Edna Bryant Phelan

Edna Dorothea Bryant Phelan Edna was born in Brooklyn on September 7, 1920 to Dorothea Emma Miller and William Cullen Bryant. She lived there until age six when the depression forced the family to relocate to Greenville, NY. When she was fifteen, the family moved back to the Nyack, NY area. Edna attended Nyack High School where she met her future husband, Richard Phelan. Her prowess on the basketball court earned her the nickname, “Ginger.” Shortly after graduating, she was hired in the accounting department at Lederle Laboratories and began a serious courtship with her future spouse. They were married on April 26, 1941 in the Grace Episcopal Church in Nyack. Edna left Lederle to follow her husband around the country when he enlisted in the Army Air Force. While at the College Training Facility in North Carolina, she announced to her spouse that she wanted a baby. “If you are going to go off and get yourself killed, I want someone to remember you by!” The child, a boy, was born in December of 1944. When the war ended in 1945, they returned to Nyack and resided on Elysian Avenue. Because her husband was raised Catholic, she then converted to Catholicism and they were remarried in St. Anns Church in Nyack. Here she would count the collections every Monday morning for the next twenty years. Edna returned to Lederle and worked briefly until their second child was born. She spent the next twenty years as a housewife and mother. At the end of that time, she was offered and accepted a job in the Nyack Savings and Loan. When she left the bank, she worked briefly with office temps from where she was offered and accepted a position with Presidential Life. Both she and her husband retired in 1987. During their sixties, they traveled extensively including three trips to Europe and seventeen trips to Hawaii where their daughter Linda lived. Both Edna and Richard were long standing members of Nanuet II Senior Citizen Club. Edna is preceded in death by her son Michael John, who died in 1954 at the age of 11 months. She is survived by her husband of 69 years, Richard; sons Richard Bryant Phelan of Nyack, Thomas Michael Phelan of Cortland Manor, NY; daughters and sons in law Linda and Robert Meadows of Corvallis, OR, Laura Ann and Richard Pait of Putnam Valley, NY, Michele Marie and Vincent Green of Valley Cottage, NY; seven grandsons, two granddaughters, one great granddaughter, her sisters Lois Krausser and Dolly McKeon. Memorial donations in Edna’s name may be directed to the American Heart Association in care of McHenry Funeral Home 206 NW 5th St., Corvallis, OR 97330. There will be no local services, a funeral mass will take place at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Nyack next week.

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Edna Bryant Phelan

September 7, 1920 - September 4, 2010