Halloween 1976

My own kids and the monster outside the door


It's become a family tradition. Filling up bags of leaves and dressing them in clothes. Topping it all off with a horrible mask. Then posting the monster in just the right place to make passers by look twice.

We've posted ours by the door.





Dad posted his on the fire escape ladder of our Guilford Connecticut saltbox. It would cling there between the 2nd and 3rd floor for several weeks not far enough from Lansing's window.
Clearly Dad was more interested in this kind of mischievousness than carving pumpkins as he stated in a letter to Lansing in 1976:


I had to go draw a face on Amanda's pumpkin. Then I had to clean out Amanda's pumpkin. Then I had to carve the face on Amanda's pumpkin. How come it's AMANDA's pumpkin and not MINE I'd like to know?



Then, of course, Saint wanted me to carve his. I told him he was goddam well old enough to carve his own pumpkin and the only way a father gets practice enough to carve a 6-year old daughter's pumpkin is by spending 40 goddam years carving them!



<---Saint at about 12
and old enough to carve his own goddam pumpkins

Amanda at about 6 years old (ABOVE)

I think Dad tried to make things sound just a bit less rosy than they were. He didn't want Lansing, who was living with our mother, to feel like she was missing out.

Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind 1995

For five days in June of 1992, on the campus of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a "mixed and motley crew" of scientists and skeptics, UFOlogists and psychologists met to discuss UFOs and alien abductions.
The New Yorker sent Dad to write a tongue-in-cheek piece about the conference.
There was only one problem.
Dad found the people he met, even those who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, to be credible. If they weren't abducted, then something sure as hell had happened to them. And whatever the answer is, it's pretty scary stuff.
So what happened? It's all part of one of the most fascinating mysteries of our time and it led to his 1995 book Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.





As part of a cross country promotional tour for the book, Dad stopped by Tom Snyder's talk show.
It's a great interview topped, in my opinion, by this exchange about five minutes in:


Snyder: Wouldn't you think (an encounter a sighting or an abduction) might have happened to one of the thousands of people who have served in Congress?...
Like if John Major went to Parliament and says "By the way I got picked up by a UFO last night." Now we'd say " We can trust him!".

CDB: What makes you think this hasn't happened to these people? Would you, if you were John Major and had been abducted, would you come forward?






Dad never did come up with an answer beyond "something must be going on " but my grandfather had no doubts. As an advisor to NATO , special assistant to Secretary of the Air Force and board member of The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon (NICAP), Colonel J Bryan lll said "These UFOs are interplanetary devices systematically observing earth, either manned or under remote control, or both."



Dad interviewed in San Francisco



Outside Guilford's "UFO House"



"Interviewing" a small grey

My Eulogy for Dad February 6, 2010

And so he is gone. Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan.

He wore bow ties, custom shirts, a handkerchief sprouting up from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket. In another time he'd be called a dandy! Fitting because he was his father's son...a man known in some circles as The Duke of Richmond.

At my grandfather's service, Dad gave the eulogy. It wasn't all praise. He called Grandpa Joe "a difficult demanding man ...utterly true to himself and his code of honor".


When, as a teenager, I failed to write a thank you letter to my grandfather within two weeks of receiving a Christmas present, J Bryan 3 wrote Dad a snarler: "You can assure (Saint) from your own experience that I have a very short fuse in the presence of bad behavior, and that the fall-out from the explosion can be lethal".

My dad could snarl as well. Genetics and upbringing are such powerful forces! On those long rides back from boarding school, it seemed as though 14 generations of disappointed Bryans joined us in the car.

"You are just too goddam easy on yourself, buckle too quickly under the slightest pressure. My God, Saint it's tough being a man on this planet and you've got to toughen yourself up...you cannot continue to float".

Every drive was the same. I'd wind up with tears streaming down my cheeks. ..and Dad would always conclude these lectures with "My God, I sound just like my father". That was my cue that the lecture was ending.

There were many lectures growing up. "Anticipate the Consequences" was the one we probably heard the most. It is a sad irony that shortly after he realized how much he sounded like his own father, he would light up a cigarette.

My sisters and I like to remember the soundtracks to our childhood. The Beatles Rubber Soul. Harry Nilsson's The Point. Paul Simon and Carly Simon. Songs in the Key of Life.


But there's another soundtrack: the tap-tap-tapping of Dad's typewriter. We're lucky. When we want to visit with Dad we have his words in Friendly Fire, P.S. Wilkinson, The National Geographic Society book and the Air and Space Museum book. We can find them in articles he wrote for Esquire, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Book Review. I can even hear his voice for three hours on tape reading his alien abduction book, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.

In his work, Dad sought out the truth. Even in his fiction, he was trying to understand and explain himself and his relationships. Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes. Despite those scenes, all of his ex-wives were his friends.

And in Mairi he found a soul mate. If love could have saved him, Mairi, he would not have died.


Dad's first battle with cancer was nearly 15 years ago. And it scared the hell out of him. He was moved to tears by everyone's concern.

His writing life soon came to an end.

He was always a gentleman but he became a much more gentle man.

His kids and grandchildren basked in his smile...so full of affection...such a true smile even with false teeth.



Dad became "the dear old man".
And when I finally got married he was my best man.

He was also his toughest critic as a father.
I said he was fine.

The Bryan males are notoriously slow to mature I'd tell him. We all need a swift kick in the pants now and then.

My own son is refusing to turn 5. He says 4 is his favorite number. 5 is the age of big boys who go to Kindergarten. He likes being a medium sized boy.

I can imagine the lectures I'll be giving over the coming years.



Dad loved Guilford,
this church,
movies where things got blown up
or famous beauties disrobed,
pets he named Magoo, Thud, Wretched and of course Odette.
Coffee at first at Hull's and then Cilantro,
watching football with friends,
dinner at The Stone House and The Place,
a good pulp-y thriller,
well-mannered grandchildren in 15 minute increments,
being called a distinguished author,
and of course a vodka martini.
I do believe he's up there right now hunting through God's freezer...and because he's in heaven I'm sure it's packed with Grey Goose.



And he loved you. His family, his friends, his neighbors, his fellow First Congregationalists. He'd be so pleased to see such a fuss!

Until his first bout with cancer-- he wasn't so sure there would be a fuss. And then he felt this wave of affection from so many of you. He wrote an essay for the Yale Class of 58's 40th Reunion. He called it In Praise of Cancer and I want to finish up by reading the last few lines.

My praise for cancer lies in the gift it gave me: the gift of knowing I was loved.

To be loved meant I was forgiven for having done all those things I ought not to have done--and we don't get to be our age without having done plenty of those.

My cancer is not cured. It is , as they say, in remission.

I can live with that.

But I would have hated to die without ever knowing that somewhere, by someone, I would be missed.

Look around Dad. You are missed!

Anticipation 1972

In a letter to Peter and Mimi Neill November 14, 1972

Months and month ago you gave Sam and me a Carly Simon album called Anticipation. For some reason I have been playing it over and over again these past two weeks and even went so far as to get the tape for the truck, It absolutely fills me with pleasure.

Carly Simon. Paul Simon. The Beatles. Harry Nilsson's The Point. Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. They contributed to the soundtrack of our childhood just as much as the tap tap tapping of Dad's typewriter.

Correspondence with Carol Burnett February 9,1979

On the night of my Dad's 43rd birthday an estimated 64 million people tuned in to ABC to see the movie "Friendly Fire". Almost every other TV set in the nation was tuned to FF. The movie would go on to win four Emmys (including Outstanding Drama) and a Peabody Award. There were plenty of people wondering whether TV's favorite comedienne could play Peg Mullen, an Iowa mother trying to find out how her son died in Vietnam, but Carol Burnett impressed critics and was nominated for an Emmy.It seems her favorite review came from the man who spent six years writing Friendly Fire.
Here are two letters dated February of 1979.
The first from Dad. The second from Carol Burnett.

Dear Miss Burnett:

Last Friday Brandon Stoddard screened "Friendly Fire" for me at ABC in New York. It's been a week now and I'm still at a loss of how adequately to express my gratitude and appreciation to you for your superb portrayal of Peg Mullen. You did things on that screen with your eyes, the set of your jaw, with your posture, your sudden stillness and very absence of action that duplicated exactly all those same warning signs I would see in Peg the instant before she would say or do something that would me swallow hard of want to duck and reach for a yellow pad.

As you can imagine I found "Friendly Fire" at time almost unbearably difficult to watch. In the scene near the end where Sam Waterston says my "Look, I don't know if this is the proper time or not " line about telling the Mullens all I had learned about how Michael had died, the look you gave Sam was the look I got.


The inevitable death of that sweet-faced you actor who plays Michael is going to devastate the television audience. Now, thanks to you, all of Peg's rage and anguish and frustration will become understood. I hope you won't think it presumptuous of me to say you should be very proud of yourself--certainly you have made me very proud of me.

Dear Courty
I can honestly say I've never been more thrilled by any letter I've ever received.

I knew Brandon was going to show you the film and I was pretty nervous. I experienced the Mullens' story for a brief period--you lived it a lifetime.

I'm so proud to be a part of this remarkable film. I was overwhelmed by your book. The love and backbreaking work you undertook were astonishing to me.
My God what you all went through to get at the truth, all of us would do well to have a friend such as you.

I'm hoping...to be back in California when "Friendly Fire" airs. It's so special to me that I want to be home and watch it with my family.

With love,
Carol

P.S. I'm framing your letter






Carol Burnett and my father finally met the Wednesday before Friendly Fire aired.
Dad writes:

She was marvelous and funny and relaxed an quite lovely and she ...rushed up to me, threw her around me gave me a huge kiss and I was a bit shy, a bit dazzled, a bit pleased. We all went together to the bar of the Watergate Hotel and drank and yakked and laughed and got very serious for several hours.



I plan on writing more about the writing of "Friendly Fire" which seemed to take up the better part of our childhoods. Dad agonized over this book which was, of course, about more than Peg Mullen and the incident that killed her son. It was about the soldiers who fought beside Michael Mullen. It was about a colonel named Norman Schwarzkopf. It was about our country and its ideals. I'd also like to revisit the making of the movie some time and include the role one of Dad's very best friends, Brandon Stoddard, had in producing the film.



As sad as the subject matter may be, for my sister and me, the film offers one bit of fun trivia. There's a scene where Waterston pulls up to his house in Connecticut and two children run out to meet his Volkswagen bus. Those children were playing us.

A two minute preview of Friendly Fire can be seen here





http://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Fire/dp/B002W7EPZ0/ref=pd_vodsm_B002W7EPZ0

You can also see a clip at 3:23-4:01 in this "TV Annual 1978-79" special.

The Little Orphan Coyote

Lansing Becket Bryan

Box 2

My sister Lansing was 8 and a half years old when she began writing poetry and short stories for school. Dad was impressed enough with her work that he shared them with friends.
I want to take this moment to share with Lansing and my readers the pride Dad felt about her creativity:

From two letters to Peter Neill

January 11, 1973

The children are due home from school in any minute. Lansing wrote the most beautiful poem yesterday Not just paternal pride, either. It was quite dazzling complete with repeated last line.


February 28, 1973

I will close with a short story written by Lansing. The only help I gave her was making sure when she wrote "he" we knew who "he" was:

The Little Orphan Coyote

Once there was a beautiful, beautiful mountain and there was a coyote. He was a month old and his mother had died at 23 and his father at 28. One day the sun came out and the mountain looked just beautiful when the sun came out. So the orphan coyote went out hunting some mice. He was too young to hunt deer and big things. After he hunted down the mice he ate them and he went and took exercise with his friend. And then he asked his friend if he could live with him, And his friend said he would have to check with his mother and father. So he did. And his mother and father said No. But at night his friend packed his suitcase, his toothpaste and all the things he needed and went to live with his little orphan coyote friend. And they were never lonely again.

I never did find that poem, but you can see what I mean about her ability to write. It's very exciting."

"Something's Gone Wrong" January 28,1986

Box 4


On the January morning in 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke up just 73 seconds into its flight, I was living in New Orleans, trying to figure out what to do with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Tulane University. Dad and my 13 year old stepbrother, Derek, were in Florida watching as special guests at the Johnson Space Center.
Dad described what happened in an article for The New York Times Magazine called "A Lesson in Tragedy":


Ribbons of white smoke like party streamers fell slowly-quite beautifully, really, toward the ocean. Despite the calm voice of launch control we sensed something unsettling had happened, but we didn't know what. A woman in front of Derek suddenly began saying "Oh, no! Oh, no!"
"What's happening?" Derek asked me.
"I don't know, " I said. "Something's gone wrong."
He looked at me, wanting to look back at the sky, but wanting to see my expression when I answered...We were looking at the hole in the sky where Challenger should have been...


Derek standing by a Saturn 5 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center




I left Derek for a moment to retrieve my tape recorder, which I had placed on the ground near one of the speakers. As I hurried back to him I knew that, just as I would never forget the horned, demonic twin reaches of smoke in the sky, I would not forget the image of this boy for whom I care so deeply gallantly standing there waiting for me with his shoulders hunched up to ward off the terrible, deepening chill.

Col. Ellison Onizuka

Dad and Derek were special guests of astronaut Ellison Onizuka. Seven years earlier, after a radio show in San Francisco, Dad struck up a friendship with Onizuka. The astronaut wrote Derek a letter and sent signed photographs.
Out of the blue Dad received an invitation from Onizuka to attend the Challenger launch. Why?

"Because you're a friend" he said. "I thought about you often, and when I flew over Connecticut once, I wondered how you were doing. So when it came time to make up an invitation list, I said 'By God, I'm going to send him one.'"


Of course the disaster was both historic and traumatic for everyone who witnessed the disintegration of the Challenger.

"I guess I realize now those machines aren't foolproof." (Derek) paused for a moment , then added, "But Colonel Onizuka must have know that, too."


Derek and Jonah the cat a month after the Challenger disaster
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