Doris Bryan was born in 1919 in Pennsylvania and moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1926. She had a varied childhood and teenage years in Hollywood. In 1944, she married Stan Bryan and they had three children together. The family lived in several states as Stan pursued his career. Doris was devoted to her family and community. She had an adventurous spirit but also faced difficulties as one daughter developed schizophrenia. Doris remained optimistic and active into her later years until her death in 2000.

56. Doris Bryan
1919 Born the #11th child of 12 in Reading, Pennsylvania. They lived in a rural
environment and her father mainly made his money managing the local water reservoir.
Her favorite brother, my Uncle Roy, was 14 years older than her and she often
referred to him as a second father.

57. 1926 the family moved to Los Angeles in 3 cars.
A neighbor’s kid was somehow “adopted” and made the trip with them. 7
year old Doris made the trip in the rumble seat of a Apperson Jackrabbit.
The trip took 3 months of driving, often just following ruts and telephone
poles. There was a breakdown in St. Louis that forced her older brothers
to work as mechanics to finance the repairs.
Uncle Harvey, who had at one time needed to hide out when he knocked
my grandfather out in some kind of dispute, scared some other campers
off when he started twirling his six shooters.

58. In Los Angeles, Doris’s father worked as a concrete worker until mom’s older brothers saw
what a toll it was taking on him. They somehow pooled enough money to buy him a
Standard Oil station.
Mom told the story of the bandit who pulled a gun, and Grandpa took the gun away
from him and told him to scram.
She also told the story of an inspector pulling into station after another customer and
Granddad had not “reset” the pump. He did though, charge the right price. He was let
off with a warning.
One of my uncles had a moving company, and every Sunday would move the family to
Church.
Her Grandmother ran a large boarding house near Hollywood and Vine: two stories

59. A revenuer had walked into the basement and found far too many potatoes. When
He asked young Doris what they did with them, she answered “We eat them.”
Doris’s mother had to make huge meals for the boarding house residents, and mom
loved the ambience of a warm and active kitchen. And though, before she got
married to dad, about all she knew how to do was open a can, she learned to enjoy
being in her kitchen creating things.

60. She learned her love of eating out from her father, who would once a week, would
take the girls who were still living at home out to the automats and cafeterias—
elegant institutions of its time we don’t understand today.
Later, when she worked at very large cafeteria, she worked a coffee station. One
of the large urns fell and dumped scalding liquid on her. Since they didn’t let her
quickly take her shirt off, she had a scar on her back her whole life.

61. As a teenager, Doris became a part of the Hollywood area she grew up in. She loved
the beach scene, was a champion roller skater, went to art school, and worked as
model for a fashion designer. The pictures, or course, are stunning.

62. 1942 she had a short failed marriage.
I only learned about this when I was a naive 20 year old hitch hiking
around the country. Aunt Betty, my mother’s younger sister, told me
this with some glee while smoking a corncob pipe upside down.
Family can be stranger than fiction.
1944 my mother married my father in one of those whirl wind Los Vegas
marriage establishments.
They met in the Douglas Airplane factory where my father was an
engineer. My mother was part of the roller skating brigade delivering
messages and documents around the cavernous buildings. She was
skating fast around a corner and accidently—so she said—knocked
him over. So began a long marriage that lasted more than 50 years.

63. They began to dig into the Hollywood area.
Before marrying mom, my dad had been part of the area, rebuilding Model A
Fords which cost about $50 when he was a young man.
Brakes, like today, were a problem with that generation of autos, and the
design of the pedals was different. One of the pedals was for reverse. After
hitting the bottom one of the winding roads in the Hollywood Hills usually
meant that the only way to stop was to stomp on all three pedals -- the gas,
the break and reverse!

64. Stan had bought a property in Hollywood Hills and dreamed of a home that
was totally concrete so that he could clean up the interior with a fire hose,
but Doris did not approve of this novel idea.
They even bought plots at the famous Forest Lawn Cemetery. These were later
were sold when they built a house at the top of Lake Washington near Seattle.

65. Dissatisfied with being an engineer, Dad was accepted into the Business Administration
Graduate program at Indiana University and mom followed willingly.
1947 Roy born in Bloomington, Indiana
1949 Rex born in Bloomington, Indiana
Both of us were born during the anti-breast feeding craze, and both times my mother
walked out of the hospital in her pajamas with her newborn child to call my father from
a phone booth to come and get her.
Dad built a TINY home in Bloomington Indiana during his Ph.D. studies just after
WWII. The post-war Rheem furnace he bought would not work. Dad wrote to
complain to the president of the company...he asked if he was being Rheemed. Promptly
after that, the little home was visited by four executives in suits. With Roy and Rex in
diapers, the executives gave a heartfelt lecture on the history of Rheem and asked the
parents to be understanding ... demand for parts was incredible just after the war. When
the furnace was fixed, the executives begged Dad to again write a letter to the president,
stating that the executives had solved the problem.

66. In 1950, Stan took a job as an Asst. Professor at Michigan State University—
where his grandfather had graduated from and in an area where his father had run a
bicycle shop and produced the curved dashboard for the original Oldsmobiles.
1953 The family follows Stan to the University of Washington in Seattle where he had been
offered a Full Professorship. I spent 1st and 2nd Grade at the Lake City School.
My parents built—mostly with their own hands—a house right on the very northern
tip of Lake Washington. Though it seems like a big part of my life, I think we were in
that house for only about a year. Sometimes we could watch the large hydroplane
racers practice on the lake. The video image of Slo-mo-shun V’s famous 180 degree
flip is still haunting (the pilot fell out but lived).
As Rex said: Mom and Dad were always building a home around the
family. Bloomington Indiana, Seattle Washington, Bath Michigan. Always the
smell of cut wood and paint.

67. 1953 Beverly is born in Seattle, Washington
Early in 1955 the dean from Michigan State University flew out to Seattle and offered
Stan a 2 year teaching stint in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mom whole heartedly jumped at the
chance, and dad, who wasn’t totally happy with the department politics, agreed to do
it. He would return to Michigan State when it was done with a full professorship.
Fall 1955: Thus started 2 years in Brazil, 2 years in East Lansing, Michigan, and then 2
more years back in Brazil. The experiences were wide and varied. Mom learning to work
with a maid during the first 2 years in Brazil—someone that almost felt like family; and
refusing to have a maid the second 2 years in Brazil.
Mom developed strong friendships with artists in Sao Paulo, particularly a mosaic
artist whose work we still have.
Exchanging the Airplane tickets for 3rd class boat tickets so we could return to the
US by way of Europe.

68. 1962 we finally returned to East Lansing, Michigan, where Rex and I finished out high
school and our undergraduate degrees.
1967 Beverly developed Schizophrenia. I only mention this at this event because for the
next 26 years Doris fought through the psychiatric bureaucracy to get Beverly help. She
visited her constantly and worked tirelessly to organize local half-way houses for people
with Beverly’s type of problem.
Mom presented an optimistic and cheerful front to everyone, but it was one of the
great sadness’s in her life.
In 1970 they bought 7 acres they called “Enchanted Hill” in Bath, Michigan and began
building a large rambling house. It became an ongoing project they enjoyed immensely for
the next 24 years.
1993 Beverly dies.
1994 Stan and Doris celebrate their 50th Anniversary.
1995 Stan dies suddenly at 83
Later that year, Doris moves out to Colorado into a house just up the street from Rex and
Christina.

69. For quite a while, she walked around Golden and was always greeting people
along the way.
2000 Moves into assisted living.
She painted a beautiful water color 2 days before she died.
She ate a hearty meal and danced on her way to bed. She died peacefully in
her sleep.