Alanson Perry Holly by Mary Higgins – 2/21/79

Wedding Pictures - 1905

Alanson Perry Holly

Mabel Elizabeth Barbour

Alanson Perry Holly by Mary Higgins – 2/21/79

Daddy loved his family – wonderful times we had in Lafayette on Grant St, - Take a picnic and and go to Steeley's Woods. We looked for an named the lovely wild-flowers. He was always finding ways to go on short trips – Turkey Run State Park, a favorite spot. He loved to travel; always wanted to be an explorer. So, as children, he red to us about Roosevelt – in darkest Africa, Bird at the Pole, Scott at the North Pole, Amundson (we heard him lecture) Northwest Passage in that small boat, Beebe underseas, etc. Read to us James Whitcomb Riley, always Dickens “Christmas Carol” and Dingley Dell Party.

He took us to the Vaudeville. We called it the Line Show. One time, when Helen was about four years old, we saw Sophie Tucker. She came out in a spangled dress and a feather bow around her neck. All was quiet and Helen said in a loud voice, “Oh Spush!” - One of Daddy's favorite sayings.

He taught us to be inventive – don't buy something – make it. He taught us never to be snobbish or think we had something more than the other fellow. He was never a racist. Taught us always to appreciate the black. We went to their churches; always heard Frisk University colored choir, etc.

He was an impeccable dresser; an executive in every sense of the word; took interest in all his employees, and they loved him.

But to me, the greatest gift he brought us was Christian Science.

So as Mrs Eddy says in Ret and Int page 21 - “It is well to know – that our material, mortal history is but a record of dreams, not of men's real existence, and the dream has no place in the science of being. The heavenly intent of earth's shadows is to chasten the affections, to rebuke human consciousness and turn it gladly from a material, false sense of life and happiness, to spiritual joy and true estimate of being... The human history needs to be revised, and the material record experienced. ---- The real man is not of the dust, nor is he created through the flesh; for his father and mother are the One Spirit, and his brethren are all the children of one parent, the eternal good.”

When you asked me to write about Daddy, this is what I found – and it truly is the answer. For I cherish the God-like qualities Daddy expresses now, and those qualities he lived make up my concept of him.