Please sign the Petition at change.org to rename the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship, University of Maryland,
Department of Fire Protection Engineering
Thank You
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Sarah grew up in Oklahoma in the 1930s and was abusive and bigoted, which she apparently got from her mother who could barely say anything without spewing out one racial epithet or another. Her sisters seem to have been similar. Sarah had a huge complex about her brother who had left, gone to Yale for grad school and married someone from NY who was decently bright. Fine, sure, whatever but Sarah was so grossly insecure that she couldn't handle much of anything and made it perfectly clear by early in elementary school that she had no intention of letting me go to a decent college ("THE EDUCATION AT OXFORD AND HARVARD IS AWFUL!!! THEY JUST READ BOOKS AND GO DISCUSS THEM WITH THE PROFESSOR!!! I'VE NEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING!!!"). One of her favorite tricks was to screech "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET AN 'A' AND YOU MAY NOT EVEN PASS!!!" if I wanted to take any semi-decent course (mainly languages) outside the basically crap neighborhood schools and then not let me. I ultimately just got books on my own and did it myself - as if Sarah had any clue, could actually really read herself, or cared for much of anything beyond her grudges about her brother and whoever else and her own incredibly fragile ego.
It seemed basically to be an expression of multiple insecurities - her own weaknesses, comparing herself to her brother - as well as a general level of laziness, incuriosity, and bigotry that made her terrified of in any way disturbing her extraordinarily narrow and limited view of the world. Same for Joan, though they both compulsively tried to pretend they knew more than they did and more than anyone else - though it was mainly a collection of their own bigotries and narrow-mindedness. Sarah took out her ridiculous grudges against her brother on me. She would constantly hit, slap, threaten, bully, mimic, make homophobic remarks about me as a child. She attacked me - along with my mini-Sarah sister Joan - when I came out ("SO YOU WANT A GAY LIFESTYLE, HUH?!!!"; "HOW DARE YOU!! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!!!!!").
I don’t think she really wanted children; she just did it because it was expected and she had nothing else to do. She was one of those people who seem more driven by grudges and insecurities than anything else. She was fundamentally incompetent at everything she ever got her grubby little paws on. She spent over a decade miscarrying (and still births and dead babies) – supposedly some blood type incompatibility (per John who tended to make excuses) though she also couldn't be bothered to stop smoking and drinking while pregnant. She liked screaming and hitting. She tried to spoil my sister, but she was still emotionally awkward and my sister became this odd combination of psychotic and spoiled. My sister Joan used to attack me in my playpen, threw temper tantrums nonstop, would shove me down and scream at me when I was learning to walk, rubbed sand into my back at the beach, would come up to me and start kicking and screaming for no reason, would throw food at me, tennis rackets tennis balls whatever she had around. I was constantly sandwiched between Sarah's temper tantrums and Joan's, often occurring simultaneously. I cracked my head open when I was two after I ran into a wall shuttling between Joan's temper tantrum in the kitchen and Sarah's competing temper tantrum in the living room. Of course, Sarah was so incompetent she couldn't even take me to the doctor but had to call my father to come back from work and drive me - which simply wasted an hour while I lay there while Sarah and Joan sat around doing nothing.
There were also Sarah's pronounced bigotries, which at least in part mimicked her own mother who could barely have a conversation without spewing out one racial epithet or another - though she at least had some sense of what she could not say in front of most people and expected people not to say anything. "The blacks" was always lingering (as with her mother). The two male teachers in the local elementary school were the targets of the homophobic asides. And for some reason Europe set her off - which I think mainly reflected whom she happened to randomly meet, particularly if they were smarter than Sarah (not difficult) or not inclined to play along with her usual shallow and non-sensical remarks. So she would fume about the French woman in her office once she went back to work, and the Danish woman down the street who was the mother of a friend in my class (she refused to let me go with them to the movies when they asked).
In the second grade when we were doing mock presidential elections for the 1972 election, I was supposed to make a little speech for Nixon (yes, since that's who Sarah decided she would vote for).
She started in on one of her endless little monologues about how awful McGovern was (we never really got to what was positive about Nixon). It basically came down to him not being "tough enough" on "the blacks". Her conclusion was that it would be pointless to vote for McGovern in any event since "he'll just be shot anyway" which she seemed to think was entirely logical and acceptable. Being a seven-year-old and not tuned into the nuances of Sarah's saying one thing to one audience and another to someone else, I of course concluded my little second-grade "why we should vote for Richard Nixon" spiel by noting that, well, McGovern would just be shot anyway. Needless to say, folks noticed that one - and, of course, knew that a seven year old did not just pull that out of the air themselves - and complained to Sarah about her comment. In a classic Sarah move, she was of course not concerned that she had made the comments, or what they said about her, or that she was spewing this stuff out at home. What bothered her - and made her absolutely furious and started her screeching and hitting - was that I was supposed to know not to mention what she said to anyone else.
Sarah refused to listen to my teachers, refused to put me in a decent school that had what I wanted to study, made fun of me for studying and wanting to learn, tried to keep me from applying to decent colleges, broke my hand and then sent me to school like that, refused to get help for my ulcerative colitis (“just use Vaseline, that’s what I do”), refused to talk to me when I got into Yale like her brother, screamed at me for going to a similar school (with scholarships, as if she was paying for it - "So, you have to have THE school, huh?!!"; "You may be going to a FANCY SCHOOL, but...(whatever her current fixation happened to be)!!"), would come into my room when I was little and couldn’t sleep and scream at me and hit me. She would be furious if another parent or teacher complimented me. She would start talking about Joan and then make fun of me or hit me. She would denigrate me in front of others. Stomped around flapping her mouth about how she was going to “knock some heads together” and how she was “not here to be popular”. She would go into a rage if the toilet overflowed or the thermostat was set one degree too cold for her taste. Joan perpetually copied her including the hysterics, bigotry, temper tantrums and badmouthing people behind their backs.
If I asked for something Sarah’s response would inevitably be “NO! We’re not going to do that!” (a phrase Joan picked up as well). If Joan then asked the same thing, no problem. “THAT’S A GOOD ONE!” in a snotty, derogatory tone followed by sarcastic snort was another favorite construction: in high school when I said I was thinking about careers (“So you want to have a career, huh?! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!); when I wanted to do ballet (“So you want to be Baryshnikov or something, huh?! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!”); when I asked if we could have a conversation at dinner rather than watching TV (“So you want to have an intellectual discussion, huh?! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!”); when I wanted to apply to a decent college - and Sarah and Joan, of course, could barely read ("So you have to have THE school, huh?!! THAT'S A GOOD ONE!!); the snotty remarks when I would be reading ("What?! You want to be 'well-read' or something?!! THAT'S A GOOD ONE!").
On and on: "WHY DO YOU KEEP YOUR ROOM CLEAN?!! IT'S NOT NORMAL!!!", "WHY ARE YOU READING?!!!", "BE QUIET!!!", "I'M NOT HERE TO BE POPULAR!!!", "I'LL JUST KNOCK SOME HEADS TOGETHER!!!", "YOU'RE NOT GONNA LIKE IT!!!" - all interspersed with much hitting, slapping, grabbing, shoving.
She was always complaining about money, but primarily only for me. She and Joan went shopping every weekend at the overpriced shopping malls. Refused to do anything I wanted to do on the weekends even when it was free (museums, special libraries, the park or the lake). All she said was “I don’t want to” (another phrase Joan picked up along with “I don’t care!” and “I’m a loud-mouthed white woman!” the latter meant to be a compliment).
My father John L. Bryan hid with his work and refused to bother most of the time. He generally refused to talk to me. I’m not sure he even knew when my birthday was; he certainly didn’t acknowledge it. He would either be away or simply stand there while Sarah stomped around, hitting, grabbing and threatening. He was vaguely prejudiced as well though it was harder to tell since he rarely spoke and even more rarely spoke about anything but his work. When I did a hypnosis session for study skills Sarah freaked out – started grabbing me and screaming that it was going to damage her “credit rating” and that she was going to “institutionalize” me – a typical sort of threat she liked to fling around about abandoning or hurting me. John just stood there not saying anything, as usual.
Sarah had this odd, trash habit of obsessing over and bragging about her credit cards like it was some accomplishment. She would not shut up about her stupid Bloomingdales credit card (or “Bloomies” as she insisted on calling it). She was too ignorant and shallow to notice that no one cared and she was just making a fool of herself. It was always like she was stuck in a particularly violent, ignorant, bigoted section of 1940 Oklahoma or something since she never read or listened to people or went much of anywhere or did anything but storm around the house, watch TV or play with her sewing machine. She refused to associate with one family because their clothes were too “dirty”; refused to associate with another because they were “too smart” and “not normal”. Not that anyone wanted to be around her or ever invited her anywhere.
Sarah was an unpleasant, insecure, shallow, and violent individual who was raised poorly and who had an enormous grudge against her brother and basically anyone who was halfway educated or kind – not to mention being racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education and learning, the works. Her sisters and mother seem to have been similar. She clearly was unstable, could not control her rages (or maybe used them to manipulate like Joan), selfish, cruel, violent, hysterical (and, yes, the word fits; same for Joan). She would go into panics when she drove, freak out that John’s plane was going to trash or he was going to get into a car accident, was afraid to go downtown because of the “blacks”, locked herself up in her basement room playing with her sewing machine for hours on end before storming out to scream and flip the TV on. Typical for people like that, she also hated animals. A pet, of course, was out of the question. If a cat came into our yard, she would storm outside screeching, throw water at it, and try to kick it.
When my colon almost ruptured after 10 plus years of ulcerative colitis and I had to have an emergency hospitalization Sarah told me not to “bother” her (she was "very busy" - doing absolutely nothing as usual). A few months later when, as a result, I was in the hospital for two weeks having my colon removed she came out for the first week with my dad. She couldn't even bother to talk to me; didn’t even say hi. The only thing she would do was randomly mention some vaguely gay-themed movie she claimed to have seen and then say she didn’t like it (“I saw The Crying Game. I didn’t like it”; “I saw Midnight Cowboy, I didn’t like it”). She had no real friends, hated animals, people, etc. I still have no clue what her anti-animal violence was about.
In short, Sarah was a nasty, bigoted, child abusing piece of trash. She was one of those incompetent lazy nothings who tries to prop up her own ego by stomping around flapping her mouth. The only moderately helpful bit she ever did was smoke herself to death relatively early though, unfortunately, not early enough. Dementia Sarah would have been an even bigger nightmare than nasty non-dementia Sarah.
Sarah Bryan
Joan Bryan
John L. Bryan
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