Berniece Rabe Tryand

Berniece Louise Bagby Rabe Tryand passed away in her sleep the morning of December 28, 2013 at the age of 85. She is survived by her husband James Tryand of Plano, Texas. She and Jim were married August 15, 2009 in Plano, Texas and were members of the Plano 3rd Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was married for 59 years to her first husband Walter Henry Rabe, who passed away in 2005. She is survived by her three sons Alan, Brian, and Clay Rabe and her daughter Dara Rabe Sandland. She has 10 grandchildren (Rochelle Chandler, Justin, Chad and Collin Rabe; Jeremy Rabe, Becca Fire, Chrissy Barry and Josh Rabe; Trent and Weston Sandland). Berniece also has 14 great-grandchildren. She was born January 11, 1928 to Grover Cleveland Bagby and Ethelinda Martha Jane Green. She had 12 siblings, but is survived only by her brother Carl Bagby and her half- sister Christine Bufford. She grew up near Parma Missouri, in a large sharecropper family of modest means, working in the fields chopping cotton and ended up eventually getting a Master of Fine Arts degree and publishing 14 books. Though her books won many literary awards, including a Golden Kite award and a finalist for the Newberry Award, she most treasured her role as a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
Berniece and Walter Rabe were married July 30, 1946, and converted to the Mormon faith two years later. They were baptized on September 4, 1948, in the chilly water of Chicago's Lake Michigan. They were first members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Elgin, Illinois - organizing the first congregation and helping to build the chapel in that city. Berniece remained a stalwart member of the church and a faithful follower of Christ. Hundreds now trace their legacy in the church to her conversion.
A memorial service for friends and family will be held at 11:30am Tuesday December 31, at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2700 Roundrock Trail, Plano, TX 75075. She will be buried on Thursday in the Dallas - Ft. Worth National Cemetery with Walter Rabe.

An excerpt from Berniece's autobiography, published in 1990, follows:
"My teachers all said I should go to college, but at sixteen the law said no more school was required. Since I had overloaded on subjects all along just in case my education should get cut short, at sixteen I had all the credits the state of Missouri required for graduation, save a quarter credit in physical education. Broseley High School refused me a diploma without that quarter credit, but one teacher told me that Chicago University would take me with my credits, diploma or no. So I set off with a friend, to go to college in Chicago, in spite of the fact that I was totally broke.
City life held all sorts of surprises and things to learn. Being a waitress was really a fine job, for it not only brought immediate money from tips but provided food as well. I called the University of Chicago and asked the cost of tuition. I laid the phone down easily, without even saying good-bye or thank you. I didn't ask about a scholarship, for I didn't know such existed.
Before I turned seventeen I got work as a professional model. A year later, during World War II, I was sent to Panama to model a line of fashions and there I met my husband, Walter Rabe. He was in the army. He seemed so refreshing to me, not giving me any of the smooth lines men usually handed models. I could tell he really liked me. Above all else, I needed to be safe, loved, and feel I belonged. I wanted to start a home. He was a country boy, tall and good-looking, and bright! In fact, he was so bright I felt stupid. I did not realize there were different kinds of intelligence. I leaned towards concepts, but his was memory of things and statistics, almost a photographic memory.
When I was eighteen and Walter was twenty-two, we were married by a justice of the peace in Chicago. It was a small unattended wedding because, just three months earlier, Walter's mother, along with two nephews, and a niece (all his age and childhood playmates), were killed when a train struck their car. Walt was thrown clear and survived the accident. The remaining family members disapproved of our marriage. It was too short a time since the deaths and they didn't think I could cut it as a housewife. (Echoes of my stepmother, who said, "You'll never hold a man six months!" Though that was because I peeled such thick potato peelings.) How surprised his family was to discover that I, too, was a country girl and could stretch pennies and cook and sew. They learned to like me and I them.
My modeling career ended when I had my first child, Alan, born December 19, 1947. Brian was born April 2, 1950. Clay on February 24, 1953. And, almost twelve years later, a daughter Dara was born August 27, 1964. For those seventeen years I kept busy being a housewife and homebuilder and decorator. I do mean homebuilder. My husband and I built two houses with our own hands. We had occasional help from friends or family, or hired help on a really big job like pouring concrete for the basement floor. One house we sold, the other we lived in for twenty-three years. It was modernistic in design, fitting the trend I was most comfortable with during those years. Also during those years, I got my college degree from Elgin Community College and National College near Chicago, one course at a time. I loved college. It was a way to make up for the lack in education during my childhood and gave me interests and friends outside the home. I got my B.S. degree in 1963, taught a class of special children for seven months before I became pregnant with my daughter.
My husband looked at me one day and said, "You were always a lot happier when you were out doing things. I think you need to get out of the house and do something interesting. Take a course at the community college. Something just for fun.'' Then he opened the college brochure and, scanning it, declared, "Here's a course in creative writing. Take that. I think you're creative.''
Having no particular objections and a mild curiosity about writers, I thought, why not? But I could not have anticipated the instructor, Marjorie Peters, who'd been a journalist during the war. Nor the influence her assignment would have on me. She insisted we all bring in a manuscript the following meeting and I went up to her and truthfully declared, "I don't know what to write about."
She pushed down her little wire spectacles to the end of her nose, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Well, why don't you write about a fight? That's always good copy." So home I went to stew and worry. What fight? I couldn't invade the privacy of people by reporting their fights! Especially not my own. But desperation always produces, and the night before the manuscript was due, inspiration hit. I saw, in my mind's eye, this great, long farm table with all my brothers and sisters seated around it. Standing at the end of that table was my stepbrother, shouting, "I hate cabbage. I will not eat cabbage! It makes me puke!"
Actually, that's all I remembered, but it was enough to set my imagination working. I zoomed downstairs to my ancient typewriter, a twenty-two-year-old Royal, and began to type. What did it matter that I was the world's worst speller? What did it matter that my grammar and punctuation were poor? (Even a math teacher threatened to flunk me if I didn't learn to use better grammar.) I had a story to tell! And I had a ball doing it. However, my feet grew cold as I neared the college with manuscript in hand. What would people think of me writing this absurd, earthy little farm story? Never again could I fake sophistication. Courage was with me and I handed it in and Ms. Peters read it in front of the class.
When she finished she pushed those spectacles down on the end of her nose once more and announced to the class, "Now, you've heard an author. Where's the rest of the book?"
So I wrote the rest of the book - Rass - and that's how I became an author. A fluke! I was forty years old when my life took this big turn.
In 1972, my oldest son got married and soon I became a grandmother. Little Rochelle, that dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, was born with spina bifida. We were soon were captured by her personality and all the many things she could do. She began reading at an early age and her mother, Carmen, who supplied her with books, lamented the fact that handicapped children were usually portrayed in the books as poor little crippled children or the story was about a miracle: and now the child can walk! Neither applied to our Rochelle.
Carmen asked me, "Will you write a book for her? One where a handicapped child just happens to be the main character, too. You're an author. You can do it."
I let Carmen pressure me into action and the result was The Balancing Girl. That became such a success, my other grandchildren, later on, started demanding their books. And I was forced into writing Margaret's Moves, which has a lot of Justin in it. And next A Smooth Move, which tells things Chad's way. Then Rehearsal for the Bigtime, which lets the world have a peak at Rebecca.
The year I was doing my master's thesis at Columbia College, I also finished a novel I'd been working on for some time. Editor Frank Sloan heard of it and asked to see the manuscript of Tall Enough to Own the World. It's about a good boy, a fifth grader, who does a lot of acting-out because he is too different to be happy; he can't read, I feel it is one of the biggest tragedies in this world that any child be denied the joy of reading. My grandson Jeremy said this special book on reading would be his book. It didn't matter that it was not about him. He's a fine reader and approves such a book.
I've lived in two very different cultures and very different books come out of them. The material determines my style. Some people find it difficult to imagine the same woman who wrote Naomi also wrote Where's Chimpy? There's no mystery to it, I'm simply a diverse woman. My husband says there's never a dull moment. He's never known what to expect next from me."