Published: July 20, 2009 09:24 pm      

Ex-Burnside councilor Bryant dead at 82

BURNSIDE, Ky. — Conard Bryant, a fixture in Burnside politics for more than a decade, has passed away. He was 82.

Bryant was elected to the Burnside City Council in 1994, and served until 2007. He decided not to run for re-election in 2006 because of health concerns.

Bryant also made a bid for mayor in 1998. Along with Burnside merchant Pat Jones, Bryant was defeated by incumbent Richard Sadler.

It wasn’t for lack of ability to balance the books that Bryant fell short. Everyone who remembers Bryant notes his acumen for numbers and calculations. He worked for 35 years in cost accounting with the Clorox Company, parent company of Kingsford Charcoal, which operates a plant in the Burnside area. He retired in 1992, at which time he moved back to Burnside, having resided in the Oakland, Calif., and Louisville areas.

“He was a very conscientious councilor,” said Jim Rasnick, who served as both mayor and a fellow councilor alongside Bryant. “With his (professional) background, he brought a financial twist to the city council. He was a very dedicated councilor.”

One of five children born to Lonnie and Thelma Bryant, young Conard graduated from Burnside High School in 1944, where he played on the Burnside Generals basketball squad, and soon after joined the U.S. Merchant Marines around the time of the Pearl Harbor bombings. After that, he worked in security with the Seven Gables motel and then for Clorox, which eventually moved him out to California.

“He served for quite a bit with the main office for Clorox. ... They liked the way he did things,” said Bro. Dudley Bryant, his brother and a local minister. “They had him doing quite a bit of inventory.”

Conard Bryant also worked for the Kingsford company as a consultant, said Dudley Bryant.

It was during one of the most controversial periods in recent Burnside history that Conard Bryant served on the city’s governing body, as the 2004 restaurant referendum brought alcohol sales by the drink to an otherwise dry county. This was something Bryant was adamantly opposed to and fought against — successfully in 2001, unsuccessfully three years later.

“He was very firm against going ‘wet,’” said Dudley Bryant. “Like a lot of us, he was pretty well hurt about it.”

Conard Bryant’s children, Shelba Jones and Martin Bryant, recall their father as being very community oriented, taking time to help with the upkeep of cemetery property within Burnside and being active with the Boy Scouts organization. His hobbies were hunting, fishing, gardening, and saving money — because, as Jones noted, “he was very frugal and resourceful. ... He never threw anything away, because you could use it again.”

Adds Jones, “He was the best dad ever. ... He was truly concerned about the welfare of citizens in Burnside and truly had their interests at heart. He was very giving.”

Read the death notice for Conard Bryant on page A3 and look for a full obituary in an upcoming edition of the Commonwealth Journal.