Mrs. Bruce (Dot) Bryant
Cape Fear Garden Club – President 1977-1979
Emeritus Member
Interview and profile completed by Ms. Carole Ellis, 2009-2010. Updated 1/2015
Mrs. Dot Bryant was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1926. Her biological father and mother divorced when she was a small child. When she was eleven (11) her mother married a dentist who was a widower. The family lived with Dot’s grandmother and grandfather in Greensboro in a large townhouse. The grandparents also had a farm on the outside of the city. Dot went to Greensboro High School (now Grimsley High School). Upon graduation, Dot went to nursing school in Wilson, North Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland. Dot notes that nursing school at that time was in a small hospital in Wilson whereby students put their aprons over stripped uniforms and were assigned to patients as soon as they began their studies. In 1945, she met her husband, Bruce Bryant who, according to Dot, was the “most sought after bachelor in Wilson”. In 1946 they were married and Dot, who had become a nurse, continued in her career. In 1955, Mrs. Bryant said “I retired from nursing with the promise to my husband that when he retired I would go back to work”. (She kept that promise later in Wilmington where she worked at New Hanover Memorial Hospital for twenty plus (20) years, working well into her seventies!). In the meantime, she was raising four children and keeping a home which sounded like work to this author!
The Bryant family moved to Wilmington in 1961 not long after the Coastline Railroad offices had moved to Florida. Mr. Bruce Bryant came as a vice-president of National Bank of North Carolina. According to Mrs. Bryant a real estate agent asked her why her family moved to Wilmington as it was “a dead town” at the time. There were a great number of homes up for sale because of the exodus of the Coastline employees.
Shortly after Dot and her family settled in Wilmington, Mrs. Frances Odom asked her to attend a Cape Fear Garden Club meeting. Mrs. Odom said to Dot “you have to belong – there are no ifs, ands, nor buts about it”. Dot became a member in 1970 and participated in garden club activities. She started serving coffee, doughnut holes and cookies to the members before the meeting as a gesture of simple hospitality. At the time she was using Styrofoam cups. This gesture later became the Hospitality Committee and is now an elaborate goodie fest before each monthly meeting with a lovely flower arrangement as well. Mrs. Bryant said that she had been asked before her presidency to become president but she had turned the opportunity down. So in 1977, she took up the reigns of the club and became its president. The president served two (2) years at the time Mrs. Bryant was in charge (1977-1979). She remarked that there were two projects to beautify the community that the club took up during her term. The first was planting shrubs to beautify the front lawn of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. According to Mrs., Bryant, however, it was never maintained and now the design has changed because of the growth, as well as, changes made to the university. The other project was to redo and replant the garden at the Bellamy Mansion. There was an effort to bring the garden back to the way it was when the mansion was in its prime. The garden was completed as it was, but the owner of the house at the time did not like it so it was torn up! Mrs. Bryant still simmers over that misfortune!
Dot is short in statue, but she exudes a large presence. She is a very caring, warm person who has had many wonderful friends in her lifetime. She explained the connection that she had with Mrs. Jane Mitchell (a fellow garden club member now deceased) in her waning days. She helped her friend ease out of this world into the next with gentleness and compassion. Dot’s friendship meant so much to the family that she is still in contact with Mrs. Mitchell’s son. Dot has a wealth of knowledge about numerous people in Wilmington primarily because she is a people person. She said her friend Betsy once told her that “to feel like you belong in Wilmington, you have to do this and that for at least seven years”. Mrs. Bryant has been doing “this and that” for many more years than seven and she definitely belongs in and with contributing Wilmingtonians.
Mrs. Bryant continues to enjoy life in Wilmington. She remains in her home in Wrightsville Beach but travels frequently to visit her children and their families in Florida, South Carolina and New Jersey. Mrs. Bryant still drives, continues to offer a helping hand and thrives on being young at heart. She loves being independent and probably turns down more invitations to visit her children than they would like!