A tax attorney and estate planner who left a legacy to support the LGBTQ+ community in New York City.
Bruce Dresner (1953-1992)
Bruce Alan Dresner was a tax attorney and estate planner, athlete, and gourmet dinner party host. Both he and his soulmate, W. Craig McConnell, died during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and early ’90s, but Bruce left a legacy of strong advocacy and support for the LGBTQ+ community.
He was born August 15, 1953, in New York City, the second child of Lee L. Dresner and the former Adele Rosenberg. His father was an executive of National Studios in Manhattan, which produced photographic and title slides for television. National Studios was founded in 1914 by Adele’s father, Herman A. Rosenberg, to produce song and advertising slides for silent picture houses.
Bruce and his sister, Jane, grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Their mother was a member of the Glen Rock Jewish Center and its Sisterhood, the League of Women Voters, and a volunteer for Meals on Wheels. Their father served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and was a life trustee of the Glen Rock Jewish Center. Lee Dresner also was a member of the Kaufman-Harris Post No. 36 Jewish War Veterans of Paterson, and the Masonic lodge in Fair Lawn.
After high school, Bruce graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was on the dean’s list. He then enrolled at the Syracuse University School of Law; he was on the editorial staff of the Syracuse Law Review and edited its Annual Survey of New York Law. He graduated in 1978 and took jobs as an estate-planning attorney in Albany, then in Pittsburgh.
Bruce soon returned to the New York metropolitan area and worked in tax and estate planning. He bought a condo in Somerville, New Jersey, and was an avid cyclist and gourmet cook. His social life revolved around the vibrant gay scenes in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and Manhattan.
In April 1983, he met the love of his life, W. Craig McConnell. They were young, successful, and enjoying life. Bruce was 30 and Craig was 25. Craig hailed from Lawrence, Kansas, and had been an honor student at the University of Kansas before moving to New York in 1979 to study interior design at Parsons School of Design. Craig graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in environmental design and worked as a design consultant. He joined the American Society of Interior Design.
For a year and a half after they met, Bruce and Craig spent weekends together and traveled as often as their busy lives would allow. When shuttling between Somerville and Manhattan got to be too much, Bruce took a new job in the City and moved in with Craig in the East Village. Wanting to maintain a connection to New Jersey, he bought a mountainside home in Califon as a weekend retreat for the two of them. There, they gardened, antiqued, and relaxed.
In July 1985, only two years after the couple met, Craig was diagnosed with AIDS. His health was good for the first year but declined rapidly the following summer. He died in October 1986 at St. Vincent’s Hospital of AIDS-related causes. He was 28. His hometown obituary said he died of cancer. In addition to Bruce, who was not mentioned in his obituary, he was survived by his parents, his sister, brother, and grandmother.
Bruce never found another soulmate. He returned to his passions for bicycling, weightlifting, dinner parties, traveling, and shopping. And he continued his education as a tax attorney, earning a master’s degree in tax law from New York University.
With a strong gay rights scene intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s, and with HIV/AIDS as a rallying point, Bruce was deeply committed to gay and lesbian organizations, including Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the gay and lesbian synagogue in the Westbeth Artists Housing complex in Greenwich Village; the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center; and Gay Men’s Health Crisis.
Bruce had been diagnosed with HIV when Craig got sick but remained in good health until March 1991. He died of AIDS-related causes at home on March 6, 1992. He was 38.
His fund in The Trust is for the support and education of the gay and lesbian community.
