Army nurse from Michigan dies during Skype chat with wife

So sad. The wife was on Skype with him and he died!!! How she must feel.. My heart goes out to her and her family!

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The circumstances of Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark's death on Monday were not immediately available.

An Army spokesman, however, said it is believed that Clark died of natural causes and that an autopsy is being conducted to make a final determination, according to CNN.

"We believe his death was from natural causes," CNN quoted Clarence Davis, a spokesman for the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, where Clark was based, as saying.

The Pentagon said the 43-year-old officer was formerly from Spencerport, N.Y.

"Bruce's wife tragically witnessed her husband's death during one of their regular Skype video-chats on Monday," Taber-Clark said in a prepared statement. "At the time of the incident, the family was hoping for a rescue and miracle, but later learned that it was not to be."

Clark, a clinical staff nurse who had worked in the ICU at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, was deployed in March. Yobeta said he was stationed in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan.



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Growing up in the tiny village of Addison, Kevin Clark struggled with personal demons until meeting his future wife in the late 1990s.

He then found work as an operating room assistant, got a degree in nursing and joined the Army, becoming a highly praised chief nurse.

He was stationed in Afghanistan Monday, talking to his wife on Skype, when he was suddenly killed, said his family. His wife, Susan, the woman who had turned his life around, watched as it happened.

How Capt. Clark, 43, died isn't known. The family and military didn't release details.

Susan Clark found something positive amid the sorrow.

"Although the circumstances were unimaginable, (Clark's) wife and extended family will be forever thankful that he and his wife were together in his last moments," read a statement by Susan Clark and her family.

After witnessing the attack during one of their regular Skype chats, Susan Clark had hoped for a "miracle," that somehow her husband had survived, according to the statement. But she later learned he had not.

Two weeks before he died, Clark wrote to a friend, saying he tried to stay upbeat by focusing on what he had in life, not on what he thought he should have.

"Tomorrow may be my last day on earth but I want to have enjoyed every fricking day to the fullest before I go," he wrote to Tracy Scudder.

He also told Scudder that he thought his deployment in Afghanistan, which had started a month earlier, would get easier.

"From what I understand, it only gets better from here," he wrote April 16.

In Addison, a speck of a community with 627 residents, the flag at the tiny village hall remained at half-staff Friday. The one-stoplight burg is about 20 miles south of Jackson.

After graduating from Addison High, Clark served on and off with the volunteer fire department for 14 years.


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