Clark, a 43-year-old Army chief nurse, grew up in Michigan and lived previously in Spencerport, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester and his wife’s hometown. He joined the Army in 2006 and was stationed in Hawaii before he was assigned to the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso. He deployed to Afghanistan in March.

A statement from the family released by Taber-Thomas said Clark died Monday while talking to his wife during one of their regular Skype sessions.

“At the time of the incident, the family was hoping for a rescue and miracle, but later learned that it was not to be,” the statement said. “Although the circumstances were unimaginable, Bruce’s wife and extended family will be forever thankful that he and his wife were together in his last moments.”

Clark’s body was returned Thursday to Dover Air Force Base.

A funeral is planned in Spencerport, but details were not immediately available. Clark and his wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, moved there in 2000. While living there, he worked for about four years at Highland Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., first as an operating room assistant then operating room technician.

“He was a friendly guy, always joking, always picking on me because of my (British) accent,” said Ellie Villanueva, a nurse who worked with Clark at the hospital and kept in touch with him after he left. They spoke a few days before his death, and he talked about coming for a visit. “After work, we would all go out. It was like a family. He was my son.”

Clark was an EMT before he worked at the hospital. He went on to earn his nursing degree and planned to become a certified registered nurse anesthetist, Villanueva said.

“He was always willing and always wanting to better himself,” she said.

Military records show Clark finished his nursing degree before joining the military in 2006.

He received a number of awards and decorations for his service.

“When you were in Bruce’s presence it was apparent he served a higher purpose,” the family’s statement said. “He was deeply honored to serve his country, and he paid the ultimate sacrifice to serve people, his children, family, community, and church.”

A memorial service also was planned in Addison, Mich., where Clark graduated from high school.

Villanueva said the delay in releasing the cause of Clark’s death was difficult on those who knew him.

“Why is it taking so long? It’s odd,” she said. “It’s a real shame.”

Clark is survived by his wife and two daughters, age 3 and 9, he said.

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AP writers Chris Carola in Albany, N.Y., and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y., contributed to this report.

“I’m very sorry. Everything that happened that night was wrong,” Adams said. “If I could take it back, I would. Not a day goes by I wish I could take it back. … I messed up and can’t take that back.”

He asked those gathered to not let any hate they had for him “eat you up.”

“Find a way to get past … I really hate things turned out the way they did. For everybody involved, I don’t think any good came out of it.”

Adams took about a dozen breaths, then began wheezing and snoring. Eventually, he became still. He was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m. CDT, nine minutes after the lethal drugs began to flow into his body.

His attorneys had asked the nation’s highest court to halt the execution, review his case and let him pursue appeals claiming he had deficient legal help at his trial and during earlier stages of his appeals.

He won a reprieve from a federal district judge earlier this week, but the Texas attorney general’s office appealed the ruling, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the death warrant Wednesday.

Adams was one of two East Texas men sent to death row for the slaying of Kenneth Vandever, 37. He was in a convenience store on Sept. 2, 2002, in Rusk, about 115 miles southeast of Dallas, when two men wearing masks and carrying a shotgun walked in and announced a holdup.

After robbing the store, Adams and Richard Cobb drove off with the two female clerks and Vandever in a car belonging to one of the women.

Testimony at Adams’ trial showed he gave the orders during the holdup and initiated the abductions. They drove to a remote area about 10 miles away in Cherokee County, where Adams demanded Vandever and one woman get into the trunk of the car and then raped the other woman. Testimony also showed he forced all three to kneel as they were shot.

Vandever was fatally wounded. The women were kicked and shot again before Cobb and Adams, believing they were dead, fled. Both were alive, however, and one was able to run to a house to summon help.

Adams and Cobb were arrested several hours later in Jacksonville, about 25 miles to the north. Adams was identifiable because he had slipped off his mask after one of the women said she thought she knew him.

“I’m not going to lie. There is a sense of pride that’s there,” Alexander, 22, said Wednesday, standing in front of the “Corps Arches,” an arched brick wall that marks the entrance to the dormitory area for the 2,100 members of the Aggie Corps of Cadets. “I look at it as encouragement to other people to get out and do whatever they want no matter what their background is.”

Texas A&M is about 100 miles northwest of Houston where Alexander, the oldest of 10 children in his family and the first to go to college, grew up and attended high school. Despite recruiting efforts by the school, Houston’s inner-city areas typically don’t produce future Aggies, and black students represent less than 4 percent of the 40,000 undergraduate students at the College Station campus.

“A lot of people from that part of town don’t come here,” said Alexander, who already spent a year and a half in the Marine reserves before enrolling at Texas A&M in 2009. “Everyone has their views and I knew what I was coming into when I came here, but it’s been very positive.”

The corps’ racial makeup largely reflects the university, but Alexander suspects that will eventually change.

“We’re working on that,” he said. “We’re growing steadily. I can serve as a testament.”

His first exposure to A&M was during a high school visit. The Corps of Cadets was his group’s first stop and where he got his first “Howdy,” a greeting so synonymous with the school that people who enter an elevator at A&M’s Rudder Tower get an automated “Howdy” over a speaker.

When his acceptance letter from A&M, the only school to which he applied, didn’t arrive promptly, he signed up for the Marine reserves. The acceptance note eventually came but too late to renege on his Marine commitment. A year and a half later, he enrolled.

His continuing duty as a reservist, where he’s a corporal, also makes him the first person with actual military experience to head the corps, whose graduates are outnumbered only by the nation’s military academies in the amount of men and women who head from college to the armed forces. In A&M’s case, however, membership in the corps doesn’t require graduates to join the military, although nearly half do.

He acknowledges becoming the “face of the university” and he hopes to participate in efforts to encourage people from areas like his at home to make something positive of their lives.

“Coming out of that area, you don’t see a lot of success stories,” Alexander said. “There’s not a lot of role models for that particular area. What you see is this guy living on the street or this guy selling drugs or this guy going to go to prison. Things like that. I hope to serve as a beacon of hope that: Hey, you can do this too.”

A number of cadets applied for the commander position for the 2012-13 school year, then underwent scrutiny that included a five-minute presentation before an 11-member panel that included school officials, the reigning corps leadership and the Corps commandant, retired Brig. Gen. Joe Martinez.

“This is a young man who has all the right qualities,” Martinez said. “You can see has a level of maturity that’s probably not common among the cadets of that same age. He brings a command presence, leadership ability. He’s comfortable speaking. … He looks the part of a leader.”

Texas A&M opened its doors in 1876. Blacks and women weren’t allowed until 87 years later. The first African-Americans joined the corps in 1964. The first women cadets came a decade later. By contrast, rival University of Texas was racially integrated in 1950.

In A&M’s centennial year, Fred McClure won election as body president, making him the first black student to assume the post that’s considered a campus equal to corps commander and Aggie yell leader, a position once held by Gov. Rick Perry. McClure estimated that in 1976, only about 250 black students were at the school.

“I think he and I share the same passion for Texas A&M,” McClure said, referring to Alexander. “It just so happens that we happen to share the same skin color. That’s pretty cool too.”

Albert Broussard, an African-American history professor, said Alexander’s achievement was “an important event but largely symbolic.”

“I don’t want to minimize the importance of this event, but I would not refer to this as a turning point,” he said. “Turning a new page in the long history of this university … would be more appropriate.”

Alexander, who hopes for a career as a military lawyer or intelligence work, said he wasn’t even aware he was the first black cadet commander until someone told him.

“I don’t know why it’s taken so long,” he said. “But I know the corps’ process is that they will always put the best people in the spot. I can honestly say my race didn’t play a factor. I hope it’s because I was legitimately the best person for the job.”