Ann Arbor resident Barbara Bryant, the first woman to lead the U.S. Census Bureau, died on March 3, surrounded by her family. Bryant served as director of the Bureau of the Census from 1989 to 1993.Photo provided | U.S. Census Bureau

ANN ARBOR, MI - By the time Barbara Bryant made history as the first woman to lead the U.S. Census Bureau in 1989, she had long been considered a legend in the eyes of her children.

Before she kicked off a groundbreaking 38-year career in survey research at age 44, she was a nurturing and supportive mother who helped her children start competing neighborhood newspapers, dressed them for parades with her extensive collection of costumes and organized family gatherings and vacations.

She did it all while juggling part-time jobs, volunteering extensively in the Ann Arbor and Birmingham communities and traveling 75 miles each way to pursue her master’s and doctorate degrees from Michigan State University.

She even managed to fit in daily swims in the lap pool built in their Ann Arbor home until she was 87.

“She called herself a night owl, but then she was the first one up (starting) the coffee pot in the morning,” Bryant’s daughter Linda Bryant Valentine said.

Bryant died of natural causes on March 3 in Ann Arbor at age 96.

Nominated by former President George H.W. Bush, Bryant served as director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census at a time when state and local officials were faced with lawsuits and pressed to address population undercounts, particularly in minority communities.

Born Barbara Alice Everitt in 1926 in Ann Arbor, she and grew up outside Columbus, Ohio. Bryant attended Cornell University, earning a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1947, while serving as editor of the university’s newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, with hopes of becoming a science writer. She put her career ambitions on hold, however, when she married John Harold Bryant in 1948. They were married 49 years until John’s death in 1997.

The couple set up their home in Nutley, New Jersey, where they had three children before moving to Birmingham in 1956 and later Ann Arbor, where she became involved with the League of Women Voters, University Musical Society, Cranbrook Academy and First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor. She was also active in the lives of her children.

Even then, Bryant’s love for counting and survey research was apparent. Daughter Lois Bryant said she remembers her mother accompanying her Girl Scout troop on a weekend camping trip where she turned the experience of dealing with swarms of mosquitos into a fun game.

“She had each of us count our mosquito bites as we applied calamine lotion,” Lois Bryant said. “I won - over a hundred bites!”

By the time her children had grown and she had gotten her doctorate degree in communication from MSU in 1970, Bryant was ready to explore a full-time career in survey research, her son Randal Everitt Bryant said.

That started at Market Opinion Research, where she spent the next 20 years, including 12 as senior vice president. She directed national research for three presidential commissions, including Gerald Ford’s Commission on Observance of International Women’s Year in 1976, President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on World Hunger in 1980 and Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Americans Outdoors in 1986.

“She kind of just kept working away but she also would host family gatherings and come on vacations and to our our children’s events,” Randal Bryant said. “She managed to kind of combine that family life and professional life in unique ways.”

Bryant also wan an active member of the American Marketing Association, which suggested she become a member of the Census Advisory Committee in 1980. After serving two terms on the committee, former Market Opinion Research President Robert Teeter suggested Bryant take the director position after he served as the Bush campaign’s director of polling and head of its transition team.

In March 1989, Bryant was contacted by Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Michael Darby, who informed her she was one of three finalists for the job of Census director. Bush later nominated her as director of the U.S. Census, where she served from 1989-93, overseeing the 1990 decennial census, 200 household and business surveys per year and the 1992 economic and agriculture censuses.

Barbara Bryant speaks during the Senate confirmation hearings on her nomination as the director of the U.S. Census Bureau in 1990.Photo provided | U.S. Census Bureau

When the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs got around to her confirmation hearing in July 1990, the census-taking was over, but the committee had not had any hearings with the Senate. So, her confirmation hearing was combined with the oversight hearing on the census.

Bryant’s children remember the confirmation hearing as contentious, given the controversy and attention surrounding the census at the time.

“It was interesting to see all these famous senators grilling our mother,” Randal said. “There was all this negative stuff they were saying and I thought, ‘How can I say that about my mom?’ But then I watched her and all that negative stuff just kind of went off her like water off a duck. She was just completely unflustered by it.”

In a remembrance, current Bureau of the Census Director Robert L. Santos referred to Bryant as “a trailblazer and a champion of quality survey methods” who worked to improve the quality of economic statistics and led the Census Bureau away from pencil-and-paper interviewing and toward computer-assisted data collection that was implemented for the 2000 and later censuses.

After her time at the Census Bureau, Bryant joined the faculty of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. There she designed the data collection methodology for the American Customer Satisfaction Index, serving as managing director of the national economic indicator for its first eight years before retiring at age 82 in 2008.

While Bryant’s legacy is intertwined with the Census Bureau, many who work in communications, marketing and survey research consider her influential for helping get their careers off the ground.

For former U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves, that came in the form of Bryant - his neighbor down the street at the time in Ann Arbor - knocking on his door to inform him of an opportunity to serve as associated director of the bureau.

As a member of UM’s survey research center at the time, Groves said the encounter was unexpected, but the moment altered his career path forever, leading to him serve as director of the U.S. Census Bureau under President Barack Obama in 2009.

“I doubt any of that would have happened to me if Barbara hadn’t knocked on my screen door that one day,” said Groves, who is now the provost of Georgetown University.

Growing up next door to Bryant at a young age, Tavi Fulkerson marveled at how Bryant was able to balance raising a family while having a successful career, calling her “my one and only mentor” as she eyed her own public relations career in Ann Arbor.

Fulkerson launched The Fulkerson Group, which now has a 34-year track record of marketing major sports and civic events in Detroit. She credits Bryant for taking the time to introduce her to top public relations executives and women in leadership.

“I had just started my own PR company in Ann Arbor in 1983 and her help made all the difference in my success,” Fulkerson said.

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