(as written and presented by Adam Droge)
Bruce Robert Droge was born on
September 14, 1992. He was the seventh child born to Lynn and Maxine Droge.
Coincidentally, both Lynn and Maxine were also the seventh child born in their
respective families, so Bruce was lucky number 777. Bruce was born and raised
in Bountiful, Utah, spending most of his life living in our homely little house
there on fourth east and first south.
I think it’s safe to say that all of
us eight siblings had a good relationship growing up, but with differences due
to age alone, things naturally separated to where there was an older family and
a younger family and us younger three – myself, Bruce, and Joe – had a special
bond and shared many great memories growing up. A lot of these memories had to
do with our many adventures with our stuffed animals. Bruce had quite the
collection. While mine maxed out around 70, his collection was close to 200.
And it wasn’t just a casual collection; each stuffed animal had a name and a
story. We had lots of fun with these stuffed animals and had many games and
tournaments with them. We even had our own made up land where all of them lived
that was quite elaborate. This showed the great imagination that Bruce had.
Also growing up with Bruce, we enjoyed our Saturday morning cartoons, Pokemon
and Yu-Gi-Oh being favorites. We had lots of fun with our Super Nintendo too,
the Mario games being favorites. Bruce always loved playing Luigi. It was a
great day for him when I was able to get him his stuffed Luigi to go along with
his stuffed Mario that he had. Bruce always loved movies since he was young and
at a fairly young age he would watch and re-watch shows like Aladdin and Lion
King all the time, many of those times watching by himself. When he was older,
he prided himself with quite the movie collection, which mom didn’t even know
about for a long time. I know this because he asked me to keep his movie
collection safe and secret while he was gone to Basic Training and I was down
at BYU.
Sports were a fairly big part of his
life growing up. He played little league baseball for a year or two when he was
really young and he always enjoyed a casual game of basketball, especially with
his friends. But football was the sport he was into most growing up. He was
inspired by his older brother Greg, a football star in High School, to play
little league football and played for several years while he was younger all
the way up till the very beginning of his High School days. In fact, one of his
biggest regrets of High School was not playing football his last couple years.
He was never a huge watcher of sports, but when he did it was NFL. Specifically
he was a Baltimore Ravens fan. This past month he frequently expressed to me
his excitement as the Ravens made it deeper and deeper into the playoffs. Bruce
didn’t make it to the Super Bowl, but I know he would’ve been very happy at the
result as his Ravens were crowned Super Bowl champions this past week.
In school Bruce was a well-liked
classmate. Schools he attended were Hannah Holbrook Elementary School, Millcreek
Junior High School, and Bountiful High School, graduating from Bountiful High
in 2011. Bruce was friendly to everyone he met. He always had a smile on his
face and made people feel comfortable. He did a good job of avoiding the
uncomfortable or questionable situations. At the same time, he wasn’t afraid to
be himself and was always telling jokes and making people laugh.
As is the case with all of us, life
didn’t always turn out the way he wanted it to, but he was good at always
moving forward in a positive way and making the most of life. As I said
earlier, Bruce loved football and early on envisioned himself as a great
football player. When football didn’t work out in the end, he turned to acting.
He enjoyed his theater classes in high school and was the lead role in the
school play at least once. In high school he also joined the army reserves. He
did his absolute best in the army and was well praised by his fellow soldiers and
chain of command. When he was young he had great aspirations of being 6’9”, but
I jokingly told him that he was only going to make it to 5’9½”. I mainly said
this because I was the shortest thus far and didn’t want to be known as the
shortest in the family. It turns out that I cursed him and he never made it to
my height of 5’10”, stopping at about 5’9½”. However, what he lacked in height
he made up for in physical stature. You wouldn’t want to get in a wrestling
match with him or an arm wrestle, because you would most certainly lose. Being
in football and the army helped him in this. After high school he moved down to
Los Angeles with high hopes of getting an acting career. His plan was to attend
the New York Film Academy down there in the Los Angeles area. That didn’t quite
work out for him, but he didn’t lose hope. He always told me that he could
still do acting on the side when he got the chance, but his new plan was to go
into criminal investigation. He had plans to start up school at a community
college somewhere down in the southern California area where he would lead up to
that.
Life at times isn’t fair. Bruce had
many goals and aspirations in life that he meant to accomplish and he had his
whole life in front of him. It would’ve seemed fair to let him live another
60-80 years before moving on to the next life, but instead a tragic apartment
fire in his North Hollywood apartment on the night of the 23rd of
January took his life. He was only 20 years old. He is survived by his mother,
father, six brothers, one sister, four sisters-in-law, one brother-in-law,
eight nephews, and three nieces, as well as many aunts, uncles, cousins, and
friends. To me Bruce wasn’t just a brother. He was a friend. I’d even go as far
to say that he was one of my best friends and I will miss him greatly and I’m
sure this is the case with many people that were close to him. There is now a
void in my life that will only truly be filled when we both meet again. Bruce
never made it onto his mission, but we now all feel very confident that he is
now the sixth Droge boy to be called on a mission, he just has a much different
call than the rest of us did. And a great work he will do. Until that great and
glorious day when we are once again reunited, may God be with you dear brother!
