Service to remember Bryants

A memorial service will be held next Saturday for John and Irene Bryant, months after the couple from Horse Shoe disappeared in Pisgah National Forest.

Andi Edwards said she may attend. Irene Bryant used to hang her handmade quilts in Edwards’ shop, Material Things.

“Most people who knew her only knew her to say hello,” Edwards said of Irene Bryant. “She was a nice person, but more of a family person, I think.”

The memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. Saturday, March 29, at Thomas Shepherd & Son’s Church Street Chapel.

Authorities in Transylvania County discovered the body of Mrs. Bryant, 84, on Nov. 9 in the Pink Beds area of Pisgah National Forest where she and her husband had gone missing almost three weeks earlier.

Mr. Bryant, 81, remained missing until Feb. 3 when his skeletal remains were discovered in an illegal dump in the Nantahala National Forest in Macon County.

Transylvania County Sheriff David Mahoney said on Feb. 4 that investigators believe the Bryants were killed by Gary Michael Hilton.

“He’s the man. We’ve got a good case,” Mahoney said.

Hilton, a 61-year-old drifter, pleaded guilty Jan. 31 to the bludgeoning death of Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old hiker in the North Georgia mountains. Hilton has not yet been officially charged in the Bryants’ deaths.

Hilton was charged late last month in Tallahassee, Fla., with one count of murder, one count of kidnapping and two counts of grand theft in the death of Cheryl Hodges Dunlap.

The body of the nurse and Sunday school teacher was found in Florida’s Apalachicola National Forest on Dec. 15.

Irene Bryant

Irene Bryant was an avid gardener, quilter, gourmet cook, traveler and hiker.

She grew up in Oregon and completed high school there. She earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Washington State College and was a practicing veterinarian in Missoula, Mont., when she met John Bryant. John and Irene married in a chapel in Whitefish, Mont., on July 9, 1949. Irene was the first generation of her family to earn a college degree and one of the first women to practice veterinary medicine in Montana.

John “Jack” Bryant

John Bryant was born Oct. 29, 1926, in Princeton, Ill. He grew up in Ft. Collins, Colo. At age 17, he enlisted in the Navy under the V-12 program and went to Northwestern University, earning both a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a naval commission in 1946.

Mr. Bryant left active Navy duty in 1947 and the Naval reserves in 1964. He worked in India for a year before joining the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1948 on the Hungry Horse Hydroelectric project in Montana.

Mr. Bryant earned a Doctor of Law degree from Cornell University in 1961. He and his family settled in Skaneateles, N.Y., where John entered into private practice.

He was the town attorney for Skaneateles for almost 30 years. During the 1980s, John Bryant end-to-end hiked the 2,145-mile Appalachian Trail.

He and Mrs. Bryant retired to Hendersonville in 1991.