Patricia Holland, wife of LDS Church Elder Jeffrey Holland, dies at 81
-
- Sister Patricia T. Holland makes her remarks to an expansive crowd at the groundbreaking event for the Provo City Center Temple on May 12, 2012, in Provo.
-
- President Russell M. Nelson, president and prophet of the church, hugs sister Patricia T. Holland as he looks to other church leaders after the morning session of the 188th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints held Saturday, Oct. 6, 2018, at the church’s Conference Center in Salt Lake City.
-
- Elder Jeffery R. Holland, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his wife, Patricia Holland.
Patricia Holland, wife of Elder Jeffrey Holland and herself an influential figure in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died Thursday after a brief stint in the hospital, the church announced.
No reason for the hospitalization was shared publicly and funeral arrangements are pending.
Holland was 81 years old. She was most known for her time as a counselor in the Young Women General Presidency from 1984 until 1986, four different stints as a Relief Society president and as “first lady” of Brigham Young University during her husband’s tenure as the university’s president.
“She was a mother to that whole campus,” Jeffrey Holland said in the church announcement. “We wanted to be parents of that campus.”
Patricia Holland grew up in southern Utah, meeting her eventual husband while attending Dixie High School, according to her BYU biography. She attended the LDS Business College and Dixie College, now Utah Tech University, before studying at New York City’s Juilliard School.
The two were married in June 1963, have three children and 13 grandchildren. Their children are Matt Holland, former president of Utah Valley University and a General Authority Seventy of the church; David Holland, John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School; and author Mary Holland McCann.
“Every night was a kind of family home evening filled with laughter, compliments, encouragement, interesting conversation, testimony and expressions of love,” Matt Holland said of his childhood.
McCann spoke of her mother’s influence in a 2021 episode of “All in. An LDS Living Podcast.”
“I learned to love the scriptures, before I could even read them, because my mother loved them. And she didn’t have to do a lot of teaching and family home evening lessons about reading the scriptures. Sometimes we’d get gentle reminders, but even those weren’t necessary because my brothers and I each grew up knowing that you just love the scriptures. And that’s what our mom does and that’s what we do,” McCann said. “I mean, who doesn’t hear their mother’s voice in their ear when they’re thinking about things or deciding things or see their mother in their mind’s eye?”
Holland’s time and energy spent being a mother was vital her, going back decades. In several devotionals at BYU, she said her experience giving birth to her children gave her a glimpse of God’s love.
“The love that I felt as I realized it was my body, my strength, my constant nourishment that was giving life to my children formed a bond that is like nothing else in this world — nothing else, that is, expect for that love our father in heaven extends to us,” she said in 1982. “You see, once you’ve given life, you never stop giving to it.”
Holland was a regular sight alongside her husband, sitting and walking with him for each general conference he attended. She also wrote several books including “A Quiet Heart, and Strength and Stillness: A Message for Women.”
In its announcement, the church praised Holland’s faith, saying it “blessed the entire Church” and spoke to generations of members.
“Her faith has always been as pure and powerful and strong as any person I have ever known. She’s a very charitable person. She has given and given and given of her time and of her love all of her life,” Jeffrey Holland said.
