“About three-quarters of them are coming on the trip,” says Bryant, an indispensable figure in the annals of Montana grappling. “For them, it doesn't have anything to do with (wrestling), it has to do with Disney World.”
The Hall of Fame is in Orlando and a whole gaggle of Bryants, so many Lanny obviously doesn't hesitate to break the number into fractions, are planning to rent a house in the area and turn the occasion into a week-long family vacation.
“I was told I'm supposed to get a tux,” he says. “I'm not sure if I have to get up and talk or anything like that.”
Talking about wrestling shouldn't be a problem for the son of a Baptist minister who's made his life competing, coaching and writing about the sport.
For the past 44 years, Bryant has been the editor and owner of Wrestling USA Magazine, which he still publishes in Missoula with the help of son Cody and the rest of the family. There are five different Bryants listed in the masthead of the most recent issue. The publication has covered it all, from the smallest juvenile tournaments to the world championships and the Olympics.
“I'm not a journalist, by any means,” says Bryant, whose academic background is in biology. “But we struggle with the thing and we seem to get it put together every time.”
He's also coached and taught at the high school and college levels, serving in Wyoming as well as at Missoula Hellgate, Montana State and Western Washington.
His prep teams racked up a duals record of 241-47 and he coached 35 individual state champions, including Cody, who won three of them for the Knights from 1982-84 - one at 132 pounds, and two at 138.
Bryant lists watching Cody win his last state title as one of the highlights of his life, right alongside personally baptizing a number of those many grandkids and being inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003.
“I think it's a great sport,” he says. “It teaches kids how to fight through the game of life. You're on your own out there. You can't blame anybody else if you fail. I'm glad I had the opportunity to be around it.”
The opportunity was hard fought early on. He says his father wasn't crazy about the idea of letting him out of the house to go to city wrestling meets when Bryant was in junior high. Most of them were held on Sunday nights.
“Back then you weren't supposed to do much of anything on Sunday, especially if you were a preacher's kid,” Bryant says. “I had a heck of a time talking him into letting me participate, but he did.”
He says his dad was also “pretty disappointed” when he gave up his scholarship at private, faith-based Hardin-Simmons University after one semester to go to Northern Colorado and wrestle for the Bears.
Later, he sunk $1,600 he was supposed to have used for college into starting up the magazine. It lost money for a few years, he says, then slowly started to build into a winner.
At 69 years old, Bryant has to figure his decision to devote his life to wrestling and to family was a wise one. Next week almost the whole clan departs for Orlando, where the famous Milk House at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex will host the Hall of Fame induction banquet and the Scholastic Duals wrestling tournament at the same time.
When it comes to this latest trip to the hall, it seems like Bryant himself was the last to know.
“It was a complete surprise,” he says. “I was sitting at my desk and my wife was opening mail and I heard her say, ‘Yay! We're going to Florida this summer!' But that was all I heard about it at the time. Then about 45 minutes later I find this letter on my desk about going to the Hall of Fame.”
Once again Bryant is a hall of famer. And he's going to Disney World.
Sports writer Chad Dundas can be reached at 523-5361 or at chad.dundas@missoulian.com.
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