Walter Bruckner Pictures
Walter was the third child of Lewis and Augusta Bruckner. He was born in 1901 and died at 86 in 1988 in Oregon, WI. Information about his life is included following the pictures.
|
|
 Walter at age 10
|
 Madison Sanitarium where
Walter studied and worked.
|
 Walter with 1st wife Emma and Mother Augusta.
Emma died in 1967 after a long illness
 Walter married his 2nd wife Marcia in 1967.
She had been a patient and long time friend.
|
 Walter with one of his hunting dogs.
|
Walter finished grade school and started high school at the Seventh-Day Adventist Bethel Academy at Arpin, WI. He was sickly while there and did not stay very long. He went to the Madison Sanitarium for help and did apparently receive help as he stayed and got a job working at the sanitarium. This was the Madison Sanitarium on Lakeside Street at Lake Monona. It opened in 1903 as a branch of the Seventh-Day Adventist church connected Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Walter took courses and training there that allowed him to become a physical therapist. The Madison Sanitarium included an Adventist school of nursing where Walter met Emma Bisseger who became his first wife. Walter and Emma opened a massage and physical therapy clinic in Madison and Emma served as his nurse and office manager.
Walter's younger sister Dorothy remembers Uncle Willie Stroschein driving her and her mother down to the Madison Sanitarium to visit Walter. The drive from Oxford to Madison now only takes about one hour via the Interstate highways but Dorothy remembers that it seemed to take forever in the Model-T Ford.
While his training probably did not justify it, everyone called him Doctor Bruckner. He helped develop a deep heat diathermy machine that became his primary treatment method and he is credited with helping many patients with aches and pains that regular medicine could not help. His treatments also helped troublesome sores heal.
For a long time his office was in downtown Madison very near the capital building. For a while before he retired he worked out of an office closer to Oregon, WI where he purchased land and built a house. Oregon, WI is only a short distance from Madison. He moved his treatment equipment to the basement of the new house and never really retired as his regular patients begged him to keep giving them treatments.
He had several acres and had a small lake built near the house. He planted natural vegetation that would attract wild life. Walter always had at least two "bird dog" retrievers and he used the lake to train them. He also entered his dogs in competitions and several times won championships. He loved to hunt, mostly duck and pheasant, and to fish. He spent most of his vacations on hunting and fishing trips - often to Canada and sometimes to Alaska. He once bought land in Arkansas as he thought that would be a good fishing vacation place. He found that he did not like the taste of warm water fish and never went there again.
His first wife, Emma, died in 1967 at 74 after a very long illness. Later that same year Walter married Marcia Patterson who had been a friend and patient and who had helped him care for Emma during her long illness. Marcia died from cancer in 1992 three years after Walter had died. Walter did not have any children with either wife. Walter was an astute stock market investor and had accumulated several million dollars by the time he died. After his death his second wife Marcia gave a significant amount of money each year to Walter's relatives and when she died most of the remainder of his estate was given to his relatives.
|
|