Bruce Barack

79, Los Angeles

Bruce Barack would have turned 80 in April and had no intention of slowing down.

A thoracic radiologist who spent most of his career practicing at the Veterans Administration and training UCLA residents, Barack continued working — even after retirement — until his death Dec. 31.

“He just loved what he did,” his daughter Lauren said. “He loved teaching. … He loved looking at film to problem-solve, to find — what was it going to tell him?”

Carol Wu met Barack in 2002, when she was a radiology resident first learning how to read a chest X-ray.

“As new residents, we were usually not so knowledgeable,” Wu said. But Barack provided a low-pressure learning environment.

“He would always be very enthusiastic in pointing out the interesting findings and asking us what we think,” she said. “If we got anything right, he was usually very complimentary.”

More than just teaching radiology, Wu said, Barack made a real effort to get to know his trainees — their family situations, their goals, their hobbies.

“He loved those young people,” said Adrienne Barack, Bruce’s wife of 55 years. “They all trusted him and came to him — he listened to so many people crying.”

“You know that children’s store Janie and Jack? We kept them in business for years,” she said. “Every time there was a new baby we would go and buy clothes.”

Even after trainees moved on, Barack continued to mentor them, write recommendations and connect them to job opportunities.

Over the years, Wu said, whenever she published a new article, gave a lecture or earned an award, he would call or text to tell her she was doing a great job.

“He’s like a father figure in my life,” she said. “It was just so sad for me to realize that there’s not going to be somebody there to cheer me on.”

A Missouri native, Barack earned his bachelor’s and medical degrees at Washington University in St. Louis. He completed his internship at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, then was drafted.

A lifelong liberal who opposed the Vietnam War and disliked President Nixon, Barack contemplated fleeing to Israel or Sweden with his wife and young daughters to avoid becoming a soldier.

But a call from the National Institutes of Health saved them, offering Barack a research position and a means of completing his service without going to war.

Barack later finished his residency at UCLA, beginning a half-century devotion to the Bruins, whose games he and Adrienne attended almost without fail since 1971.

Barack’s other passions included music and sushi. The couple regularly attended performances of the L.A. Philharmonic and ate weekly at his favorite sushi restaurant, Kiriko on Sawtelle — which was where Bruce took people if he liked them.

“We were not stay-at-home older people,” she said. “We couldn’t cram enough in for him.”

Barack also raised hundreds of orchids in the backyard of the couple’s Brentwood Glen home.

“He was diligent; he was out there every day,” Lauren said.

Barack and Adrienne both caught COVID-19 in December, possibly from repairmen who came to the house to fix a furnace.

Amid the winter surge of patients in Southern California, the ambulance couldn’t take him to his beloved UCLA and he was instead treated at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where he died.

“I never really realized,” Adrienne said, “that I would speak about him in the past tense.”

NEW DELHI — Rescuers in northern India searching muck-filled ravines and valleys for survivors after the sudden collapse last week of a Himalayan glacier found 11 more bodies Sunday, raising the death toll to 49.

Krishan Kumar, a representative for the National Disaster Response Force, said 155 people were still missing after a part of a glacier near Nanda Devi mountain broke off on Feb. 7, unleashing a devastating flood in the region in Uttarakhand state.

Kumar said five bodies were found in a tunnel of a power project as rescuers cleared the debris and looked for survivors.

Six bodies were found in a village in the area.

Rescuers are using excavators and shovels to clear sludge from the tunnel in an attempt to reach dozens of trapped workers as hopes for their survival fade.

Floodwaters, mud and boulders roared down the mountain along the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers, breaking dams, sweeping away bridges and forcing evacuations. The water swept away a small hydroelectric project and damaged a bigger one.

Scientists are investigating what caused the glacier to break — possibly an avalanche or a release of accumulated water. Experts say climate change may be to blame because rising temperatures are shrinking glaciers and making them unstable worldwide.