Photo of Bruce Hanke, courtesy of Rebecca Ward.

Surrounded by family and close friends, Bruce Hanke left this world on Monday, October 12 after a courageous battle with cancer.

He was born at Plunkett Memorial Hospital in Adams, Mass. on November 3, 1958 to William and Mildred (Kryston) Hanke. Growing up on East Road in Adams, next to his grandmother’s farm, Hanke spent summers and most weekends building dams and fishing in Southwick Brook, picking up hay bales in the fields, exploring the woods and playing sandlot baseball and football with the neighborhood kids and his older brother, Mike.

He graduated from Hoosac Valley High School in 1977, where he was a standout on the track team as a long jumper, javelin thrower and sprinter. He attended Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Mass. for one year before transferring to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he majored in Communication Design. Hanke explored printmaking and other media while at Pratt and, following his graduation in 1982, joined DMCD, an exhibition design firm located in New York City, where he worked for 12 years as a graphic designer.

His work won numerous national design awards, including a Presidential Design Award for Blue Heron, a project that he and his brother completed in the late 1980’s while at DMCD. In 1994, Hanke became the chief graphic designer at Design Division, Inc. and was responsible for all the graphics for the award winning Mashantucket Pequot Museum (the largest Native American Museum in the United States).

In the early 2000’s, he took a senior graphic design position with the Option Institute in Sheffield, Mass. He began painting in 1990, specializing in figurative, portraiture and still life subject matter. His work eventually received considerable acclaim and was exhibited widely in galleries in New York City, and beyond. In 2010, “Like Father,” a painting featuring his son Charlie as a model, was selected for inclusion in the prestigious BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England.

In the late 1980’s, Hanke met and married the love of his life, Rebecca Ward, a native of Surrey, England. They lived briefly in Brooklyn, and then moved to Kent, Conn., where their two sons, Henry and Charlie, were born. After a few years in Kent, the family moved to an expansive Victorian-era fixer-upper in Norfolk, where Hanke spent long hours renovating and restoring the stately home to its original luster.

But he derived his greatest sense of pride and accomplishment from his sons. Bruce Hanke was a dedicated father and thoroughly enjoyed supporting his sons in school and in their various activities. One enduring image of him is behind the wheel of his 1958 Willys Jeep CJ-5 with his sons in tow.

Hanke was one of the first volunteers to sign on at Norfolk Now. He designed the graphics, logo and layout of early issues, which the paper still uses 12 years later. Lloyd Garrison, the paper’s co-founder, used to sing his praises far and long. Hanke also volunteered his services for the Norfolk Farmers Market in its infancy, and his design of the cow image on their logo endures today.

There will be no public service of remembrance. Contact Natalie Randall at natalie@rtfacts.com for information on how to support the Hanke family in this trying time.