The daughter of Charles Sidelinger and Mary (Veoni) Sidelinger, Eleanor was born and raised in Dagus Mines, Elk County, Pennsylvania. She graduated in 1952 from St. Vincent School of Nursing in Erie, Pennsylvania and in that same year married her high school sweetheart, Peter L. Bryan, who was then serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. His work as an industrial engineer took them to Corning, NY, Wilmington, NC, and Chambersburg and Camp Hill, PA. Eleanor worked as an RN at hospitals in each of those communities. She was one of the earliest nurses in the hospice movement in the U.S. and was devoted to the well-being of her patients.
She was raised in an Italian-speaking family. Her maternal grandmother maintained a life-long correspondence with relatives in Italy, so Eleanor was thrilled when she had a chance to travel later in life to visit her grandparents’ birthplaces and meet her Italian relatives.
Eleanor was a parishioner of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Mechanicsburg, PA and Sacred Heart Church in Lake Worth, FL.
Eleanor was artistic from an early age but, growing up in a small coal mining village in northwestern Pennsylvania, making art was not encouraged. She remembered almost having an art class in high school: “The teacher brought pastel chalk to her first class, but we only had that one class. The teacher eloped the next week and was never replaced.”
As an adult, she attended a lecture called “In Defense of Modern Art” that featured Jackson Pollock’s canvases of splattered paint. “I left saying to myself, if that’s art, I can do better. The next day, I bought myself some oil paints.” She worked in oils, alkyd oils, and watercolors. After her retirement from nursing, she spent much of her time painting and gardening.
Eleanor Bryan’s paintings were featured in one-person exhibits at Centre Street Café & Gallery in Baltimore (MD); Little Theatre of Mechanicsburg (PA); The Oyster Mill Playhouse and the Harrisburg Area Community College – Gettysburg Campus. Her work, largely still life florals and occasionally abstract, appeared in juried exhibits at the Art Association of York (PA), the 19th Annual North American Miniature Exhibition at The Art Gallery of Fells Point in Baltimore (MD); the Lake Worth Art League (FL), and the Art Association of Harrisburg (PA). Her paintings were also featured in group exhibits including Westminster Art in the Park (MD) and the Arts for Peace and Justice Exhibit in Harrisburg (PA).
Eleanor was predeceased by her husband, Peter, and her brother, Arthur Sidelinger. She is survived by two daughters and their spouses Barbara Bryan (Zachary White) and Paula Bryan (Richard Denison), sister-in law Sumiko Sidelinger, and cousins, nieces, and nephews.
Services will be private with interment at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery.
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