Naomi Louise Bryant
May 5, 1927 ~ October 26, 2021

Naomi Bryant went to live in Heaven on Tuesday, October 26, 2021 at the age of 94. Naomi was born on May 5, 1927 to a coal miner and a teacher in Pennsylvania. Naomi lived her life, her way. She was strength and wisdom. She loved you forever, whether you deserved it or not. Her childhood, as she'd tell you, was hard, but happy. She went to school in a one room school. She'd talk about the snow she'd travel through to get there and how she'd ride on her dad's shoulders. She had 4 brothers and a sister, but she was the youngest, by several years. They lived in the country, so many of her activities were solitary. She loved listening to "her stories" on the weekly radio shows. She married young, and so never graduated from high school. She lived happily with Charlie Knouse and they started a family very soon. She had her first child at 16 with Deborah and a year later they had Karen. They were a happy old-fashioned family, where mom stayed at home and did the mom things; cooking, baking, housekeeping … this was when everything was hard and all done by hand. She'd talk about handwringing the laundry and how they were the first to buy a washing machine with an agitator and a hand wring built in. At 17, she lost her mother, Edith Shank, a mother who had been bed-ridden most of Naomi's life. Charlie died suddenly in 1960 while undergoing a medical procedure. She was in her mid-30s and Deb and Karen were barely teenagers. She was left alone to raise them and carry-on. She met and married Ray in late 1960. It was a whirlwind romance because Ray was in the military and being shipped to Germany. So she took off on an adventure to Germany with the girls and soon after they had a baby, Schawtz. Then, after returning to the states and to Ray's home in Oklahoma, they had Mark. Her father, Joshua Shank, died shortly after the birth of Schawtz, in 1961. Life for Naomi and Ray were going well, until Ray's heart-attack in 1971. They had just moved from California to Nebraska. He had a lengthy illness with multiple hospital stays. He died before Christmas in 1973; Schawtz was 11 and Mark 10. She was once again the care-giver for young children. Naomi loved with strength. She managed to live a happy and fulfilled life, in spite of the many trials she survived. She lost Karen over 20 years ago, which she said was a pain like no other. Her brothers and her sister, all passed before her. Any who knew her, knew she was a strong woman. She was small, but you didn't see her smallness, only her toughness. She lived life fully, but always on her terms ... to the very end. She will be greatly missed by her surviving children; Deborah, Schawtz and Mark; by her grandchildren: Teresa, Michael, Kelly, Christopher, Joshua and Breanna; her 9 great-grandchildren and many great-great-grandchildren.