Bryan Stuff

This is my life.

• 1954 Life as I know it began when I graduated from Limestone Community High School located in Bartonville, Illinois. I was a part of the very first graduating class.
• 1954 My first full time job was at the Burchett Portrait Studios in downtown Peoria. I started mixing chemicals for film developing (you do remember film?), learned film lab jobs, was taught some portrait skills, went on to shooting weddings and portraits and ended up doing all sorts of film related jobs.
• 1955 I met Patsy Louise Swise working at the East Peoria Steak-n-Shake, as a "curbie". Pat waited on me much of the time and we began ‘running around’ together.
• 1957 After three years of shooting free lance jobs for the Peoria Journal and WEEK-TV and working for Burchett Studios, I was hired at WEEK-TV as a full time news photographer, my life’s ambition.
• 1958 Pat and I were married at Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria.
• 1959 Our first child, James Edward, was born. Late in 1959 I moved from WEEK-TV to WMBD-TV when they first went on the air, again as a news photographer.
• 1960 Gerald Wayne was born in Peoria
• 1961 I was hired by KYW-TV, Westinghouse Broadcasting in Cleveland, Ohio, a major step up for my career.
• 1961 Michael Leroy was born in Peoria, Il.
• 1962 Patricia Carol was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1965 September, KYW was taken over by NBC as an owned and operated network station and was renamed WKYC-TV. As an NBC O&O we began shooting news stories for the various network news broadcasts. I remained here until 1990, one of three network news crews until about 1985.
• 1968 William Jay was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
• 1990 I ran for the elected position of Secretary-Treasurer of NABET (National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians), the International Union I had to join under NBC. When I won this full time job, I "retired" from NBC on December 1, 1990.
• 1990-1998 I was re-elected as the Secy-Treas for NABET-CWA, the old NABET as we merged with the CWA (Communications Workers of America). In 1998 I did not run for a third term and spent the next two year at various jobs within the union.
• 2000 I "retired" from NABET-CWA in September of 2000. In July of that year, Pat and I moved back to Peoria where it all began.
• 2001 Pat was diagnosed with cancer. Treatments began immediately.
• 2002 Pat’s cancer continued to run up and down, sometimes getting better then getting worse. Pat always seemed to be having "the time of her life" as she enjoyed every minute of life when she was able.
• 2003 The cancer was found to have traveled to Pat’s brain as a large tumor early in 2003. Pat had held up really good from the diagnosis up to the brain invasion. Patsy Louise (Swise) Bryan passed away on May 21, 2003 in the early hours, at home, as she had hoped. Life changed drastically on this date.
• 2003 Current life has moved on. It’s lonely without my partner and friend after 45 years of marriage. But with the family I still have, our five kids, all the grandkids, my brother and sister, Pat’s very large family and the many friends, the loneliness has taken a back seat. I still, and always will, miss Patsy but as they say -

• Life Goes On - and I’ll go on with it.
• Good Bye Patsy. We all love and miss you!!

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posted by Bill Bryan @ 1:28 PM