Robert Drucker left his will on the counter top of his Astoria home and his little dog Asta safely tied in the backyard before he ended his own life with a bullet Friday morning. Astoria police said a friend and former neighbor found Drucker’s body on a walkway between his garage and his house.

An animal lover, Drucker adopted Asta from the Clatsop County Animal Shelter and was so delighted with his pet that he donated money to the shelter for a park, which he named Asta Dog Park.

“He was a wonderfully generous man. He donated quite a bit to the shelter,” said Steve Hildreth, the county’s animal control officer. “He was a very, very nice man, very good-hearted.” Hildreth said Drucker visited the shelter often with Asta, “a little ball of fluff” of indeterminate ancestry.

Drucker shared Asta with his neighbor Debbie Thomsen, who owned the Downtown Coffee Shop on 10th Street. He took care of the dog while she was at work. The two had the same arrangement with Thomsen’s previous dog, Winnie. When Thomsen moved away, Asta stayed with Drucker, said Thomsen’s stepmother, Darlene Felkins.

Felkins remembered that Drucker brought her bouquets of flowers when she worked at the Clatsop County Historical Society. “He was just a really neat guy,” Felkins said.

Drucker and his late brother Kenneth came to Astoria in 1956, when they relocated their manufacturing plant from St. Louis to the site of the old Navy Hospital in the Olney-Walluski area. Called Phillips-Drucker, the company focused on manufacturing centrifuges and other medical equipment. In 1969, it merged with another company and in 1975 the Astoria plant was closed.

Kenneth Drucker left more than $600,000 to three local organizations when he died in 1997. Robert Drucker presented the checks. The Clatsop County Historical Society and the Columbia River Mariitime Museum each received about $194,000 and Astoria High School Scholarships Inc. and Shriners Hospital for Children each got about $97,000.

While Kenneth Drucker was a self-taught engineer and inventor, his younger brother Robert’s interests ran to archeology. “He was a great archeologist. He explored the Indian Mounds in Seaside for the Smithsonian,” said Michael Foster, an Astoria philanthropist and civic leader who was a longtime friend of both Drucker brothers. “Bob was a very nice man. When my parents were alive we had Thanksgiving together” with Bob Drucker, his brother Ken and his wife, Lucy Drucker, Foster said.

Sadly, Kenneth Drucker also died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound about 12 years ago after the death of his wife. Astoria police said Robert Drucker’s only survivor is a niece in St. Louis.