Brenda Maria Bland

was born on December 15, 1960 in Asheville, North Carolina to Morris and Ruby Buchanan (Nee

Creasman).She spent her early years in rural Suffolk Virginia before relocating to Richmond Virginia as

a teenager. There, she graduated from Highland Springs High School. She later attended J. Sergeant

Reynolds College where she studied business. Brenda worked as a volunteer emergency medical

technician. Later she would have an intermittent career in radio as she spent many years as a

homemaker raising her three children.

A self proclaimed “Country Girl”, Brenda enjoyed the outdoors with a deep regard for the

Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina, her birthplace and ancestral home. She was a talented

artist who spent much of her free time sketching nature scenes and animals. She was also an avid

swimmer who loved the water. She enjoyed cooking, baking, reading, and arts and crafts. She also cowrote

several songs with her husband.

Brenda had an incredible sense of humor and found it in nearly everything she encountered in

life. She was incredibly kind and was constantly helping others. Her husband, her children, and her

grandchildren were her very heart. To them, she was their constant comfort. Her friends were lifelong,

some of which she had since childhood.

If success is measured by the lives we touch and the number of hearts in which we reside, then

Brenda was surely the definition. For, she touched the lives of nearly everyone who knew her and will

reside in many hearts forever. Sadly, a beautiful life has ended but a beautiful soul lives on for eternity.

She is survived by her parents: Morris and Vera Buchanan of Suffolk VA and Larry and Ruby Fisher of

Swannanoa, North Carolina, her husband: Thomas “Graham” Bland. Her three children: Christina

Young of Springfield TN, Marcus Tribble(Patricia) of Springfield TN, and Mary Bland of Madison TN,

her sisters Linda Bowley, Alice Edsall, Angel Fisher, and Kim Mehalko, her brothers: Larry Fisher and

Andrew Rich, her seven grandchildren: Hunter, Courtney, Angel, Maxson, Layla, Blake, and Marilyn

as well as many nieces, nephews, and cherished friends.