Keith Miller Ryan

Keith Miller Ryan was born in Kiblah, Miller County, Arkansas during the Great Depression. She was the daughter of a preacher and a deeply spiritual woman (Marion Wyatt Glasscock and Oretha Wood Glasscock). She grew up with four brothers and a sister. As a girl she sang gospel tunes on her father’s radio show out of Texarkana, and at tent revivals all over Southwest Arkansas. She had a half-brother and three half-sisters in her father’s second family.

She lived in Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky over her 89-year life-span. She traveled the United States. She even once spent 2 weeks in England. For a few years at the end of the 1940s Keith worked as a nurse at the State Tuberculosis Sanitorium at Boonville, Arkansas. She married Thomas Martin Ryan of Magazine, Arkansas in December 1950. The year 2002 brought the disappointment of widowhood that would last for 17 long years. Over the years of her life she was privileged to humbly ride the crest of good fortune, and to courageously endure the grinding weight of ill-fortune.

In her lifetime she bore two sons and raised two sons and two grandsons. She is survived by her sons (Thomas Martin and Bruce Dean), four grandsons (Sean Brennan, Thomas Martin, Joseph Brendan and Dylan Scott), one granddaughter (Dena Nicole) and one great-granddaughter (Addison Mae)—all with the last name Ryan. She is survived by four sisters (Patsy, Shirley Ann, Bonnie and Janet) and two first cousins in her parents’ family (Betty Jo and Joy Rae), and by three sisters-in-law in her late husband’s family (Marilyn, Julia and Glenna). She loved all of them. In her last years she still dreamed of traveling to visit them, although her health did not permit traveling for the past five years.

She was a member of First Baptist Church since the 1990s. She was known for her faith that never waned, for her generosity and for her willingness to be a servant to others. She was known for her delicious cooking, her decorating style, her solid practicality and her dreams, her fastidious housekeeping, and the respect she held for other people. She was known for her beauty, which never faded. Her last spoken words were a prayer for God’s grace and help.

If you knew her, you will miss her. But you will still see and meet her in the lives of her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. We hope, pray and believe that she is dancing with the angels and reunited with her beloved husband, and parents, departed brothers, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law and all those who loved her and were loved by her when she was a girl in Miller County, Arkansas long ago