Michigan's Barbara Bryant, first woman to lead Census Bureau, dies at 96

Barbara Everitt Bryant who rose from a career in survey research she undertook in her 40s to become the first woman to lead the U.S. Census Bureau in 1989, died in Ann Arbor of natural causes on Friday. She was 96.

Bryant was nominated by former U.S. President George H.W. Bush and took over as director at a time when some state and local officials were pressing for the bureau to address historic undercounts, especially in minority communities, heading into the 1990 decennial count. Although Bryant later recommended using an adjustment to try to correct the undercount, she was overridden by Commerce Department officials in a decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"I do think the secretary had a very difficult decision to make," Bryant said in an oral history interview for the Census as she was leaving office in January 1993. "He jumped one way and I jumped the other, but down at the bottom of the fence we weren’t that far apart... I think one of the things that probably drove (the secretary) is that when in doubt, you don’t change 200 years of history."

Bryant later joined the faculty of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and, according to her family, designed the data collection methodology for the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a leading national economic indicator for more than a quarter century. She retired in 2008 at the age of 82.

"Dr. Bryant was a trailblazer and a champion of quality survey methods," Robert Santos, the current Census director said in a statement. As director, "she oversaw the enumeration of the 1990 census and the Census Bureau’s response to the undercount issues. She also worked to improve the quality of economic statistics and led the Census Bureau away from pencil-and-paper interviewing and towards computer-assisted data collection."

Barbara Alice Everitt was born in 1926 in Ann Arbor and grew up outside Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of William Littell Everitt, an electrical engineering professor at Ohio State University, and Dorothy Wallace Everitt. During World War II, her father served as director of operations research with the U.S. Army Signal Corps before moving to the University of Illinois.

Barbara Everitt attended Cornell University, getting a bachelor's degree in physics and intending to become a science writer. She put her career on hold after marrying John Bryant, also an electrical engineer. They initially lived in New Jersey before moving back to Michigan. Later, when the first of their three children entered elementary school, Bryant began working part time and attended graduate school at Michigan State University, eventually receiving degrees in journalism and communications

She and Bryant were married for 49 years until his death in 1997.

She entered the field of survey research after receiving a doctorate in communications at age 44, beginning with 20 years at what had been Detroit-based Market Opinion Research. While there, she rose to become senior vice president, directed national research for three presidential commissions and managed survey studies and consulting projects for media, transportation, education and health care organizations.

"Communications research ... took me into survey research, which is one of the tools of communications research," she said in the Census interview. "You do attitudinal research, opinion research. So I got all the methodology and techniques of survey research, which led me eventually to the Census Bureau, but only about 25 years after that."

Bush appointed her director while the U.S. Senate was in recess on the recommendation of Robert Teeter, a Michigan pollster who had previously been a part-owner of Market Opinion Research and ran Bush's transition team. Although Bryant had not worked on political matters with Teeter, she later said, "He had known me, worked with me 19 years at Market Opinion Research and so I know who put my name in the hat."

Teeter later told the Free Press that he recommended Bryant to Bush because she was an expert in the field and energetic. And while she had "managed only a few people at MOR ... she is very good at motivating people and having them like to work for her." She was later confirmed by the Senate.

According to her family, Bryant, throughout her career, volunteered for community and church efforts and swam nearly every day up until age 87. She is survived by three children: Linda Bryant Valentine, of Louisville, Ky.; Randal Everitt Bryant, of Pittsburgh, and Lois Beth Bryant, of Ann Arbor, as well as eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Barbara Bryant of Ann Arbor, first woman to lead Census Bureau, dies