Sister Patricia T. Holland, former general officer and wife of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, dies at age 81 after faith-filled life
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After a faith-filled life defined by dedication, service and testimony, Sister Patricia Terry Holland — the wife of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles — died Thursday, July 20, at the age of 81.
A former general officer in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sister Holland — the mother of three, grandmother of 13 and great-grandmother of 5 — will be remembered for her constant support of her husband and their efforts to share love and light in nations across the world.
Born Feb. 16, 1942, in Enterprise, Utah, to Maeser W. and Marilla Terry, Sister Holland embodied the faith and legacy of her pioneer ancestors. That faith carried her from the isolated farming community of her youth to marriage and motherhood, general Church leadership and the visibility of her husband’s callings and — in recent years — through illness that illustrated her tenacity and character.
Raised in Enterprise, one of two daughters in a family that also included five sons, Sister Holland was a self-proclaimed “tomboy”; she loved horses and dogs, milked cows and drove pickup trucks, and worked with a capacity that matched her brothers.
Most important, in the southern Utah community that included generations of pioneering Latter-day Saints — most of them aunts, uncles or cousins — Patricia was surrounded by extended family that descended from a long line of believers who were steeped in a tradition of faith.
“I couldn’t get away with anything,” she said in a 2018 Church News interview.
Families lived on what they could raise in the “very rural community,” and “people relied on what they could do with their hands,” she said. Everyone expected things to be hard.
Because of that, faith was “in the blood, it was in the air, it was in the concrete, it was in the lumber,” said Elder Holland.
Added Sister Holland: “You told faith-promoting stories and recalled ancestors who sacrificed.”
When she was 16 years old, her parents moved to St. George so their only daughter would have someone to date. She met Jeffrey Holland. “He was smart. He was a wonderful student,” she said. “He knew how to make friends. He had this just wonderful ability to make people feel good.”
After attending Dixie College, supporting Elder Holland in his missionary service, and studying piano and voice with a faculty member of Juilliard School of Music in New York City, she married her high school sweetheart on June 7, 1963, in the St. George Utah Temple.
Almost six decades later, while reflecting on the connection she shared with Elder Holland, Sister Holland would say, “I still continue to learn from my husband’s brilliant mind.”
