Funeral services for 108-year old Virginia Bryant are Friday, April 19th, at 2:00 at the Congregational Church of Lusk, Wyo.
Interment will follow at the Lusk Cemetery.
Online condolences may be left at pierfh.com.
Virginia May Bryant was born Oct 13, 1915, at Hat Creek, Wyo. She died peacefully at Hospice of Laramie on Sat, April 13th, 2024 in Laramie, Wyo.
The second child of Albert and Ethel DeGering, Virginia’s birth was a dramatic beginning as she was born in the old Hat Creek Stage Station where her parents had stopped while driving their horse-drawn wagon to the nearest doctor in Lusk about 35 miles away from their home.
Virginia was raised on her parents’ homestead, the Bar Six Ranch, on Coyote Creek in the Hat Creek community, with her six siblings. As the second-oldest child and oldest daughter, she was given many responsibilities in helping her Mother, including looking after the younger children, helping watch livestock and helping with household chores.
As a young girl, Virginia loved roaming the hills near their home, dipping honey out of the honey separator, and playing with her siblings along the creek in the shade of the cottonwood trees.
After attending one-room country schools, she boarded with families in Lusk to attend Lusk High School, graduating with the class of 1933. She then attended the Nebraska State Normal School at Chadron (now Chadron State College) and received her teaching certificate in less than a year.
Virginia returned to the Hat Creek area in 1934 to teach K-8 at three one-room country schools over the next 4 years, but she made the big trip in 1938 to Laramie to attend the University of Wyoming and obtain her BA in Education,
She received her degree in Dec 1940 and shortly married her high school and college sweetheart, Ed Bryant, in June 1941. During the early years of WWII, Ed and Virginia worked in Washington D.C. and began their family with the birth of their son, Edward “Eddie” Bryant in 1943.
Virginia spent the remaining war years both at the ranch in Hat Creek and later in Hawaii where Ed was stationed at the end of the war.
After the war, the family moved to Laramie where Ed became a professor in Statistics at the University of Wyoming and Virginia began her focus on being a homemaker and supportive partner. In 1947, their daughter Bonnie was born and the family was complete.
The years raising her family were filled with Cub Scouts, concerts, baseball, League of Women Voters, church functions, school projects, faculty dinners, picnics with friends and fishing trips to the Snowy Range in the Medicine Bow Mountains.
The family eventually moved to Potomac, MD, to follow Edward’s new company which he started with two of his UW grad students. Virginia continued to provide a perfect home for Ed, even after their children had grown and moved away.
After the tragic death in 1974 of her daughter-in-law Lydia Bryant, Virginia stepped in to help raise her three young grandchildren while her son, Eddie, adjusted to a new life without his wife.
This was a new, unexpected but welcome phase of her life: caring directly for those she loved. After the 3 grandchildren had grown, Virginia spent over a year caring for her beloved Bonnie throughout her battle with brain cancer and helped care for her baby daughter Katie, both during this difficult time and after Bonnie’s death.
Virginia’s drive to care for those she loved was unstoppable throughout her life and she was always concerned with the well being and happiness of others.
After Ed’s death in 2008, Virginia moved back to Laramie to be closer to her grandson and great-grandchildren. She spent her final years there watching her great-grandchildren grow up, baking cookies, attending family gatherings, and making new friends at the Regency Retirement Residence, where she lived independently until her death.
Virginia is survived by her brother John DeGering (Lusk, WY), granddaughter Lisa Bryant (Scottsbluff, NE), granddaughter Katie Kirkpatrick (Colorado Springs, CO), grandson Eric Bryant and wife Darcy (Laramie, WY) great-grandchildren Isaac, Elijah, Helena and Liam Bryant, and Alexandra Freeman (Laramie, WY).
Pier Funeral Home of Lusk is in charge of arrangements for Virginia Bryant.