Remembering Bruce Everetts - August 27, 1963 – April 29, 2026
May 26, 2026 12:12PM ● By Brian L. Fislar
Growing up in Chillicothe, two years of school between you and somebody else might as well have been ten. Bruce Everetts was Class of 1981, and I was Class of 1983. I knew him long before he ever knew me. He was already playing varsity basketball in his sophomore year when I was still in eighth grade, watching from a distance the way younger kids do when they look up to someone. By the time I was a sophomore, Bruce was a senior, and seniors at IVC carried a certain status that most of them were not shy about. Bruce was different. He was kind. He was approachable. He never made you feel like you did not belong in the conversation just because you were younger or because your name was not in the box scores. He had every reason to have an ego, and he never let one get in his way. He could make you laugh without ever making you feel small. That is a rare thing in a teenager, and it is a rare thing in a grown man too. I admired him when I was a kid, and the more I got to know him later in life, the more that admiration held up.
A Reconnection Across the Miles
A Grey Ghost Through and Through
Fighting With Grace
The Man Behind the Memories
A Final Word
A Reconnection Across the Miles
It was Michael Kinnary, aka “Kin-man” to anyone who knew him, who reached out and told me Bruce had not been feeling well. He was battling cancer, and from what I understood, the fight ahead was going to be a serious one. I sat down and sent Bruce a text, honestly not sure he would even remember my name. He remembered. and just like that, my memory of Bruce Everetts took off just where I left it.
I started sending him old photos, newspaper clippings, and stories from my Chillicothe timeline history project. Everything I shared carried him back to his youth, back to where his identity was built on the sandlots and gym floors of Mossville. He had retired to South Florida in 2019 and was living just south of West Palm Beach, a long way from any of it. But that part of central Illinois never really left him. It rarely does with Mossville kids, because growing up there meant you had to earn your place. You were the rival until you got to high school, and then expectation would have you become a teammate. Bruce made that transition look easy, which says as much about him as anything else.
He told me once: “I can’t tell you how much fun I’ve had following all the Chillicothe news. I’ve been in touch with so many people from the old days and it’s been awesome.”
And he meant it. Word had gotten around about what Bruce was going through, and the people who knew him came out of the woodwork. Old teammates, old neighbors, old friends from decades past. That is what happens when you spend a lifetime treating people right. They do not forget you when it counts.
A Grey Ghost Through and Through
Bruce was part of the 1980-81 IVC basketball teams, and I have always believed those squads belong in the conversation for the greatest in Chillicothe history. They were not the tallest group, and they were not deep on the bench, but they played with a fire and a togetherness that you simply cannot manufacture. Bruce was right in the middle of all of it.
He once shared a story about Coach Friday that stuck with me. Early in the season, to motivate the team, Coach pointed at Bruce and told his teammates: “Everetts has no tools, yet he is leading the team in many categories. The rest of you need to step it up.” Bruce laughed telling that story, but it says everything about who he was. He earned his spot. He outworked it. He played in front of 7,300 people at Robertson Memorial Field House and left everything he had on that floor.
Basketball was not his only sport. He played football in his senior year, just that one season, which he described as part of “the legend of Halloween.” He also went on to play baseball at Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL. He had gone out as an infielder, but the coach told him there was no room in the infield. So, Bruce reinvented himself as a pitcher. By his junior year he was number two on the staff, and by his senior year he was the ace. That was Bruce Everetts. Give him a closed door and he would find another way in.
Fighting With Grace
Bruce faced his illness the same way he faced everything else in his life: straight on, with his sense of humor right beside him. He mentioned once that his oncologist had treated Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt. “If he’s good enough for Mike Schmidt,” Bruce told me, “I think he’s good for me.”
There were hard stretches. Multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Radiation for a spot in his lung lining. Weeks when his white blood cell count dropped so low he was quarantined at home. And yet, in every message he sent, gratitude outweighed complaint by a wide margin. “The good days outweigh the bad,” he told me. “I’ll take as many good ones as I can.”
Even in the middle of treatments, Bruce was thinking about what came next. He talked about a backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon. He was excited about getting the old 1980-81 teammates together for a 45th anniversary reunion, and when December came, he showed up. He made the trip back to Chillicothe, stood with his teammates, and participated in the celebration despite knowing full well he was still in the fight of his life. He did not complain. He was simply happy to be there. Jim Youngman honored him at half court for his tenacity and his refusal to quit, and if you knew Bruce at all, you understood why that moment landed the way it did. He had been earning his place his whole life. This was no different.
That was Bruce. Always in it. Always contributing. Even until the end.
The Man Behind the Memories
Bruce is survived by his wife Lisa, his children Clint and Amanda, and his grandchildren Paisley and Pruitt. He talked about those grandkids with the kind of joy that reminds you what life is for. He grew up near Mossville, and those roots never left him. He stayed connected to the people and the place long after he had moved on to other chapters of his life.
He had a great laugh. He had a sharp memory for the minute details that matter when you come from a small town. He once burned a hole in his jersey celebrating a conference championship in college, smoking a cigar, and had his roommate’s grandmother sew it closed. In his home office hung a signed photograph from the moment the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series, captured right after the last out was recorded. For a Cubs fan, there is no holier image than that one. It fit him perfectly.
The people who were always in his corner knew who they were. Pat Sarver. Bob Jenkins. Steve Hughes. Craig Parr. Guys who go back to the beginning with him, who never needed a reason to show up for Bruce because showing up for each other was just what they did.
A Final Word
When Jim Youngman called to tell me that Bruce had passed on April 29, 2026, I cried. I am not embarrassed to say that. Some people come into your life late and still leave a mark that does not fade. Bruce was 62 years old. That is too young, plain, and simple.
I reached out to him because I heard he was sick and wanted him to know somebody was praying for him. What I did not expect was that he would give back more than I ever sent. He reminded me of why the old stories matter. Why picking up the phone or sending a text to someone you have not talked to in forty years is never a wasted effort.
Bruce Everetts will be missed deeply. But more importantly, he will be remembered, and that is not something, that is everything.