Bruce Sterling (Love of Life)

Bruce Sterling was a fictional character in the now-cancelled American Soap Opera, Love of Life. He was played by actor Ron Tomme from 1959 to the show's demise in 1980.

Bruce was the second husband of heroine Vanessa Dale. He was a teacher at Winfield Academy, a private boys' school in the fictional upstate New York community of Rosehill. Bruce met Van through a mutual friend of theirs named Tom Craythorne, a New York City lawyer, who had befriended Van after she helped him foil a paternity suit that her malevolent sister, Meg, foisted on him. They had fallen in love and married.

A widower with two children, Bruce felt that Vanessa would be a needed mother figure to them. Alan, his son, took to Van almost immediately; as did Bruce's former father in-law, Henry Carlson. But Henry's wife, Vivian and Bruce's headstrong daughter, Barbara, didn't like the new situation. Vivian thought it heartless that Bruce marry so soon after the death of his first wife, Gaye (Henry and Vivian's daughter). However, the war against Vanessa was mostly on the front of snobby Vivian.

Bruce had his share of trials, especially with Barbara. She and a date went joyriding and almost injured Dr. Tony Vento, a handsome doctor (who was the son of a cleaning woman, Mrs. Vento) that she wanted to marry. Barbara told Van all about it, and then Van, out of concern, told Bruce about it. Barbara was annoyed with Van and hated her steadily since. Barbara did marry Dr. Vento, but he found her completely immature. Not surprisingly, he divorced her.

Henry offered Bruce a job at his paper company, and accepted it, feeling burned out from teaching at Winfield Academy. There was the beginning of marital problems for the Sterlings. Bruce had an affair with his secretary, a woman named Ginny Crandall (Barbara Barrie), who had been the wife of a teacher at Winfield Academy, and that caused Van to move out of the house and in with her stepson in his apartment. He also saved a girl named Sandy Porter from a rapist named Glenn Hamilton (Bert Convy). He also had an affair with Dr. Jennifer Stark (Jennifer Bassey).

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