Emabel Catherine Berryman

Emabel Catherine Berryman was an avid reader, a card sharp and a puzzle master. She was an adventurer, a survivor and a thriver. She pushed opened steel Quonset doors like a shopping cart into her 90s. Born in Pratt, Kansas, Oct. 14, 1923, she was a daughter, sister and wife; but moreover, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother. Her family was her greatest achievement, accomplished with the love of her life, Harley Frank Berryman, who preceded her in passing after 62 years together that started at a dance in San Francisco in 1942.

They were 18. He was a sailor. She was a raven-haired beauty riveting nose cones on Mustangs by day and going to dances by night. She lived in a small apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge with her sister, eating as much ice cream as they wanted, something that never happened when they were kids in the midst of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Ice cream and income and dances were truly Shangri-La.

It was also a time of war, and her sailor was sent to sea for nine months. She wrote to him every day. They returned to the Midwest after the war, married in June of 1946, and settled on the family homestead north of Cozad, where she gardened, gathered eggs and labored but refused to milk cows. She was impervious to what she did not want to learn, and uniquely creative with what she did. Her house was a riot of colors and patterns, and she crafted with all available materials, including plastic six-pack rings rendered into pink and blue hyacinth blooms.

She and her sailor and cousins and friends followed the hopping Highway 30 dance circuit for several years after the war. She loved Guy Lombardo and he loved Tommy Dorsey. They saw both perform. Pair by pair, the dancers settled down into playing pitch, with her as their undisputed champ.

Emabel and Harley would raise two children through a tumultuous time that saw them both hospitalized with serious conditions that they both overcame. She raised kids, helped operate a farm on a budget and managed a retail business for several years. She was the general manager of Fabric Fair in Cozad during the 1970s, and applied her sewing skills to everything from Barbie clothes to a padded motocross suit to curtains. She was an engineer with fabric. Her creations bore her particular signature.

She loved a nice outfit and a great dessert but was never self-indulgent. If one of her kids bought her new boots, she would duct tape the old ones for walking to the mailbox. She liked Louis L’Amour novels. She loved watching The Virginian and Walker, Texas Ranger. Her favorite color was red and her favorite song was, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” because of that dance in 1942. 

For most of 62 years, she made three meals a day for the handsome sailor, sticking by his side through thick and thin, through heartbreak and joy, car rides through the Sand Hills and road trips to California, until the day came he had to go and was laid to rest at 84.

She had mastered living on the farm by then and proceeded to do so on her terms. She visited her beauty operator weekly and went to lunch with her close friends. She wrote letters, played solitaire and covered the kitchen table with 1,000 piece puzzles constructed one atop the other. She would be adopted by a small black cat who watched over her for several years, though realized early on that Emabel did not appreciate the mouse offerings left on her front step.

“I never expected to live this long,” she said one day around her 100th birthday, by then living nearer her multigenerational family. Perhaps it was growing up 1920s Kansas with none of the creature comforts we take for granted today that formed the fiber of her being and the depth of her resilience. Thus it was not without some fire that she left the mortal coil in the early morning hours of Monday, Aug. 26, 2024, having been surrounded by loved ones.

Survivors are son James H. and Gayle (Thornton) Berryman; daughter Deborah D. McAdams; grandchildren Cherease R. Berryman, Jacliyn Berryman and Kai Szoka; great-children Ashton and Courtney (DeHart) Berryman and Castiel Berryman-Szoka; and great-great grandchild, Amelia Berryman. 

She was preceded in death by her husband Harley F. Berryman and parents, William E. and Bertha E. (Elliot) Chancelor. 

A private graveside service will be held.