Myra Margaret Hyde

Myra Margaret Smith, born of Albert Edward Smith and Margaret Preston Murphy Smith in Tribune, Kansas January 10, 1923, died April 24, 2024.  She was the first of four children with three younger brothers:  Bob, Joe and Don. She was educated in and graduated from High School in Tribune, Kansas then attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, graduating in 1944 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business.  

While on summer vacation in 1943 and visiting her “Uncle JC” and “Aunt Mayme” Murphy in Galveston, Texas, she met Robert Franklin Hyde, Jr.  They were on double dates, each with different dates.  At that time, Robert (Bob) Hyde was in the Naval Reserve and a senior medical student at the University of Texas Medical School, Galveston, Texas, and Myra worked as a Civil Defense volunteer.  They were married June 30, 1944, in Boulder, Colorado.  Immediately after the marriage, Dr. Hyde was ordered to report to San Diego, California to begin his active-duty US Naval service.  As Myra was living in Boulder, she was designated as the navigator for the car trip to California. It didn’t take long for the newly wedded couple to determine that they were heading East, not West.  After a short honeymoon in California, Bob Hyde was sent to the Pacific Theater of World War II and Myra returned to Boulder and was employed until the end of World War II as a House Mother for the girls of her Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

Myra and Bob Hyde had four children. Douglass Young, Brian Edwards, Allan Sanford, and Myra Bradford. The boys were born in Houston, Texas and Myra was born in Amarillo, Texas, shortly after the family moved to Amarillo in 1950.    

Myra, while raising a family, was also active in the Amarillo community.  She was a member of the First Presbyterian Church, the Symphony Guild and P.E.O.  She had always had a passion for art history and dedicated a lot of her free time to the arts, being in the first docent class at the Amarillo Museum of Art (then known as the Amarillo Art Center).  Bob retired from his Orthopaedic Surgery practice in 1983, at which time they moved to Oriental, North Carolina.   Myra never stopped expanding her knowledge.  She kept an extensive art history library and, when time permitted, took courses at the local community college well into her ‘80’s.  There was no one more knowledgeable to visit an art museum with than Myra Hyde.

One of Myra and Bob’s favorite pastimes was sailing.  As a youth, Bob worked in a lumber yard in Austin, Texas and was an accomplished carpenter.  Myra and Bob constructed several small sailboats at their home in Amarillo, Texas with Myra laying out and sewing the sails for the boats on her living room floor.  They progressed to two larger sailboats on the newly constructed and filled Lake Meredith near Fritch, Texas. In 1970’s they went to England on business and while there purchased a 35-foot Swedish motor sailer.  This boat was kept in Sweden and the couple would travel back and forth several times a year, sailing the Swedish archipelago with friends and family.  After moving to North Carolina, the boat was brought to the States, and they lived on the boat which was harbored at the site of their custom-built waterside home modeled after a Chesapeake Bay screw pole lighthouse.  It even had a functioning light to assist navigation for local boaters.

Bob Hyde died in 1998.  Myra returned to Amarillo, Texas in 2012 to be near family. She is predeceased by her husband Robert Franklin Hyde Jr., and her second son, Brian Edwards Hyde.  She is survived by sons Douglass and Allan, daughter Myra, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.