How Sister Holland’s Strength Powered Elder Holland
Jeff and Pat Holland arrived in Provo, Utah, to attend Brigham Young University as former high school sweethearts who possessed little more than their love and some big emotions.
“We went to BYU with everything we owned in a secondhand Chevrolet,” wrote Sister Patricia Holland in one of her books. Sister Holland died Thursday, July 20, at the age of 81.
“We were not uneasy. We were not frightened. We were terrified,” she wrote. “We were little hayseeds from St. George, Utah,” which then had a population of about 5,000.
Their apartment cost $45 a month and had two rooms and a shower. There would be a moment of deep crisis, a crossroads. That moment is my favorite story about the Hollands’ marriage, because it exemplifies their love and teamwork. First a little context:
As Pat Terry reached high school age, her parents moved the family to St. George, where Jeff Holland was a football and basketball star. She was a cheerleader who would study voice and piano at Juilliard. They dated for two years beginning when he was 17 and she was 16.
She immediately, and for the rest of their lives, had a powerful impact on Elder Jeffrey R. Holland.
“Pat came from a very missionary-oriented family,” he said after he was called as an apostle in 1994. “And from the beginning of our courtship there was no question in her mind that I would go on a mission. I was already planning to go, but my desire was also fostered by Pat. By the time I was 19, wild horses could not have restrained me from going.”
They married in the St. George Temple on June 7, 1963.
During their first semester after marrying, they were, as she wrote, “two vulnerable, frightened, newly married BYU students ... fighting back the tears and facing the future with all the faith they could summon.”
“We had absolutely no money. Zero,” Elder Holland wrote in one of his books. “For a variety of reasons, neither of our families was able to help finance our education. We had a small apartment just south of campus — the smallest we could find: two rooms and a half bath. We were working too many hours trying to stay afloat financially, but we had no other choice.”
One day in August 1963, they were walking up the hill past the Maeser Building on the BYU campus between the old president’s home and the Brimhall building. Elder Holland suddenly felt overwhelmed, he wrote, “with the challenge I felt — new family, new life, new education, no money and no confidence.”
He fought back tears. They had plans not only for undergraduate degrees but for graduate school. It felt insurmountable, he wrote.
“Do you think we can do it?” he asked her. “Do you think we can compete with all these people in all these buildings who know so much more than we do and are so able? Do you think we’ve made a mistake? Then I said, ‘Do you think we should withdraw and go home?’”
He told her he could make a good living without a degree. She said no.
“She grabbed me by the lapels and said, ‘We are not going back. We are not going home. The future holds everything for us,’” Elder Holland wrote. “She stood there in the sunlight that day and gave me a real talk. ... So we laughed, kept walking and finished up sharing a root beer — one glass, two straws — at the then newly constructed Wilkinson Center.”
Elder Holland finished multiple graduate degrees, and they went on to stand side by side at the Marriott Center podium to give devotionals together while he was BYU’s president and at podiums around the world during his apostleship.
There are many tributes to Sister Holland and her achievements now circulating, including this Church News story and a personal remembrance from Sister Sheri Dew. But years later, as illustrated that day on a BYU sidewalk, Sister Holland recognized one of her strengths in her complementary partnership with Elder Holland.
“I feel that I am at the pinnacle of my creation when I am comforting and consoling my husband,” she said. “Nothing is more rewarding or brings me more joy. The sweetest sounds I hear are spoken when Jeff whispers to me, ‘You are my anchor, my foundation, my reassurance. I could never do this job without you.’”
Sister Holland’s funeral is open to the public. It will be held on Friday at 11 a.m. at the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City. The service will be broadcast online here.
