“I was curious and then it turned into a passion.” In the moment, Plymouth resident Bruce was talking about cooking, but the same sentiment goes for many things throughout his life—leading him to jobs, hobbies, and sharing those passions with others, as an instructor and cookbook author.

Many of Bruce’s passions can be traced back to his childhood. He grew up in Renton, where he spent time fishing, crabbing, camping, and hiking with his family and the Boy Scouts, which inspired a love of the outdoors. And at home, cooking piqued his interest.

“I would be out in the kitchen asking my mom, ‘What’s this for? What’s that for? What’s this do, what’s that do?’ It kind of was a game for me. She’d get a little frustrated and she’d shoo me out. I’d wait for a little bit, and I’d come back in and start all over again,” he recalled.

“She finally caved when I was about five and told my dad, ‘You gotta build him a bench, so he can get up next to the counter and help me.’ And then it didn’t matter if we were going to my aunt’s house, which was in Seattle at that time, or down to my grandpa and grandma’s in Oregon—we took my bench with me. That way I had the best three women teach me how to cook.”

“My other grandpa, my dad’s dad, he asked me one time if I wanted to go to work with him, and I said ‘okay!’ Just him and me in a bakery all night long, having a blast. And watching him make things out of nothing is like watching a magician.”

In addition to producing generations of great cooks, Bruce’s family had pride in their legacy of military service, setting Bruce on his own path to a military career.

“My dad got my brothers and I together… and asked us to put one tour in, in the service. Didn’t matter what branch, didn’t matter how long,” he said.

Bruce enlisted in 1978 at age 17, and ended up serving nearly 19 years in the Army. He trained in and instructed a wide array of skills, including parachuting.

Outside of the military, Bruce worked as a professional cook and had a role as district manager at a distribution company. Along the way, he even found himself moonlighting as a country dance instructor. It all started when a dance performance group hosted a class at the restaurant he worked at.

“I was doing the lesson, going back and forth across the kitchen floor, until one of the gals saw me. Then she took me under her wing. We would meet at her house and she taught me how to dance, the correct way. Then for about seven and a half years we taught together.”

And to cap off an already-varied career path, Bruce spent a decade truck driving.

“I love driving trucks. The freedom, being out on the road, meeting new people, going new places… It’s an adventure out there.”

Unfortunately, Bruce’s trucking career came to an end when he had to medically retire. Not too long after that, he fell into homelessness, staying in shelters before he got a Plymouth apartment in 2016.

Through the lens of his own experience, Bruce spoke about the need to further prioritize solutions to homelessness in Washington. He explained how critical early intervention is, to prevent people from experiencing homelessness in the first place.

“It helps if more people are sympathetic and more understanding when somebody falls on hard times.”

Because once somebody is going through homelessness, challenges compound, making it all the more difficult to get back into housing.

“A lot of my things were gone in the blink of an eye, because I had no place to put them,” he explained. “The hardest thing to realize is: How much am I really to lose when I wind up being homeless?”

When asked what he’d say to a Plymouth supporter, he shared his appreciation.

“Thank you for doing the good work. Thank you for the help.”

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At Plymouth, Bruce spends whole days cooking, coming up with bold, new cheesecake flavors like root beer float or orange creamsicle. He shares his creations at community celebrations in his building.

“That little twinkle in somebody’s eye when they taste something new for the first time, that gives you kind of a happy, giddy feeling in your tummy. That’s what I feel. And then you see them smile.”

At the end of our conversation, he passed on a lesson from his grandfather that inspires joy in his life and creativity in his kitchen.

“Your only limitation is your own imagination. That goes for cooking, for baking, for doing whatever. If you let your imagination go, you’re going to have fun.”