- Date Of Birth: May 5, 1943
- Date Of Death: December 13, 2015
- State: Texas
William Bryant “Bill” Herring William Bryant “Bill” Herring, 72, went to be with His Lord from his home in Belton, Texas, on Sunday, December 13, 2015, following a courageous battle with cancer. He was born May 5, 1943, to Joseph Jennings Herring and Flora Eula Selph Herring in a farmhouse near Jasper, Florida. Bill spent his early childhood in the Jasper and Jennings, Florida, area before moving with his family to Fernandina Beach and later to Yulee, Florida.
After graduating from Yulee High School in 1961, he served in the United States Air Force. Mr. Herring married Kathleen Ruthann “Kathie” Green on June 12, 1966, in Lakewood, Colorado. Their first home was in Yulee where Bill worked for the Florida State Road Department. Eventually the Herrings moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, where they had two children (Kristine Denise “Kristi” Coffey of Fort Worth, Texas, and William Bryant “Billy” Herring, Jr., of Belton, Texas. Bill worked for a contractor with the Atomic Energy Commission in a petrographic lab in Grand Junction while taking several classes at Mesa College, studying geology and petrology.
His civil service career also involved working for the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation with the Department of the Interior and later for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in Grand Junction. The Herring family moved to Belton, Texas, in 1986, where Bill continued work with the Corps as a Construction Representative at Fort Hood, Texas. He retired from the Corps of Engineers on January 3, 2003. Bill was an active member of First Baptist Church, Belton, where he served as a deacon, a member of several committees, a choir member, and a member of the Golden Age Club.
He was an active member of SPEBSQSA in Colorado, a national men’s barbershop organization, and also organized and sang in gospel quartets in Colorado and Texas. Some of his other interests included hunting, fishing, traveling, and reading. Bill especially enjoyed going to the cabins in the country that he and Kathie owned, first in Arkansas, then most recently in Buffalo, Texas. Bill’s family fondly remembers his storytelling abilities, as well as his affinity for tinkering in his shop where he could fix almost anything.
Mr. Herring is survived by his wife, Kathie, daughter and son-in-law, Kristi and Darrell Coffey of Fort Worth, Texas, son and daughter-in-law, Billy and Amanda Sherburne Herring, of Belton, Texas, five grandchildren (Tyler Glenn Coffey, Katelyn Elizabeth Coffey, Grace Chandler Herring, Samuel Hunter Herring, and Aiden Justus Herring), an older brother and sister-in-law, Jimmy Joseph and Janie Herring, of Jennings, Florida, and several nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents.
