Emeritus Professor Dr. Donald R. Holliday, who taught in the Department of English for over 30 years, passed away Aug. 24, 2024, in Nixa, Missouri.

Holliday was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Pinetop, Missouri, to Admiral Schley and Eva Mabel (Drane) Holliday. In his self-written obituary, Holliday described a hard-scrabble childhood on the family’s small tobacco farm.

After graduating from Hollister High School, Holliday enlisted in the U.S. Navy. One of his first assignments in the Navy was as an aviation boatswain’s mate to a guided missile cruiser during the Cuban missile crisis.

Holliday received full military honors at his burial in Gobblers Knob Cemetery, Hollister, Missouri, Sept. 7.

“First educational loves – learning and teaching”

Holliday began teaching at Missouri State in 1966 after having earned his master’s in English from University of Arkansas. He was granted educational leave to complete his PhD at the University of Minnesota. Holliday retired from MSU in 2001.

During his tenure at MSU, Holliday not only taught but also served as head of the English department in the 1980s, then as Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Letters for two years.

But in his obituary, Holliday wrote that his “first educational loves [were] learning and teaching.”

In particular, he was most proud of having developed the English department’s course on Mark Twain. The course “filled every semester it was taught, to overloads,” he wrote.

Holliday believed Twain was the most important writer in American literature “because, a century before any other notable writer took up the subject, Mark Twain tried to show Americans the stupidity and blindness not only of slavery, but of white superiority itself.”

Career focused on the Ozarks

Throughout his academic career, Holliday placed special emphasis on the Ozarks. In 1975, he helped create MSU’s Ozarks Studies program. Along with Drs. Robert Gilmore and Robert Flanders, Holliday also coedited the OzarksWatch Magazine, then became its editor from 1993-2001.

“I am especially grateful for his knowledge of and love for the Ozarks and his leadership in establishing our formal program in Ozarks Studies,” said emeritus professor of English Dr. Kris Sutliff, who worked alongside Holliday in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even his dissertation topic was about the Ozarks. In fact, professor of history and Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies Dr. Brooks Blevins could not help but marvel at how Holliday arrived at that topic, which researched an early Ozarks pioneer family – the Hollidays.

“Who else besides Don Holliday would have ventured up north to graduate school…and proceeded to convince his professors to let him write a dissertation about his own family?” Blevins said. “Now, this may have been right up there with the best sales jobs ever pulled off by someone from Taney County.”

“This was at the height of 1970s fascination with the Ozarks,” Blevins continued, “and the Hollidays of Pinetop must have seemed every bit as exotic and colorful as ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ to a set of Minnesota professors.”

Describing the dissertation as one of the best he had ever read, Blevins said it inspired him to include the Holliday family in his own work, the three-volume “A History of the Ozarks.”

“Don was a master storyteller, speaker and teacher, possessed of a combination of elite scholarly training, downhome horse sense and dry, store-porch wit,” Blevins said.

Mischievous and friendly colleague

Blevins described Holliday as a man who always had “a glimmer of mischievousness” in his eyes whenever he told a story.

“I suspect generations of students looked forward to that same sly look, that promised mixture of erudition and humor, in the classroom,” he said.

Senior instructor of English John Turner, a former managing editor of OzarksWatch, echoed that sentiment in his own remarks about Holliday.

“What I remember most about Don Holliday was his quick wit and the bemused twinkle in his eyes that always suggested that there was mischief to be made,” Turner said.

Likewise, senior instructor of English Lori Rogers remembered Holliday as a friendly, humor-filled colleague.

“I remember most his boisterous laugh coming through the halls,” Rogers said. “That laugh always made the day seem lighter, and it’s the first thing I thought of when hearing of his passing.”

Professor of English Dr. W.D. Blackmon said Holliday could sometimes come across as “tough,” or non-academic, almost like “a Navy Seal.”

“But he was a highly sophisticated academic and a compelling teacher and storyteller,” Blackmon added. “He treated everyone strictly with kindness and thoughtfulness.”

Elaborate prankster

Sutliff can attest to perceptions of Holliday’s “gruff” exterior, as well as the kind but mischievous persona behind it.

In the fall of 1980, she enrolled in Holliday’s Mark Twain course “solely for the enjoyment.” She found herself in a bit of a panic, however, after receiving her first graded paper from Holliday.

“I was horrified by the marks on mine,” she recalled. “I had misspelled a word in the title! I had a major grammatical error in the first paragraph! And on and on went the mistakes in both writing and thinking. I peeked at the second page. It was no better.”

Shocked and embarrassed, Sutliff “hightailed it” out of the classroom and spent a fitful night worrying about how and why she had produced such a terrible paper. The next day she showed the paper to the English department’s administrative assistant, Judith Enyeart Reynolds, who immediately began to laugh.

Sutliff described what happened next.

Stifling her laughter, Reynolds called Holliday, who was serving as department head at the time. He emerged from his office and told Sutliff how “disappointed” he had been with her paper.

“I started trying to convince him this really couldn’t be my paper,” Sutliff said. “Finally, Judy’s giggling got the best of him, and Holliday laughed and laughed.” He then explained to Sutliff what he had done.

“He had Judy go to the campus bookstore and buy paper with the same watermark and weight as the paper I had used,” Sutliff remembered. “Then she carefully retyped my paper, adding egregious errors, under Don’s guidance.”

Holliday then gave Sutliff her real paper, which had received an A and was marked with “kind comments,” Sutliff said.

“What a great joke those two pulled on me! And what great friends they both were to me over the years,” she added.

One of a kind

Holliday may have been a prankster, but he also had a gentler side.

“There was nothing off-putting or pretentious in him,” Rogers noted. “It was a delight to get to run into him during the day.”

Sutliff offered another memory to illustrate.

“One day I took my son’s six-week-old puppy to school to show Judy (Enyeart Reynolds),” Sutliff said. “Don…carefully took Shadow from me. He unbuttoned one button on his white shirt and tucked her inside, with just her head poking out. Soon she was asleep, and Don babysat her for the next hour.”

“Many things made me love and respect Don Holliday,” Sutliff added. “He was a very smart and kind man.”

Blevins agreed. “Don Holliday was truly one of a kind.”