Mary Lou M. Bryant

She entered this world without fanfare on January 27, 1932. Born in the middle of winter in the depths of the Great Depression, she was the first child of a working class couple trying to build a life in a working class town with little work to be had. In an echo of Mark Twain’s arrival and departure with Halley’s comet, she died eighty-eight years later during a pandemic and a faltering global economy. Though world events may overshadow her marker dates, the way she filled those intervening years is the far more compelling story.

The combination of strength and servanthood which characterized her life was forged early. As the oldest child, she was enlisted to help raise a succession of 6 siblings, and to the youngest ones especially, she was just as much mother as sister. When she was old enough to work, her income was a welcome supplement to a household with limited means and many mouths to feed. She learned to sew, and over the years she produced utilitarian items such as curtains, bedspreads and tablecloths, but she also made beautifully tailored clothing for her mother, herself, her daughter, and her daughter’s Barbies.

It was while she was working in the TVA personnel office that she met her husband Lawrence, a Georgia Tech co-op student in electrical engineering. Their 55-year marriage was a strong partnership of love and devotion which ended only with Lawrence’s death in 2012.

She and Lawrence started a family as the Cold War was heating up. When their son was two and she was pregnant with their daughter, Lawrence was called up along with thousands of other reservists and guardsmen, posted four states away. In her determined and pragmatic way, she continued the work of raising a child and maintaining family life in a world that seemed to be careening toward disaster.

A voracious reader with an expansive vocabulary, she instilled a love of books and learning in both of her children. Even when dementia began robbing her of most of her faculties, the spoken word was the last thing to fall silent. She loved and could call by name “all things green and growing”, and her yard as well as the rooms of her house were always filled with flowers. She was a meticulous housekeeper, no doubt the result of living in a small house with many people, and the running family joke was: What’s the difference between Mary Lou and Nature? Nature abhors a vacuum, but Mary Lou loves one. With her typical self-deprecating humor, she laughed right along with us — but never stopped vacuuming.

Her servant’s heart was manifested in too many ways to enumerate, and because she was one who never sought recognition or praise, she would disapprove of this entire obituary. It was her lifelong journey with Jesus that compelled her to use her gifts to make the world around her just a little bit better. Whether it was taking cold lemonade on a sweltering July day to the prisoners patching the road in front of her house, making a wedding dress for her sister-in-law or daughter, kneeling down to engage a shy child, creating scores of Raggedy Ann/Andy dolls for shower gifts, cooking hundreds of batches of blackberry jam to eat on her sourdough bread, seeking quiet conversation at family gatherings, caring for a sick niece or nephew so her sister could go to work, volunteering at Parkridge Hospital, working the election polls with Lawrence, or teaching English to Cambodian refugees, she was the hands and smiling face of Jesus. A member of Brainerd Baptist Church for 60 years, she spent half of those years teaching 3-year-olds in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, certainly the byproduct of helping raise her own siblings, and probably much easier in comparison. In later years, when her mother’s health declined, she became the matriarch of the extended family; she and Lawrence were the glue that held us all together. For such a tiny woman, the void she has left is vast.

She was preceded in death by her husband Lawrence Bryant, parents Hiram Houston McCarroll and Jessie Ann Curtis, brothers Billy Hugh McCarroll and Edward McCarroll, and sisters-in-law Tina McCarroll and Agnes McCarroll.

Survivors who will rise up and call her blessed include her son Dr. Steven Bryant (Nita Lou) of Alberta Canada and daughter Dr. Susan Roberts (Micky) of Maryville TN; grandchildren Zora Ellis of Los Angelos CA, Laura Beth Myers (Nick) of Knoxville TN and David Roberts of Maryville TN; brothers Rev. Don McCarroll of Depauw IN and David Michael McCarroll (Carol) of Murfreesboro TN; sisters Sara DeGalleford and Sharon DeLoach of Chattanooga TN; sisters-in-law Patty McCarroll of Jasper FL and Miriam (Mark) Harmeling of Ventura CA; and a host of beloved nieces and nephews, many of whom regarded her as a second grandmother.

Special thanks to the compassionate staff at Morning Pointe of Ooltewah, Morningview Village of Maryville, and Shannondale of Maryville, who loved her like a family member and gave her last years dignity and meaning, and to Blount Memorial Hospice who ensured that her last days were spent in peace and comfort. Very special thanks to Shannondale nurses Nicole and Mendy, who tenderly cared for her as though she were their only patient and who held her hand when her daughter could not.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the television ministry at Brainerd Baptist Church of Chattanooga TN, or to your local food pantry.

Due to the pandemic, a celebration of life service will be held at a later date.