John L. Bryan

Sign the Petition at change.org to rename the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship, University of Maryland,

Department of Fire Protection Engineering

Thank You

https://www.change.org/NoChildAbuse 

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Dr. John L. Bryan served as Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering beginning with the establishment of the Department in 1956 until his retirement from the University of Maryland in 1993. https://fpe.umd.edu/JLBChair 

My father, John L. Bryan, was apparently good at his job and respected in it. Fine. In 1997 he set up the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship after his wife, my mother Sarah Bryan died from lung cancer – big surprise – after a quarter century of smoking. I knew about the scholarship at the time, though no one asked me about it or bothered to show me the materials they had prepared. When I later found them, I saw that they present Sarah as an enlightened humanitarian, “a generation ahead of her time”, a “role model, supporter, and friend" for her children and rope me in as a character reference and supposed example of her wondrous character and qualities.

This is bullshit.

Sarah was a bigot and a child abuser – not to mention ludicrously incompetent, lazy and willfully ignorant. She was violent, selfish and consumed by petty insecurities and grudges most of which she aimed straight in my direction.

John could not be bothered to do much of anything about it or even pay much attention. Such is life. It wasn’t his thing. He had his routines and fire interest and did not really want to be bothered with anything else. Which is fine, even laudable, but don’t have children and especially not with someone like Sarah.

If one is honest, John was hardly free of several of Sarah’s bigotries himself. The vocal, late life nativist and pseudo-eugenicist/racist rudeness made keeping house cleaners and lawn keepers understandably and rightfully difficult, but he was usually more subtle about it and it was a tranche of Americana hardly unique to John and Sarah. But, still, welcome to the Wonderful World of Sarah. An always pleasant afternoon.

Sarah was what she was and made zero effort to be anything else. So be it. If folks are into that, go for it. But don’t lie about it and don’t make up some dishonest, boilerplate fiction that pretends otherwise.

John can be noted or not for the fire bits as anyone sees fit. Whatever it’s worth. That’s what he was into. But don’t pretend the other parts didn’t exist or were other than they were. And certainly don’t pretend to use me as a Sarah character reference or expect the story to remain uncorrected.