Alan Dennis Bram, age 79, passed away on Jan. 23, at home after a 13-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia.
Alan was born on March 28, 1944, to Harold and Betty Bram in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in Cleveland and graduated from Cleveland Heights High School.
On March 5, 1972, Alan was joined in marriage to Laura Gross. Alan and Laura were married 43 years until she passed away in August 2015 after a short battle with colon cancer. In his retirement years, you could find Alan reading a book or watching the next Hallmark movie scheduled on his calendar.
Alan spent 50 years in the field of Jewish communal service. It was at the Jewish Community Center in Cleveland where he joined the health and physical education staff after earning his undergraduate degree from John Carroll University. While working, he earned his master’s degree in physical education from Case Western Reserve University. He was then promoted to the position of assistant director of health and physical education, and two years later became director of the department. He received exceptional training at the JCC, and it sparked his enthusiasm for Jewish communal work.
After 11 years at the Cleveland JCC, he was given the opportunity to relocate to Richmond, Virginia, where he took the position of assistant executive director of the Jewish Community Center of Richmond. In Virginia, he expanded his skills to encompass programming and budgeting for the agency and not just for a department.
In 1983, he again relocated and became the executive director of the Tulsa Jewish Community Center. The small community center had lacked organization, and he worked to reorganize the staff as well as repair the accounting system.
In 1986, lay leaders from Kansas City recruited Alan to establish policies and oversee the construction of the Jewish Community Campus. His family moved to Kansas City in January 1987, and he began work Feb. 1 in the Campus office located at 12th and Walnut. Planning for the Campus was well underway, and he had to play catch-up, which he did with the help of the Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Foundation staffs. Building the Campus was a Jewish community project and involved more than 400 volunteers and staff. Once the Campus opened, he served as its executive director, continuing to work with volunteers and staffers in the Jewish community.
The 224,000 sq. ft. building officially opened in October 1988. Alan developed manuals of operation for all the systems as well as creating guidelines for personnel and board policies. Over the years, he oversaw several construction projects, including the addition of two new preschool classrooms in the early 1990s. The next substantial building addition, the Lewis and Shirley White Theatre, took place in the fall of 2005. This brought the size of the Campus to 250,000 sq. ft.
As early as the mid-1990s, the changing political scene worldwide impressed upon those people heading up Jewish agencies and schools the need for crisis response planning. So, Alan sought assistance from John Douglass, then-chief of the Overland Park Police Department, to provide the resources needed to prepare plans and provide training for employees of the agencies at the Campus. Alan also collaborated with Captain Tim Lynch, who arranged workshops on bomb response planning and oversaw evacuation drills for the preschool and Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy.
Alan retired in 2013 after 50 years in the Jewish communal field. After the tragedy that occurred in the Kansas City Jewish community on April 13, 2014, Alan was brought on as a consultant to help reassess the security of the Campus and work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Overland Park Police Department to implement processes and improvements for enhanced safety of the community.
His volunteer activities included serving as program chairman, treasurer and president of the Kansas City Chapter of the International Facility Management Association, which he joined in 1995. Alan was also a member of American Red Cross Safety Services and Congregation Beth Torah.
Grateful to have shared Alan’s life with him are his son, David (Janna) Bram of Olathe, Kansas; grandson, Micah Burrell of Sioux Falls, South Dakota; brother, Melvyn (Charlotte) Bram of Sun Lakes, Arizona; brother-in-law, Paul (Mel) Gross of Blue Springs, Missouri; and sister-in-law, Bernice Gross of Laguna Woods, California; nieces, Lauren (Charlie) Mick of Cleveland and Kira Grimes of Fountain Hills, Arizona; nephews, Lenny (Lori) of Columbus, Ohio, Dr. Keith Bram of Chicago, Illinois, and Jesse Gross of Denver, Colorado; as well as a host of great-nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Harold and Betty Bram; wife, Laura Bram; brother, Kenneth Bram; and nieces, Tara Patterson and Bit Vo.
In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that memorials be made to the Jewish Federation, Congregation Beth Torah, National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund or a charitable organization of your choice in Alan’s honor.
