Mary Lou Gloyne Byler, 95, died Saturday, May 11 in the Cherokee Indian Hospital after a brief illness of COVID-19 and pneumonia. Mary Lou was one of the four children of the late Lula Owl Gloyne and Jack Freize Gloyne. She was preceded in death by her husband, William Byler of Washington, D.C., her brothers, John and Dan Gloyne; and her sister, Mollie Blankenship.
She is survived by her two stepdaughters, Helen Houston of Connecticut, and Celia O’Brien of Rhode Island; and by her nephews, Lloyd Arneach (Charlotte)(d.), John Gloyne (Henrietta), Jack Gloyne (Tootsie)(d.), Geoffery Gloyne (Benita), and nieces Mary Wachacha (d.)(Arnold), Judy Tiger (Mike)(d.), Roberta Gloyne, and Helen Snow.
She is also survived by many great nephews and nieces.
Mary Byler was born Aug. 30, 1928, and spent her early years living in Cherokee. She later attended University of Oklahoma in Norman, receiving her BA degree. After graduation, she returned home for a short time, and then left for New York City where she began to ascend the ranks of the publishing world, working as an editor for American Heritage, publisher of the oldest and most respected magazine on American history. There, she met her future husband, Bill Byler, a writer and publicity director for Yale University Press.
In 1983, Mary Lou Byler co-edited, with Michael Dorris and Arlene Hirschfelder, “A Guide to Research on North American Indians”. The seminal annotated bibliography numbered 358 pages and covered 1,100 books, documents and essays on Native Americans in 27 different fields. It was almost two pounds in weight. Of Modoc descent, Dorris was already a celebrated Indian novelist (“Yellow Raft in Blue Water”) and would soon publish, with his accomplished novelist wife, Louise Erdrich, “The Crown of Columbus”. Erdrich, of Chippewa descent, survives both Dorris and Mary Lou Byler.
Mary Lou and her husband Bill worked at the Association on American Indian Affairs (AAIA) where he became executive director, in New York City, from 1962-80. They moved to Washington, DC, where they continued to fight for Native American land and water rights. They helped draft the national legislation that became the unprecedented Alaska Native Claims Act (1971) that ceded back a greater portion of state land to the Alaskan Indians and Inuit Eskimos than any state had ever returned – 45 million acres. Likewise, the Bylers worked to secure water rights for the Havasupai and for the San Carlos Apache in Arizona.
Mary Lou Gloyne Byler’s work to promote Native American literature and authors was far reaching. She wrote and co-produced several landmark studies of the stereotyping of Native Americans in children’s literature, and she authored “American Indian Authors for Young Readers”, a selected bibliography published by AAIA in 1973. She wrote:
“Only American Indians can tell non-Indians what it is to be Indian. There is no longer a need for non-Indian writers to ‘interpret’ American Indians for the American public.”
Mary Lou will be greatly missed. She was a cherished relative and friend to many wherever she lived, a quiet, strong presence, multitalented (accomplished Taichi practitioner), supportive, with a keen intellect, sensibility and power of observation, and a sly sense of humor.
A private family celebration will be held in her honor at a later date.
Longhouse Funeral Home, Cherokee, N.C., assisted the family with arrangements