Lucile Holleman

Lucile S. Holleman, 95, of Bainbridge, GA, passed away Friday, October 17, 2008 at Memorial Hospital. The memorial service will be at 2:00 p.m. Sunday, October 19, 2008 at First Presbyterian Church with Dr. Gerald A. Little officiating. The family will receive friends immediately following the service in the sanctuary. Online visitors may sign the guest register at www.iveyfuneral.com . Mrs. Holleman was born October 20, 1912 in Bulloch County, GA, the daughter of Paul Suddath and Pearl Hulsey Suddath. She graduated from Portal (GA) High School and received her B.S. in Home Economics from Georgia Southern University. She was a home economist with Georgia Power Company and a dietician at Bulloch County Hospital and North Georgia Technical Vocational School in Clarkesville, GA. In Statesboro, she was a member of a garden club and the Cotillion Club. She was a member of First Presbyterian Church in Bainbridge. She was preceded in death by her husband, Nath G. Holleman, and a daughter, Harriet H. Hollingsworth. Survivors include her daughter, Lucy H. Yeats and her husband Richard of Bainbridge, GA; her son, N. G. "Bud" Holleman and his wife Michele of Bainbridge, GA; 6 grandchildren, Robbie Yeats, Richie Yeats, Valerie Y. Robertson, Natalie Holleman, Holley Martin, and John Hollingsworth; and 8 great-grandchildren. Lucile S. Holleman October 20, 1912 - October 17, 2008 (Comments of Bud Holleman at her memorial service) I had been pondering the question of whether I should expose myself to the challenge of speaking at the Memorial Service. Lots of differing thoughts crossed my mind: I needed to be sure that I did not miss a sharing-moment with many folks who only knew a part of the story of our mother; there was too much to try to squeeze into a small segment of time (being brief has never been one of my strengths . . .); someone from the family should say something, one last time, about a wonderful person who had influenced so many lives through her own life. Yet there was the emotional side of me that could block the message. In the midst of my introspective questioning, Jerry called and asked me to be the one to speak . . . another "intervening God thing" I guessed. So here I am today, promising to be brief, while I take a couple of minutes in tribute to add a few lines of explanation to her visit here on earth. Having something written should help with your concerns about my brevity as well as my concerns about being able to deliver the message. I won't attempt to tell you the history of Lucile Holleman. There are too many events she lived through, ranging from the great depression, two world wars, days of limited electricity and plumbing, to days of nuclear power and times of triumphs and tragedy that most Americans experienced. There were lots of hard times in which sacrifice was a way of life, and yet somehow bitterness never got a real toe-hold on her, even through the wartime loss of her only two brothers. The focus was always on what they had, not on what they lost. She had lost two brothers, but God had left her with a younger sister, Dorothy (Aunt Dot to Lucy and me and many other kids; and Mother to Randy and Betty Bates). They had parents who knew and shared with Mother and Aunt Dot the knowledge of Eternity. Therein lay the real building blocks of life: A life of Gratitude and Service. Mother didn't know it was possible to take five years to get a college degree, but she did know that she was going to have the great, almost unheard of scholarship these days: The "W-O-R-K Every Time You Get a Chance Scholarship" and it proved to be very motivating for her on her way to a degree in home economics in considerably less than five years and becoming a registered dietician. Her life's vocation also became an avocation, seemingly never missing an opportunity to use her God given talents to help folks. She also understood that it was OK to be the recipient of help from others, as long as you didn't neglect making an honest effort yourself. In all the seriousness of life, marriage, and family, she always managed to remember the need for laughter and seemed to attract a lot of people who embraced a similar philosophy. Practical jokers young and old were drawn to her like a magnet. I must say she handled their "attention" better than I would. I remember a story of when she was a very young school teacher in Wrightsville, GA and one of her elementary-age students was smitten by her. In his legitimate attempts to gain her affection he placed a gift in her desk drawer for her to find. A gift that wasn't too easy to come by and certainly not too easy to place in the school teacher's desk. I can more than imagine, (having heard Mother tell this story on several occasions) the very real heart-stopping surprise she felt when she pulled out her drawer and found a very much live snake! I suppose the intent was for the boy to become the rescuer of the damsel in distress, but as recollect, the story didn't end that way and the whole class was given a brief lesson in colorful language and the school principal given the position of animal control officer with the privilege of returning the creature to the wild. Mother loved Nature and passed that love on to me. My dad taught me about hunting and the safety functions required to be a hunter, and he tried to teach golf to me (a lesson which by all accounts didn't stick too well and must have been a source of frustration to him) and Mother taught me to enjoy fishing. Notice, I didn't say that she tried to teach me how to fish: she understood that it was way more important to enjoy being at the pond than it was to see how many fish you could catch. We usually accomplished both objectives, but always the first one. I don't know how many times we stopped, but pretty much every time, and thanked God for His gift of Nature. She never seemed to meet a stranger (a characteristic that she and Daddy both possessed). She loved people and loved to fill the house with people of all ages. Cooking was her passion and boy could she get passionate about it! A lot of the recipes were written down on the back of envelopes and on what is now faded yellow pieces of paper (yes, Lucy, I know you have them!). No matter how I tried, I never quite succeeded in duplicating the results. Lucy, on the other hand, had and still has the touch. Well, I am about to run out of my self-imposed time allotment today. So let me sum up by saying that Mother recognized the importance of being thankful and never missing an opportunity to express thanks to those folks here on earth, but most importantly to God the Father. Lucy and I feel very fortunate to have been given so much time with this wonderful lady. Mother wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but she did have a desire to understand the Perfect Will of God and on October 17th she reached that goal. And to that I say Halleluiah and Praise be to God!