Biography for

Bill Holloway

Two years after graduation from high school on August 28, 1963, Bill and his brother Bob, at the suggestion of their father, hopped on a bus in Cleveland, sang freedom songs thru the night, and eventually found themselves standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, listening to Martin Luther King deliver his "I have a dream" speech. It was the first time in his life he was in a large crowd of mostly black people. It was a thrilling and heart-warming experience.

Bill worked his way through college at DePauw University as a psychology major, and as a junior he signed up for AFROTC because he needed the money. Rolling the calendar forward three years, he found himself flying C-130 cargo planes in Vietnam, dodging enemy fire, and landing on small jungle air strips in the middle of the night! It didn't make any difference how he felt about the war because he spent his energy keeping himself and his crewmates alive for the fourteen months he was there. In all he spent a total of five years flying all over the world and had many exciting and unusual adventures. After the war he returned to school at Miami University of Ohio where he received his M.S. in School Psychology and he worked as a school psychologist until 1996 when he retired.

Over the years he and his wife of 43 years, Jane, who worked as a social worker in drug prevention education, have volunteered in a youth anti-drug program called Youth-to-Youth. Two fantastic adventures resulted almost by chance from this involvement. The first, from 1991 to 2000, was a series of trips to Moscow Special English School #1205 in Moscow, USSR. Their specialty was in showing the Russians how to conduct a conference for middle school students called a "Trust Camp" where students could learn the social skills needed in a more democratic way of life. In November, 2010, the Trust Camp will be celebrating its 19th anniversary at the school.
The second adventure resulting from their Youth to Youth training was an invitation in 2005 to conduct an English camp in southern Thailand for orphans of the 2004 tsunami. Their purpose was to improve the English skills of graduating students so they could eventually replace the Thai tourist workers who were killed. During the month they were there Bill had an opportunity to make audio recordings of many of the student's stories and to collect color crayon drawings of their tsunami experiences.

In 1989 their oldest daughter, Kris, entered the American Peace Corps and was sent for two years to Mali, West Africa, which is among the poorest countries of the world and ranks second from the bottom in respecting women's rights. At the end of Kris' first year there, Bill and Jane and their youngest daughter, Pam, visited her for two weeks in her primitive mud hut in the small village of Nampossesila, 350 miles from the capitol of Bamako. Because Kris was living without electricity, running water, and sanitary facilities, they soon felt like helpless infants, completely dependent upon their daughter for daily basic needs. However, in a short period of time, with the help of a Malian midwife named Monique Dembele, Kris introduced them to an African social experience they could never have imagined.

Currently Jane and Bill have a "camp" on Highland Lake in Stoddard, NH, from June thru October where they gather with their daughters and their families. If you're passing through they invite you to contact them at wehollo@gmail.com.