Bruno delivers moving tribute to late wife
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- January
- 14
  Besides all statewide elected officials, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Archdiocese Cardinal Edward Egan and more than 1,000 other people crammed an Albany-area church today for a memorial service for the wife of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Barbara Bruno, , who died last Monday at the age of 77 from Alzheimer’s disease.
  Bruno, who married Barbara in 1950, gave a moving, and candid, tribute to his wife, with whom he had four children.
  “Bobbi really disliked politicians,’’ said Bruno, 78, the most powerful Republican in state government. “She thought there was a phoniness there,’’ he said. “She never really wanted me to so what I did with my life.’’
 Nevertheless, Bruno said, “she stuck with me.’’ That fit, he said, with her decision to marry him, as a poor boy from Glens Falls with few prospects,  despite the objections of her father, a successful surgeon.
 “I never would have gone to college,’’ he said, without her encouragement. “She showed me a better life.’’
  Former Republican U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, former state senators Nicholas Spano of Yonkers and Guy Velella of the Bronx were also spotted in the crowd, along with former Lt. Gov. Mary Donohue. Former Gov. George Pataki was not seen, however.
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on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 3:23 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
