Bruce Bergey

Bruce Gene Bergey was born on 8 August 1946 in South Dayton, New York, a small Chautauqua County village that also produced his older brother, All-Pro linebacker Bill Bergey. He grew up in a football family. Their parents were John Eugene Bergey and Lois Elizabeth Courtwright Bergey. Bruce attended Pine Valley Central High School in South Dayton, then took the junior-college path that many upstate athletes used to reach major-college football.

In 1967 he played at Glendale Community College in California. The next three seasons he lettered for the UCLA Bruins (1968, 1969, and 1970) under head coach Tommy Prothro. Listed around 6 foot 2 and 240 pounds (some archives list 6 foot 4), he developed as a defensive end on Bruins teams that competed in the Pac-8 and played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The 1970 squad finished 6-5 and closed Prothro's UCLA tenure with a 45-20 win over rival USC.

The Kansas City Chiefs selected Bergey in the 14th round of the 1971 NFL Draft, 354th overall. He wore No. 84 and appeared in six games for Kansas City that season, including special-teams work such as a kickoff return. Later in 1971 he joined the Houston Oilers, wearing No. 83 for one game. His combined NFL record for the year was seven games without a start, a typical fate for a late-round defensive lineman in an era of shorter active rosters.

In 1972 he moved north to the Canadian Football League and the Toronto Argonauts. He played four games that season and scored a receiving touchdown on a 10-yard catch, a rare skill-player moment for a defensive end. In 1973 he became a fuller-time Argonaut, wearing No. 71 (archives also note No. 70) at right defensive end across 14 games and recovering two opponent fumbles. Two CFL seasons gave him 18 games of Canadian experience after his brief NFL stop.

The World Football League then drew him back to the Pacific Northwest. On 18 March 1974 the Memphis Southmen drafted him in the WFL's pro draft; two days later Portland acquired his negotiation rights and signed him. For the 1974 Portland Storm he started at left defensive end as No. 70 and played all 15 of the team's games. Contemporary game accounts show him in the Storm's starting front, including a UPI photo from the Houston Texans contest in which Bergey dragged down Mike Richardson by the jersey. Against the New York Stars on 14 August 1974 he recorded a sack among two tackles. When the franchise continued as the Portland Thunder in 1975, he stayed on as No. 88 at right defensive end for 11 games before becoming a free agent late that October. Pro Football Archives also notes United States Army military service among his biographical details.

After football he remained tied to Oregon. A 1981 hometown feature on Bill Bergey noted that Bruce, already known for his Kansas City and Houston years, was home in South Dayton for "Bill Bergey Weekend," and that the brothers had been involved in a building business in Oregon. Bill's December 2024 obituary still listed Bruce with his wife Carolyn among surviving siblings. Bruce lived in the Hillsboro community in later years.

Bruce Gene Bergey died on Sunday, 20 September 2026, at Hillsboro Medical Center at the age of 80. Fuiten, Rose and Hoyt Funeral Home and Crematory in Forest Grove handled arrangements. Private cremation rites were held at Hoyt Crematory in Forest Grove. The cause of death was not made public. He is remembered as part of a rare sibling pair of professional football players, as a three-league defensive end, and as a South Dayton athlete who finished his playing career where he then made a home, in Oregon.

Before UCLA, the Glendale junior-college season gave him West Coast exposure that Prothro's staff could evaluate. Pro Football Archives also records United States Army service in his biographical file, a detail common to many players of his generation who balanced campus football with military obligations. Statisticians remember the oddities that mark a long journeyman's sheet: a kickoff return in Kansas City, a receiving touchdown in Toronto, a sack in New York against the Stars, and a full WFL slate in Portland. Those notes sit beside the quieter Oregon years that followed, when the former Bruin became a Hillsboro neighbor rather than a headline.

His death notice was short, as many private Oregon services are. What the public record keeps is the arc from South Dayton's Pine Valley fields to UCLA, three professional leagues, and a final home in the Portland metro area, always linked in local memory to the brother who became an Eagle legend and to the Storm and Thunder experiments that briefly brought big-league football to Oregon.