Patsy Jean Bryan, 84
Patsy Jean Bryan was born on Aug. 20, 1935, in Kalispell, the only child of Joseph and Berneice Kinshella.
Joe was a Log Boss at Kinshella And Sons Logging Co. Berneice, of the Columbia Falls Jordans, was the bookkeeper of the company, operating in Northwest Montana. Patsy shared many fond memories of life as a young child in temporary-building logging camps near Marion, Olney and other remote locations. The family settled on a small farm in the Flathead Valley as Patsy reached school age, where she attended rural schools and Flathead County High School. Her 4-H activities led her to Montana State College, entering in the fall of 1954 to study Home Economics, later transferring to Education. She was a live-in member of the Delta Gamma Sorority, and at MSC she met Hayes Bryan, a boy from a farm in the Gallatin Valley who also flew airplanes.
Patsy completed her degree in elementary education a quarter ahead of schedule and received some additional education during a three-month fourth-grade teaching stint in a “the wrong side of the tracks” Helena school, dealing with very different children than those to whom her country upbringing had accustomed her. She received her diploma in June 1958 and accepted a second grade teaching position in Colorado Springs, Colorado, teaching for two years while keeping contact with Hayes, who was becoming an Air Force pilot. They were married in Kalispell on Aug. 14, 1960. Their honeymoon night was on the banks of Lake McDonald in Glacier Park, and the honeymoon trip was a seven-day pack trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the Rocky Mountains southeast of Kalispell.
They moved into a little house just outside the Webb Air Force Base fence in west Texas where Hayes was now a jet flight instructor. Patsy taught fourth grade in the Big Spring school system for six months, until her advancing pregnancy (in those “proper” days) dictated she depart the school. Five years in Texas found Patsy with two daughters and memories of hot dust storms that regularly raged around the house, red dirt filtering in to cover the furniture and stain the cloth diapers. Two years near Dayton, Ohio, where Hayes was a student, brought their son. Next the family lived for a short time in Victorville, California, where Hayes qualified in tactical fighters, and then the abbreviated family lived for a year in a little house in Kalispell while Hayes flew the F-4 in Vietnam. Upon Hayes’ return, they moved to Edwards Air Force Base, California in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles. Patsy refreshed her career at Edwards by substitute teaching during the year at Edwards, and then they were off to Colorado Springs, living on-base at the U.S. Air Force Academy where Hayes instructed. En route, they had taken delivery on a chassis-mount camper, which became a big part of their family-and-pets travel lives over the next ten years. Two years later came a two-year move to Austin, Texas, where Hayes was a Ph.D. student (Patsy took teaching courses and joined an art group), a week’s European trip for Patsy to tour Switzerland with Hayes via Swiss Rail Pass (Hayes spent three months at ETH (Technical University) Zurich), and back to USAFA. They lived five peaceful country years on five acres in the Black Forest, east of the Academy, with the kids’ horses and hamsters, and Patsy’s chicken and a garden, where Patsy occasionally substitute-taught in the then-tiny prairie town of Falcon.
Then came Hayes’ assignment to Washington, D.C. Over the next 13 years they became empty nesters, Hayes finished his Air Force career and was employed by G.E. and Patsy was quite involved with their church and with painting and volunteering with Hospice. They enjoyed several annual sailing weeks in the Caribbean where they had “invested” in a 32-foot charter sailboat (not lucrative). The couple had experienced growing yearnings to return West, so when a job opportunity within GE in the Seattle area arose, they made plans to move. As moving time neared, the job evaporated, but they moved anyway, finding the jewel Anacortes in 1993.
Patsy learned and taught Tole painting in Colorado, and she became an accomplished watercolor and oil paint artist in Virginia. She continued her painting in Anacortes, and also enhanced the quilting skills she’d learned as a youth, becoming enthralled with the Watercolor Quilt movement. She told the story, to a very few people, that during a surgery in 2009, as the doctors were working on her, she “heard” a voice say, matter-of-factly, “How are you doin’? Do you want to go back? Or do you just want to give it up?” After considering, she replied “I need to go back, for the kids. I need to make them each a quilt, and...”
Following two surgeries in 2009, Patsy’s distress and her nostalgia for Montana were assuaged when they purchased six acres on a hilltop west of Polson. They drew their own log house plans, selected a builder, and their crew “stacked the logs” in January 2010. Though being an “owner-finished” work in progress, Patsy was able to spend many months in her beloved Montana.
Patsy was always passionately concerned with the success and welfare of her children, grandchildren and, recently, great-grandchildren. After becoming an empty-nester, among other manifestations, this resulted in trips to Costa Rica and Spain visiting their daughter’s missionary family, and to Italy and Hawaii and an Alaska-Russia-Korea-Japan cruise to visit their U.S. Navy son and family.
They attended Christ the King Church in Anacortes for many years.
Patsy died from natural causes at home in Anacortes on April 28, 2020, sitting on the side of the bed with her husband holding her arms, shortly after having gestured for and obtained a change into her favorite (Hayes’) shirt.
Patsy is survived by her husband Hayes; their daughters Ann Beall of Kalispell and Colleen Taylor of Birmingham, Alabama; their son Daniel of Stafford, Virginia; six grandchildren; and “three-and-two-thirds” great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life will be held at a later date in Montana.
The online guestbook is available at https://www.evanschapel.com