McDonald was diagnosed with leukemia in April,<\/a> according to a T-Birds media release. He had been courageously fighting cancer through several rounds of chemotherapy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\u201cThis is a sad day for the Thunderbirds family and our fans,” said T-Birds President Russ Farwell. “Bruce loved the T-Birds and his dedication to the team rubbed off on every person Bruce came in contact with. We will miss Bruce dearly and offer our sincerest condolences to his family.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
McDonald was born Jan. 8, 1971. He has been a member of the T-Birds junior hockey team family since he was 12. Even though he suffered from cerebral palsy, he regularly attended Seattle Breakers games in a wheelchair with his mother Char.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was at one these games in 1983 that McDonald was called into the locker room by Breakers head coach Marc Boileau. Boileau gave McDonald a clipboard and asked him to help the team track and keep statistics. He was a member of the team from that point forward.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
McDonald joined play-by-play voice Chris Collins as part of the Thunderbirds radio broadcast team for the 1998-99 season. When Collins moved on two years later, McDonald joined Joe Dominey in the broadcast booth. When Dominey moved on a year later, McDonald joined Thom Beuning in the broadcast booth.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Beuning and McDonald have called the action on T-Birds broadcasts for the last 11 seasons, including the last four at the ShoWare Center in Kent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He is survived by his mother Char, sister Nolette Everett, half-brother Stevie McDonald, half-sister Stacy Talley and Grandmother Bertha.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Memorial services have yet to be announced.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seattle Thunderbirds radio color commentator and play-by-play voice Bruce McDonald died early Wednesday morning. He was 41.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":6631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6630"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}