Bryson Smith Randolph's Obituary
Bryson Smith Randolph, age 81, died Dec. 18th, 2018 in his home in Memphis, under hospice care. Born to Bryson Randolph and Janette Smith Randolph on April 29th, 1937 in Westport, CT, and raised in upstate NY, Bryson graduated from high school in 1955. He was accepted at both the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and West Point for college. Bryson always said he chose the Coast Guard because cadets spent their summers sailing around the world on a beautiful sailing ship that was formerly Hitler’s private yacht, given to the Coast Guard as War Reparations, while cadets at West Point spent their summers crawling in the mud under barbed wire with blanks being fired around them.Upon graduating from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy with an engineering degree in 1959, Bryson remained on active duty in the Coast Guard until 1964, and then served as an officer in the Coast Guard Reserves for some years. Among his activity duty assignments was command of an island in the South Pacific that served as a listening post for NASA where he monitored John Glenn’s orbit around the earth; command of the Hollywood search and rescue boat, where he and his vessel appeared for brief moments in various movies and numerous episodes of Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt; and a stint teaching submarine warfare at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.Upon discharge from active duty, Bryson moved to Los Angeles where his first wife was from. He started a family, became a general contractor building apartments in L.A. (many of which are still standing, much to Bryson’s amazement-he said it had nothing to do with his skills as a general contractor), discovered Santa Barbara, CA, and fell in love with what was then a sleepy beach town. He moved his family there and began a successful career in the real estate investment business as the Director of Acquisitions for Pacific American Real Estate Fund, one of the first publicly offered real estate limited partnerships in the country. In 1971, Bryson was recruited to Memphis to co-lead a new Division of Real Estate Investing for Ned Cook and Cook Industries. Bryson remained in Memphis for 2 years, ultimately moving back to Santa Barbara, where he continued to lead Cook’s investment activities west of the Mississippi River.Bryson left Cook within a short period of time to start The Bryson Randolph Company. He was an active real estate investor for more than 40 years, creating partnerships in California, Idaho, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. He bought office, retail and multi-family apartment properties, with the majority of his investments being multi-family apartments. Many of Bryson’s closest and most durable friendships started in the business world where he enjoyed mentoring his younger colleagues and had a reputation for high integrity and practical wisdom.Bryson was also an accomplished entrepreneur, co-founding San Francisco Bay Area based Liquidity Fund in the early 1980s and The Valuations Group in 1994.Bryson moved back to Memphis in 1991, after meeting his soon to be wife, the former Laretha Harris, on Jan 4th, 1990. They married May 19th, 1993.He is survived by his wife Laretha; two children from his first marriage: Lisa Randolph (Johnny Austin) of Memphis, and Michael Randolph (Carrie) of Santa Barbara CA; three grandchildren of Santa Barbara (Baylor, Devan, and Hayden Randolph); his stepdaughter, Samantha Ogden of Brisbane Australia; and three grandchildren of Brisbane (Jessica, Madison, and Miles Ogden).The family wishes to acknowledge the kind and loving care of the attendants who were with Bryson full time the last 16 days of his life: Regina Davis, Shantae Sallie, Pam Mason, Barbara Denson, and Nikki Palmer, and the services of Avalon Hospice.A Memorial Service and Celebration of Life is planned for Saturday Jan. 5th, 2 PM at The Church of the River (First Unitarian Church of Memphis), 292 Virginia Ave W. in downtown Memphis, with a reception and family visitation following the service.The family wishes memorials to be made to the Memphis Humane Shelter or any other animal rescue group; to the Memphis Symphony; or to the Charity of the donor’s choice.Arrangements have been entrusted to Memorial Park Funeral Home and Cemetery, 5668 Poplar Ave., Memphis, TN 38119 (901) 767-8930. “Celebrating Life… Behind the Stone Wall”.
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