Dr. Bruce B. Maley, 73, a pediatrician whose care for children and families spanned 44 years of U.S. Navy service and private practice in Jackson, died Wednesday, April 24, in Columbia, Tenn.
He practiced for 37 years in Jackson at the Children’s Clinic. With his wife, Phyllis, he moved to Columbia in 2015 after retiring.
Visitation will be Saturday April 27, 2019, from 4:00 – 6:00 P.M. at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home in Columbia, Tennessee and Saturday, May 4, 2019, from 1:00 – 3:00 P.M. at First United Methodist Church, Jackson, Tennessee. Graveside Services in Columbia were private. Memorials should be made to First United Methodist Church, Jackson or the charity of the donor’s choice.
Bruce Benjamin Maley was born Nov. 27, 1945, in Williamsport, Pa., the son of Chief Warrant Officer Clarence Wesley Maley and Ruth Estelle Chase Maley. His birthplace in the home of Little League Baseball perhaps foretold Bruce’s teenage years when he was a star athlete and earned a baseball scholarship to Southern Methodist University, Dallas. During his father’s Navy service in Kodiak, Alaska, he attended kindergarten in a one-room schoolhouse.
Dr. Maley transferred from SMU to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 1965 and then earned his physician’s degree at the UT Medical School in Memphis in 1970 and was selected to Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. It was nearby, at Millington Central High School, where in 1963 Bruce was Shelby County Athlete of the Year.
After medical school Dr. Maley entered the Navy. He completed parts of his internship and residency at the prestigious Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He was then posted to the hospital at the Naval Air Station in Millington. As a lieutenant commander he left the Navy in 1978 and joined the Children’s Clinic.
He was a member of First United Methodist Church where his wife was administrator for 17 years.
Dr. Maley was an avid reader and especially knowledgeable of Sherlock Holmes stories and novels. He was a student of World War II, in which his father served. He had passion for UT football, and on his last days was exchanging Big Orange trivia with his hospice nurse. At his bedside she played “Rocky Top” for him.
His survivors include his wife of 52 years, the former Phyllis Lovell of Columbia; a son, Dr. Christopher Todd Maley (LeeAnn) a psychiatrist at Vanderbilt University Hospital, and a daughter, Melissa Chase Maley Zinn, a fifth-grade teacher in Lawrence, Kan. He is also survived by two brothers, Ronald Maley of Somerville, Tenn., and David Maley of Drumonds, Tenn., as well as a sister, Judith Wooten of Covington, Tenn. He was preceded in death last December by his son-in-law, Andrew Edward Zinn, a tenured professor at the University of Kansas.
He had three grandchildren: Alexander Lee Maley, Mt. Juliet, and Jackson Jerome Zinn and Mimi Phyllis Zinn of Lawrence, Kan.
