Loma Brant Boyd's Obituary
Loma Brant Boyd, of Oakland, passed away peacefully with family at her side on October 24. She had been in declining health for the past year. She would have been 95 on her next birthday.
Loma was born March 27,1924, to Edith and Everett Brant of Linton, North Dakota. Her father, Everett, was a farmer and politician who had homesteaded near Hazelton, North Dakota, and later became both a state senator and the Emmons County auditor and county treasurer.
Her mother, Edith, had been a rural Dakota schoolteacher at 16, then bookkeeper and office manager in the far West, before at age 26 returning to the Midwest to marry Everett and become a farmer’s wife. Edith also worked for a time in the State Capitol building in Bismarck. At age 6 Loma watched, from her mother’s temporary apartment, the State Capitol building as it burned to the ground in December, 1930. Back in Linton, Edith served later as deputy treasurer at the Emmons County Courthouse in Linton.
In the summertime, between planting and harvest seasons, Loma stayed at her grandmother’s farm at Athol, South Dakota. She had many fond memories of this time which lasted her entire life. She was loved by her grandmother and her father’ sisters. She shared in the farm work and loved helping her aunt and uncle open up the church on Sunday mornings. Her father’s side of the family was very musical. She remembered fondly the drives with her dad to get to the farm, their picnics en route and him singing as he drove and waved his arm, conducting.
At the height of the Depression in 1936, one week shy of her 12th birthday, a traumatic event happened to Loma which changed the course of her life: Her mother unexpectedly left her father, taking Loma on a long, unexplained train journey from North Dakota to Oakland, California, where they made a new life near her mother’s relatives. Leaving her father was something which left lasting emotional scars, and her mother prevented correspondence between Loma and her father. She did not see him again till age 16. she never saw her grandmother again.
Edith eventually bought a small gift shop on Telegraph Avenue which was also a book lending library. Loma and her mother lived in the back of the store for a time. She attended Oakland Technical High School. These were difficult years at home, and school proved to be Loma’s opportunity for stability and a chance to make friends and learn widely. Well read and good with words, she loved journalism and wrote for the Scribe News, the school newspaper. She planned to make a career as a journalist. She was awarded the prestigious Citizens Cup her senior year.
Loma received a full scholarship to UC Berkeley in 1941 and attended there for a short time. But with the explosion of Pearl Harbor and “half of the boys on the basketball team she loved gone, killed, or wounded in action,” Loma wanted to help with the war effort rather than pursue higher education. She began to drive supply trucks for the U.S. Army.
From 1945 to ’48, she worked as secretary for the law firm of McKee, Tashiera and Wahrhaftig. She had her own apartment and a car and was able to be independent and acquire innumerable books and albums of recordings by singers and musicians she admired, such as the great Marian Anderson.
Though not from a religious family, Loma began attending St. Clement’s church in Berkeley, where she received singing lessons at half-price from the church organist in exchange for singing in his choir. It was in that church choir that Loma in 1946 met William Thomas Boyd, a lieutenant colonel in the Army just back from duty. His family had lived in Berkeley since 1928. They were married at St. Clement’s on February 1, 1947.
Together Loma and Bill established a home and raised four children. Loma stayed at home during the years the children were growing up, although she felt the need to earn as much as she missed the satisfaction of working. At home she would often copy articles on her manual typewriter, saying she wanted to keep up her skills for when she would go back to the workplace.
She imparted to her children the qualities of fairness, self-reliance, making the best of things, and a love for books, music, and cats. After the children were raised, she worked as a teacher’s assistant at Laurel Elementary School, and from 1982 to 1987 as secretary at the law firm of Donahue, Thomas, Gallagher and Woods. She said she had respect for lawyers, as she admired their sharp mental faculties and ability to size up situations and think on their feet. She herself always kept up with the latest current events, trends and books. She had the gift of summing up a situation into one line or phrase.
She enjoyed church music and fellowship and, over the years, attended First Presbyterian and Pilgrim Lutheran churches of Oakland, as well as St. Clement’s.
In later years as her husband needed looking after, she devoted six years of her life to his care. They walked to keep fit, and after his death in 2008, she continued to make her rounds of the neighborhood, usually on her way to Safeway for oranges or to the bus stop to make a trip to the Senior Center for Tai Chi or yoga. She had passions for exercise, reading, listening to the radio, and travel. She was a familiar sight in her Redwood Heights neighborhood where she walked miles each day. She stayed active with the swim club at Diamond Park and with Tech High reunions. She continued to take the train to Auburn well into her 90s, and loved to go on adventures with Elderhostel.
“She remained,” said daughter Mary, “a Force of Nature,” and, at the age of 93, personally appeared at the County offices to request a bench seat at a bus stop where many elderly people needed one. Within weeks, a bench appeared there, thanks to her persistence.
She is survived by daughters Laura Boyd Russell (Rick) of Santa Monica; Mary Nichols Boyd of Fairbanks, Alaska; Carol Boyd Hemphill of Auburn, California; and son William Thomas Boyd (Sarah) and grandchildren William and Astrid Boyd, all of Oakland.
A memorial service will take place at 1:00 pm Sunday afternoon, December 2rd , at Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA 94611 (510-654-0123)
The family especially wishes to thank Fred Harmon, Director/RN, and his staff at Pacifica Senior Living, who cared for her in her final days.
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