John Bryant Wyman

1933 - 2024

John Bryant Wyman

September 14, 1933 - November 8, 2024

John Bryant Wyman, M.D., was known as Bry all his life. He died at his home in Fitchburg, Wisconsin on November 8, 2024, surrounded by his three children. He was 91.

Bry was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1933. His father, Walker D. Wyman, was a history professor, UW-Whitewater president and Wisconsin folklorist. His mother, Helen Bryant Wyman, had studied at the Chicago Art Institute and was a prolific landscape artist. Many of her paintings hung on the walls at Bry's house in Fitchburg.

He was an 11-year-old boy in 1945, and he recalled his father listening to the radio news of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His father had taken Bry and his little brother on a camping trip in lieu of a day at the county fair, which his mother had forbade because of a polio outbreak.

In high school, or so went the story, a girl had told him he had "a surgeon's hands," which inspired his career choice. After graduation in 1951, Bry attended UW-River Falls for two years before transferring to UW-Madison and on to medical school. Bry earned his M.D. there in 1958.

Bry's medical school fraternity tasked him as the campaign manager for a nursing sorority's candidate for homecoming queen. Her name was Barbara Ann Procknow, whom he courted with songs on his ukulele. They married in 1956. Their first child, Annie, was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1960 where he completed training.

That same year Bry was commissioned as an Army officer and deployed to Karlsruhe, Germany. During the next two years he and Barbara witnessed the inception of the Berlin Wall and the sharpening of the Cold War. Following his military discharge, the young family traveled from Scandinavia to Greece in a VW minibus that Annie called the "pretty car."

After continuing his medical education at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where his son Jeb was born in 1964, Bry accepted a position as a gastroenterologist at the Marshfield Clinic in 1967, where he treated patients for twenty-five years. His daughter Mary was born in 1968.

The family lived on an 80-acre farm west of the city. Bry was more a doctor than a farmer, but he built fences and bailed hay for Barbara's flock of Columbia sheep.

In 1975, Bry took a sabbatical to study gastrointestinal motility in Bristol, England. Afterwards, the family camped throughout Europe with an orange Volvo station wagon and a tent, visiting old friends and crossing into then-Communist Poland and Czechoslovakia. In 1983, Bry took a second sabbatical to Adelaide, Australia, accompanied by Barbara and Mary, this time to study esophageal manometry. These experiences were the start of lifelong friendships and regular frequent return trips.

Bry's marriage to Barbara ended in 1991. He grieved this loss to the end of his life. He had a brief second marriage to Sandra Lott.

Bry left the Marshfield Clinic in 1992 and, after a brief stint as a farm hand in Illinois, he began a faculty position at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He treated patients and taught medical students until his 80th birthday. In his later practice, he focused on irritable bowel syndrome and other chronic functional disorders. Patients who had suffered debilitating symptoms for years remain grateful for the healing he gave them.

Over his long life, Bry had a wide range of interests. On his shelves were books on Antarctic exploration, art history, archaeology, and military history. He once dreamed of having a buffalo in the front paddock on the Marshfield farm. He loved opera and Gilbert and Sullivan, and held firmly to a Christmas tradition of listening to a reading of Paul Gallico's "The Snow Goose" featuring Pachelbel's Canon. An Eagle Scout as a boy, he was active in the Boy Scout Wood Badge adult leadership program for many years. He converted his Fitchburg lawn to a native prairie and always looked forward to Lutefisk season. He reveled in travel and loved watching foreign detective shows with his dear friend Janine.

Four days before he died, Bry received his 38th anniversary medallion from Alcoholics Anonymous. Active in this fellowship until the last weeks of his life, Bry "helped many others beyond the medical field," says one friend. Bry was also a generous philanthropist. In the end, his life was defined by devotion to family and service to others.

Bry leaves behind his three children, Annie (Eddie), Jeb (Darci), and Mary (David); his grandchildren Lauren, Guthrie, and Haley; Levi and Jaspar; and Declan, Benni, and Luki; a great-grandchild, Ryder; and his beloved brother Mark Wyman and family.

The family requests that any remembrances be given to Porchlight (www.porchlightinc.org; 608.257.2534) or the Madison Public Library Foundation (https://mplfoundation.org/; 608.266.6318).

A memorial for Bry will be held on January 18, 2025, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the UW Arboretum Visitor Center, 2880 Longenecker Drive, Madison, WI. A delicious lunch will be served, as Bry would want.