Don Bright photo:Deb Murphy

Inyo’s county seat celebrated the dedication of the Jane Bright Memorial Rock Garden at the Eastern California Museum.

The rock garden is just that—a garden of rocks complete with placards outlining their sources and lineages. Jane Bright was the wife of the late Supervisor Keith Bright, mother of Mary Roper, Nancy Masters and Don Bright and grandmother to Inyo Sheriff’s Department public
information officer Carma Roper.

Don Bright provided his mother’s rich history at the garden dedication. As a geology major at University of California Berkeley, it was assumed Jane Bright would end up as a secretary to a geologist. Instead, starting her career during World War II when men were off to war, Bright worked as a field geologist for Standard Oil. Her son remembered arguments at the dinner table over his father’s   determination to “drill holes everywhere,” according to his mother.

“She was not a helicopter parent,” Bright said. During road trips, her buzz words were “oh, look
at that. It’s a …….” She would veer the car to the side of the road and provide a geological
lecture on whatever rock had caught her interest. “She was fearless and tough,” her son said.
“People in authority meant nothing.”