Myrtle Bruce Tribute Video
Produced 11/19/2008

This video was prepared for and shown at Myrtle Bruce's funeral on November 17, 2008.

It was produced because I wanted to capture the greatness of Myrtle's personality in a lasting way. The material in this video came from several sources. In 2005, I visited Myrtle's home with Betty McGregor (Myrtle's daughter, my mom), and Andriana Sauer, and our kids. We set up a microphone in her living room and proceeded to look through photo albums and a box of old photos. I have a two hour audio recording of that interview. In April 2008, Myrtle, Andriana, our kids, and I walked around Blackbird Island in Leavenworth Washington with my video camera. Audio and vidoe here is from those two visits. The still photos are family photos, except for several photos of historic Tennessee which came from the National Archives online collection. The establishing shots were created at her house and around Leavenworth while she was in the hospital, on November 15, 2008.

In the months since April, Betty told me stories about how Myrtle seemed to have had several small strokes. Her short term memory was affected, but she was still living at home. Betty visited her almost daily from her home, which was only walking distance away. In early November, Keith McGregor moved in with Myrtle to live with her while Betty was on vacation, out of the country. Keith shared a close and personal visit with her for the last week of her life, and was sitting with her at the kitchen table when she had her stroke. The last video of Myrtle presented here is of me holding her hand in the hospital, three days before she passed away. She was barely concious, but still beautiful.

Producing this video was a joy, and it afforded me the opportunity to meet some of Myrtle's many friends from her neighborhood, and some of our extended family.

If anyone in the extended family has photographs of the family's early days in Tennessee, I would love to incorporate digital versions of them here in the section that shows the Pine Grove School.

The music here came from three sources:

"Where the Soul Never Dies" - Cody Shuler & Pine Mountain Railroad
"Pine Mountain Lullaby" - Jennifer Rose
"Hold On" - Emmylou Harris