William H Brunie, MD, born February 4, 1930 in Santa Barbara, California, died June 15, 1999 peacefully at his home in Glendale, California from cancer, on his 47th wedding anniversary.

Raised in Pasadena, he attended the Polytechnic School there, and graduated from South Pasadena High School. His undergraduate education at Claremont, LaSierra and Occidental Colleges was followed by studying medicine at Loma Linda University, completed in 1955. He took psychiatric residences at Harding Hospital in Worthington, Ohio and Austin Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts under Erik Erikson. He served two years as Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy, and then in 1961 established a private practice in psychiatry in Glendale which he maintained for 37 years. His training as a psychoanalyst was completed at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute, and he taught many generations of medical students at Loma Linda University Medical Center. His patients, whether for long-term psychoanalysis or a single evaluation, were a constant source of fascination and inspiration for him.

Raised in the Seventh-Day Adventist church in which his grandfather had been a leading educational administrator, his adolescence and young manhood were marked by a strong sense of religious devotion and extensive scriptural study. A leading member of the experimental Adventist congregationist movement at Claremont in the 1960s, he remained within the Adventist church even as his own maturing personal understanding led him beyond sectarian dogma to describe himself philosophically not as a believer but as a 'free thinker.' He devoted many years to a study on the historical and psychological origins of Protestant Reformation and to the character and career of Martin Luther in particular.

Always a profound student of human motivations and development he later turned to studies of some of the greatest figures of his own century, especially Einstein, Churchill and Albert Schweitzer.

A life-long scholar of science, medicine, psychiatry, and religion he was also an avid naturalist and star-gazer, a lover of poetry, painting, and the cinema, and an expert in the enjoyment of music. Resident with his family for 38 years in School Canyon in Glendale, he loved walking and biking in the local hills, and maintained a lifelong connection with the Pacific coastline around Laguna Beach, as well as with the mountains and deserts of southern California.

He leaves in Glendale his beloved wife of 47 years, Jean; with daughters, Janet and Sarah and granddaughter, Claire; and sons, John in Oakland, and Robert and his wife, Ursula in Gainesville, Georgia; also his sister Barbara Jones in Glendale.

Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1999