Mark Holiday was born and grew up in Valley City, North Dakota. He moved to Minnesota after high school graduation to attend St. John’s University. He soon found a calling in the Catholic Church and spent the next 20 years as a Benedictine monk, in Minnesota and later in the Bahamas. It was in the Bahamas where he began a lifetime of teaching, at St Augustine’s school on Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas.
Judith Holiday was born and raised in Midland, Michigan. Her father was a Dow Chemical Co. employee, so she grew up in a community with many scientists, and had a healthy respect for science. She enjoyed exciting Christmas celebrations with extended family at her grandmother’s home. She retained loyalties to Michigan food specialties and to Michigan sports teams lifelong. But within a week of graduation from high school she left for the mountains of Colorado and never looked back. She was an avid skier in the early days of Aspen, and earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Denver.
Judith and Mark met at St. Leo’s University in San Antonio, Florida, north of Tampa. Mark was a monk working to finish his bachelor’s degree, after the new approval of higher education for monks in Vatican II. Judith worked on a certificate in teaching. They were both older students on a small campus and soon found common interests in history, the Church, art, and even politics. They fell in love and Mark finished his service as a monk. They were married in a small ceremony in Florida in June of 1971 and travelled immediately to Colorado where Mark started his work as a teacher, and Judith as a minister and chaplain, and both worked on educating Doc to the intricacies of life outside the monastery; in his fifth decade of life, Doc had never written a check, and all his belongings fit in one small trunk.
They chose not to have children, but in 1980 Judith’s 10-year-old nephew from Michigan, Michael Sanford (Chip), came to live with them. Chip was a way to complete the family and share their lives. And to face new challenges: how would Judith share her hammock; who would get to eat Doc’s fresh-baked bread heels; who would walk the dogs? The newly-constituted family continued the passion for Basenjis (Central African hunting dogs), which Judith learned from her parents, with as many as six living in the house at one time, each going on separate walks.
While teaching in the Bahamas Mark had recognized the crucial importance of learning in the early grades. At the University of Denver he studied child development, especially language and vocabulary acquisition in 9-11-year olds. For this work he was awarded the Ph.D. in 1986. Early given the nickname “Doc” – after the Doc Holliday who was with Wyatt Earp in the gunfight at the OK Corral – Doc was at last a proper ‘Doc’! He put his theory into practice, teaching elementary grades in the Littleton public schools until retirement, and teaching on a voluntary basis thereafter.
Judith, with her love of history, began research in her mother’s family, the Landsboroughs, and was able with help to trace the family back to the 900’s in Scotland! Judith and Doc traveled to Scotland and upon returning joined St Andrew’s Society. They spent much time and effort working with the Basenji Club of America and the St Andrew’s Society of Colorado, contributing heavily to the events of both organizations.
Through attendance at anti-war rallies, and acquaintance with Mike Yarrow, Doc and Judith found Mountain View Friends Meeting, and soon made it their spiritual home. They both saw in Friends’ practices the constant presence of God in everything that we do – as St. Benedict had seen it in the 6th century. Judith reflected late in life, that she wished they had found Quakerism earlier.
Doc served Mountain View Friends in various capacities, including the Finance Committee and the Prison Visitation and Support group. He was for many years a faithful prison visitor, modeling for prisoners the possibilities of non-manipulative friendship which many had not experienced. Meanwhile Judith took up the challenge of incorporating Centennial as a city. She went door to door in the campaign, and was proud of how well the new city was run.
Chip moved to Florida where he married Mollie and they had two children. Doc and Judith delighted in annual visits with their adoring grandchildren, Dylan and Isabelle, especially enjoying sharing their love of books and reading.
Their lives slowed as Doc’s memory began to fail, and Judith faced significant health issues. At the onset of Doc’s dementia, one prisoner wrote “We knows he’s failing, but hope he’ll keep visiting, so that we can take care of Doc for a change.” Doc continued enjoying attendance at meeting for worship at Mountain View, even after he had ceased to understand the spoken messages.
They repeatedly refused to move to Florida to be closer to the grandchildren. Instead, a group of loyal friends, both new and old, helped them to remain in their home of fifty years.
Doc and Judith had a passionate love of reading, language, literature, and politics. Dinner table conversations always ranged widely. And their deep spirituality and earnest desire to make the world a better place led to never-ceasing activism.
Doc was an early victim of the COVID virus, in April of 2020. His ashes were spread at the Snowmass monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. Judith succumbed to renal failure and cancer – but not till she had voted in the 2020 presidential election. Chip was present as she died on November 5, 2020 at Porter Hospice a few miles from their home in Centennial, and was able to reassure her of the outcome of the election.
At a joint memorial service for Doc and Judith, two score friends of theirs, longstanding and recent, from within and without the Meeting, gathered to remember them. Recurrent themes in the ministries were the wonder of the long and happy marriage of one so fiery and active and another so calm and serene. And the joy that lighted up Doc’s face when the children would come in to share in the last 15 minutes of meeting for worship.