Ruby T. Bryant, a Chicago Public Schools teacher and administrator for more than 35 years, never passed up an opportunity for a lesson.
Tollbooth stops, for example, became lessons in arithmetic for young family members. `”The kids had to figure out how many quarters and nickels and dimes they’d need to pay the toll,” said Jacquelyn Heard, Mrs. Bryant’s niece and press secretary to Mayor Richard Daley.
Mrs. Bryant “had a teaching spirit,” said her daughter Gwendolyn Bryant-Smith. “She taught us often, even when we did not want to hear it.”
Mrs. Bryant, 70, died Sunday, Jan. 28, at her River Forest home after a struggle with pancreatic cancer, Heard said.
A Mississippi native who moved to Chicago’s West Side in 1959, Mrs. Bryant was influential in the lives of her students and her extended family, which included Heard, a Chicago Tribune reporter before joining Daley’s staff as a key adviser.
“Very early on it became clear to us that nothing less than excellence would ever be expected,” said Heard, a West Side native. “She taught us that because of where we came from, expectations wouldn’t be very much, so we had to battle against that and exceed what others were accomplishing.”
Over her long career, Mrs. Bryant taught at several schools, spending 12 years at Howland Elementary near Douglas Park and nine years at West Garfield Upper Grade Center, where she was an assistant principal and served for a time as acting principal.
One of her last assignments was overseeing the computer lab at Webster School, where her colleagues included Debra Taylor.
“She had a great rapport with the children,” said Taylor, who still teaches at the West Side school. “She still would call [after her retirement] to ask, `How are the children doing? How’s the school going.'”
Learning was part of everyday life with Mrs. Bryant, who often piled her children and their cousins into the car for trips to local museums and cultural attractions. To hammer home her points on learning and determination, she often used pithy sayings, such as “where there’s a will, there’s an `A,'” Heard said.
Born Ruby Terry, Mrs. Bryant grew up in Vicksburg, Miss., where her father had a couple of trucks he used for everything from hauling wood to driving people to church on Sunday, Bryant-Smith said.
At Alcorn A&M College, now Alcorn State University, Mrs. Bryant married fellow student Ivory Bryant in her freshman year and had two children before graduating with a degree in business education.
The young family moved to Chicago, and Mrs. Bryant and her husband began working as teachers.
Heard said that all her life, she turned to her aunt for advice. Heard’s higher profile in the Daley administration led her aunt to think Heard needed some help.
“She had started to say that I needed my own PR person,” Heard said, laughing. “My job was to market the city. She wanted to sort of market me.”
Besides her husband and daughter, Mrs. Bryant is survived by another daughter, Patricia Allen; a brother, Arthur Terry; a sister, Mary Heard; and three grandchildren.
Visitation is set for 3 to 6 p.m. Friday at Griffin Funeral Home, 3232 S. King Drive, Chicago. Services will be held at 9 a.m. Saturday at Kedvale New Mt. Zion M.B. Church, 1306 S. Kedvale Ave., Chicago.
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ttjensen@tribune.com
