It was a cold, solemn day on a ranch near Austin, Texas.

The biting wind was staved off by the thick fur coat worn by an American music icon.

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Former President Lyndon B. Johnson had said before he died that at his burial he wanted the Rev. Billy Graham to pray and Anita Bryant to sing.

“It was a little more terrifying than normal,” Bryant said.

A framed photo of her at the burial rests on a shelf in her Oklahoma City office overlooking the Bricktown Canal. She’s been back in Oklahoma since 2002. In one room of the refurbished loft, the walls are lined with album covers.

Bryant’s beauty and singing talent brought her national attention, but she garnered additional notoriety — and a pie in the face — in the 1970s when she took a stand against homosexuality.

Her opinions led to lost endorsements, bankruptcy and depression.

She is 70 now and lives in Edmond. She writes and sings Christian children’s songs. She teaches a Sunday school class at Victory Church in Warr Acres, focusing on the heart, the soul and the body.

God’s warmth

Under the big oak tree on that frigid day on the Johnson ranch, Bryant wrapped herself in the fur coat that covered her black dress, waiting to sing as the president’s casket was lowered into the ground. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the casket.

The cold made it hard to move her lips. She had a metal pitch pipe she often blew into to warm up, but she didn’t want to touch her lips to it.

Then she thought of the fishhook pin on her dress, a symbol of her Christianity that she wanted the world to see. So she took off the coat.

“I tried the pitch pipe and got nothing. It wouldn’t work. So I said, ‘God give me a B-flat,’” Bryant recalled.

She thought about Johnson, whom she had met when she sang at a private dinner at the White House. She felt warmer and forgot about the cold as she stood at the Johnson family cemetery.

“It was like God had put a fur coat all over me because I was so warm. It was a phenomenal time. It was freezing, and I started on the right note,” Bryant said. “It wasn’t me. It was the Lord. He showed up.”

Bryant was at the pinnacle of her popularity, the top of her career. Four years later, everything would spiral out of control.

Wholesome image

A Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and a Miss America runner-up in 1959, Bryant rocketed to fame in the late 1950s as a clean-cut young woman with a sweet but powerful voice. She broke into the pop charts with “Till There Was You” from “The Music Man.” Her background in acting and drama and radiant personality were exactly what the television networks wanted.

She’d been the spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, singing in a black-and-white commercial on a beach with the Brothers Four. Her late ’50s and early ’60s hits in the Pat Boone and Frankie Avalon period of pop made the charts four times.

Her biggest hit, “Paper Roses,” in 1960, thrust her into the forefront of the wholesome, pre-Vietnam ’60s pop idols. “In My Little Corner of the World” and “Wonderland By Night” featured the voice of a torch singer, but with the clean image of a Doris Day.

Surviving to thriving

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Anita’s grandfather, John Berry, threatened to kill the doctor if he didn’t save the baby, so the doctor dunked her in a pail of ice water. Mother and daughter survived.

“It had to be supernatural breath from the Lord,” Bryant said.

By the time she was 2, her grandfather noticed Bryant’s singing skills. She started singing at church and in talent contests.

Growing up in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa areas, she got her start on stations such as WKY-TV. She appeared on WKY’s “Gizmo Goodkin” puppet show before landing “The Anita Bryant Show.”

She’s got the voice

Oklahoma City television and radio legend Danny Williams appeared on the “Sooner Shindig” show on WKY-TV and later spun Bryant’s records at the WKY radio station.

Music on the radio during the pre-Fab Four era of the early ’60s was not all rock ‘n’ roll. Williams said ballads were popular, and his favorite was Bryant’s “In My Little Corner of the World.”

Williams said he remembers when Bryant was the darling of Oklahoma City television.

“She had so much talent and still does,” Williams said. “She had a great personality, very friendly, very likable, had a nice sense of humor.”

Through the 1960s, she sang on televised shows with Bob Hope on the USO tours. Her image became embedded with American patriotism.

She was honored in November 2010 by the Oklahoma City Freedoms Foundation Chapter for her years of supporting American troops.

A personal campaign

In 1966, the Beatles were dominating the top 10. Bryant’s ballads became less popular as American pop bowed to the Liverpool lads.

But Bryant was the singing spokeswoman for Coca-Cola and Florida orange juice, and these were sweet gigs, Williams said.

“In our business in TV, anyone who does commercials can make a lot of money, especially on the national level,” he said.

In one famous commercial, she sang the orange juice jingle and then recited the slogan, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

Bryant used her national prominence to take a stand against what many said was a decline in moral values. Her work to promote decency in popular entertainment started after a concert by The Doors.

Jim Morrison was arrested after a Doors concert in Miami, Fla., in 1969, and Bryant was involved in the Rally for Decency campaign that followed. Morrison was charged with indecent exposure in Dade County, Fla.

In 1977, Bryant was an outspoken opponent of a Dade County ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. She opposed a national bill in Congress to declare homosexuals a minority group.

She became the leader of a group called Save Our Children, and her campaign against gay rights took off. During a news conference that can be seen today on YouTube video clips, she said, “The war goes on to save our children because the seed of sexual sickness that germinated in Dade County has already been transplanted by misguided liberals in the U.S. Congress.”

Dade County voters repealed the ordinance.

At a Des Moines, Iowa, news conference, gay rights activist Tom Higgins slammed a pie into her face for the benefit of television cameras.

She responded by saying, “At least it was a fruit pie,” before breaking into tears.

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“He hit me pretty hard,” Bryant said, remembering the day.

Bryant campaigned for a California initiative that would have prohibited pro-homosexual views in the classroom. That initiative was defeated. Real footage of Bryant’s crusade from the era was used in a 2008 film, “Milk,” starring Sean Penn.

The movie chronicled the life of gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk. Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in 1978.

“They said I created an atmosphere of hate,” Bryant said. “That was hogwash. That is not who I am.”

Costs, repercussions

In the wake of the pie incident and nationwide boycotts of Florida orange juice, the Florida Citrus Commission dropped Bryant as a spokeswoman.

She divorced Bob Green in 1980. The couple had four children.

Conservative Christians blacklisted her because she had divorced.

Her family endured daily death threats and received hate mail containing feces and voodoo dolls, she said.

In 1980, Bryant gave up her career. She would toss in bed in the middle of the night, thinking of ways to kill herself.

“My state of mind was depressed, and I didn’t know how I was going to make a living,” Bryant said.

Moving on

In 1990, she married her childhood sweetheart, Charlie Hobson Dry, 72, a NASA test astronaut and military test pilot. They have been married 21 years.

She says she does not regret her stance against homosexuality.

“I did the right thing,” Bryant said, adding that she does not hate homosexuals.

“I’ve never regretted what I did.”

Nathaniel Batchelder, director of the Oklahoma City Peace House and a well-known war protester and a board member of the Church of the Open Arms, a church for gay Christians in Oklahoma City, said he maintains respect for Bryant.

“I think Anita Bryant is a great lady and a wonderful woman,” Batchelder said.

Hollywood screenwriter Chad Hodge is working on a feature-length biopic of Bryant’s life for HBO.

Hodge, 33, who is gay, said he has always had an interest in gay rights history.

Bryant always has been vilified in the gay community, he said.

“I wanted to find out who this woman is,” he said.

Bryant said she thinks the movie could change her public image and other perceptions.

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