Brenda Gail Brown, age 76, of Crossville, passed away peacefully at her home on January 19, 2024, while being surrounded by members of her loving family. She was born on June 22, 1947, in Crossville, the daughter of the late Verna Bernell Wyatt (Simmons) and Henry Lee Wyatt.

In life, Brenda was born to challenging times and lacking in the economic advantages bestowed to many others – but she was equally gifted with a degree of determination and strength many multiple her stature. As a woman with the highest of principles and warmest of hearts, her life has shown brightest to those who witnessed her relentless perseverance in the most arduous of situations and throughout the bleakest of times. As but a child herself, she feverishly worked and endured in the care of her ten siblings, offering up many parts of her youth and dreams in the pursuit of their betterment and wellbeing. A graduate of Cumberland County High School, during her professional career she worked in manufacturing at Eli Walker in Monterey for over 20 years and later retired from Tutco Inc. in Cookeville after 23 years – gaining lifelong friends and memories along the way from each. Being the worker that she was, the contentment of retirement didn’t last, and she found happiness and a new passion for life at Pleasant Hill Elementary School where she worked in the cafeteria until she was 75 years young – all with a wonderful group of co-workers and children who took her in as one of their own. For Brenda, life was relatively simple, and happiness was often found sitting in her swing basking under the summer solstice sky overlooking her pond, eating a good baked potato with equal parts butter and sour cream, a small sundae cone on a hot day, “wrench” dressing over a good salad, a moist lemon filled jelly donut while perusing Facebook posts, a cold Dr. Pepper over ice under a warm blanket near her heater – and when the hour called for it – a daily dose of Judge Judy. Never one to shy away from a good phone call with friends, she found countless hours of happiness chatting over past events and plans. To her many great friends and family, who all indelibly shared in her journey and looked after her throughout the years, may the magic of her life’s memories remain with you for as long as the stars hold their brightness – for the blessings you bestowed upon her life never left the warmth of her heart.

For her adoring son, for whom she unquestionably and unabashedly sacrificed everything throughout her life, the desolate silence echoing from the bitterly piercing void left by her absence is all but equal parts numbingly deafening and resoundingly irreparable. The palette of colors emanating from the prism that was her life gave warmth to the sharpest shimmers of the cold and imbued the brightest rays of sparkle down to the very depths of the deepest darks. With her passing, the hues of red have become conspicuously less vibrant, the greens lacking in their perpetual glow, the yellows stark in the empty scarcity of their brightness, the blues quieted from the boisterous sheen of their usual glistening – and it is with each hue’s encompassing dearth that the grays seemingly become more consuming in their preponderance of worldly tone. For her son, he wishes for his mother to know that while the world’s luster is but a tinge of its former shades – and all but now faded even in the immediate brevity of her absence – the warm luminescence emitting from the memories of her reclined in her favorite chair/swing after a long day, their daily lunchtime phone chats, the many weekly restaurant and travel adventures for which they routinely partook, the numerous motherly counseling sessions, the warmest of caresses amongst the coldest and painful of tears, the loving patches she sewed into the holes of both fabrics and life and the unremitting quizzical banter and joking for which she daily and mostly lovingly endured – are all eternally radiant beacons on an untrodden path for which no compass alone could fully guide his journey. For her remarkable devotion to his life, he will be eternally insolvent to the depths of her love.

Brenda is survived by her loving son: Nathan Brown of Crossville; brothers: Paul Wyatt, Frank Wyatt, and Jim Wyatt (Sheila) all of Crossville, Richard Simmons (Susie) of Cookeville, Powell Wyatt (Violet) of Monterey, and Hank Wyatt (Helen) of Detroit, Michigan; sisters: Norma Stover (Vaughn) of Crossville, Sue Reed of Monterey, Ann Phillips (Randy) of Monterey, and Judy Nakandakare (Rodney) of Clinton; half-brother: Gerald Wyatt of Crossville; and half-sisters: Jeanette Sween and Betty Cox, both of Land O’Lakes, Florida.

Brenda is additionally survived by her many nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews – along with a host of lifelong cherished friends.

In addition to her parents, Brenda was preceded in death by her infant sister: Patricia Ann Wyatt; half-brothers: Jake Wyatt and Howard Wyatt of Crossville; half-sisters: Ruth Estes of Nashville and Freda Carmack, of Fort Mill, South Carolina; and one very special banana loving Boxer named Amber (to whom Brenda grew to cherish greatly as they gracefully aged together).

Never liking to be the center of attention – and as per Brenda’s wishes – no funeral services will be held. Instead of services, and in honor of her loving memory, we simply ask you to hold those you love close and never forget the wonderful memories that Brenda helped bring into your life.

Arrangements and care are provided by Bilbrey Funeral Home and Cremation Services.