodner, Gary Bonebrake , and a couple of other heathens whose names escape me. Brother Bruce moseyed into my room on the first day and told me that he was the 4th Best Preacher in the Nation. That was what I always liked about Bruce - he was humble and he knew it. Bruce had just come out of the Mecca for Christian Youth and placed 4th at the YFC National Convention in Winona Lake that summer. He said he preached a sermon on "The June Bug". That was the beginning of one of the best friendships I had at Moody, along with Steve "the Midget" Hawthorne. The three of us usually didn't get to bed until 3-5 am as we wrestled, laughed, and set up buckets of water over the bathroom door and waited for them to come crashing down on one of the brethren in the middle of the night so that we could hear how spiritual he was. I ended up being the Best Man at Bruce's wedding when he married Cheryl Fisher in 1966 in Cleveland.
I saw him many times as the years went by, and he eventually moved to Sarasota, Florida, in the 80's when I was living in St. Petersburg. The last time I saw him was in the early 90's at my house in Michigan. We sort of drifted apart after that. Bruce was bigger than life, very comical, cynical, sarcastic, clever, witty, always involved in mischief, and had a boisterous laugh. He dressed like a clothes horse and tried to learn the rest of us to do the same. Sumner Wemp got him turned on to evangelism, and one day Bruce led an entire assembly in Torrey-Gray about how he met and witnessed to Gene "Town Without A Pity" Pitney on Rush Street one night. Bruce could turn on a dime from complete comedy to being over-saved with that dead serious face he would make, and then he would get holy on us with that radio voice he had and almost whisper, "Dale, check your motives". But I will always remember Bruce as completely open and hilariously fun.
A few of days ago I learned from Dave Nystrom, who was in Moody 68 and a lifelong friend of Bruce's from Topeka, Kansas,and later from Bruce's oldest son, Chris, that Bruce died in August 2007 from kidney cancer. Bruce had this malady beginning somewhere about 1997. It came back on him with fierceness in about 2006 when he learned it was in his leg, hip, lungs, and spine. The Lord took Bruce through some heavy duty things in that ordeal. He essentially never walked again and spent his time in a wheel chair for almost the last year of his life. Hospice came in August 2007 with the hope that Bruce would last another six months. But the Lord took him that month instead.
Bruce had been in YFC early on in his ministry, and then he got in with the Plymouth Brethren bunch and remained with them till the end. The Lord gave Bruce true artistic gifts that were evident in Moody days but did not come out like they did later in his life. It is evident to me now when I think back to 1964. He could decorate and appoint a house like nobody's business. I first became aware of this when he showed me the light switch plates in his house that he WALL-PAPERED and MATCHED TO THE WALL!!!!!! He was very particular, probably a perfectionist, and things had to be just so with him. Everything he did was neat and in place. Toward the end of his life, he was a painter, not something, I am sure, that he wanted to do or ever thought he would do. But he was reflecting even then the creative and artistic image of the Creator and using gifts placed within him. That occupation morphed into Bruce being a General Contractor to help people finish off and decorate their high end condos, something that Chris, his son, told me that his father loved doing. He had far more talent than that for the ministry, but it never materialized the way he imagined it and for the reason he went to Moody. Some things are like that.
Before Bruce died, a man that Bruce had counseled and helped through his own ordeal of cancer and who eventually became a family friend came to Sarasota to live with the Ewings for several months and be of help to them. As I understand it from what Dave told me, Cheryl eventually married this gentleman last April. They are now living in Wisconsin somewhere soon to move back to Florida.
One of the most vivid memories I have of Bruce is coming to his home one time and walking into his living room, about 12'x14', I would say. He was pastoring a small pack of disciples in the Plymouth Brethren mode - which means nobody is making any money preaching - and he was leading them with worship services out of this living room on Sundays. I saw a sofa with a few chairs in front of it, a couple of living room chairs on the side and, I think, a concert piano. Standing in front of the sofa on chrome tripod stands were two giant Peavey rock concert speakers - about 3'x4' - on either side of about 3 microphones that were standing in the middle of this 12x14 living room. I estimated about seven to eight feet from the behemoth speakers to the ear canal of the adherents on the back row. I said to Bruce, "Oh, I see you have a ministry to the deaf." No, he said, everyone hears well. "In fact," said he, "my son, Chris, stands here in front of the microphone and blasts out solos and gospel tunes on his trumpet." Now Chris was in high school at the time and seemed to have a gift for transforming a bugle into an ear-splitting siren well over the decibel limit of a jet. He could manipulate his lips over a mouth piece and deliver I Thessalonians 4-type notes into a funeral home and give the dead in Christ a false start. Chris had lungs like a teenage Tarzan and was up for all kinds of scholarships to get into college bands so that he could rock back on his heels, bend his back like they do in a marching band, take a deep breath and then detonate fanfares from 100 yards out that would cause the fans to cover their ears like they were listening to those idiot Martians pushing on their horns in that Tom Cruise movie War of the Worlds. Even in a sealed chamber, Chris could be heard for miles. I tried to picture Chris and the hearing-aided disciples in this living room with their faces about four feet from the horn of the Queen Mary while he blew his brains out into a microphone and played "He" through speakers used in a U2 concert. He probably sandblasted the hair off of the disciples in the front row. This whole setup seemed a way over the top to me. I guess Bruce bought the speakers for the coming day when he would have a 10,000 member church and decided to get some early use out of them in this church-start and begin a ministry for the hearing impaired at the same time. Or maybe it was Bruce's way of evangelizing the entire neighborhood in a sort of "Gospel Blimp" way. I said to Bruce, "You're going to have a deaf ministry soon." He said, "What?" Then I understood.