MY DAD

      My dad, Richard Holms was adopted by The Holms' when he was five years old.  He did not know who his biological parents were until he was 42 years old.  He did not remember much of his life before he was adopted except that the family was very, very poor and that there were a lot of people living together.  He remembers going to the orphanage with his younger sister Sharon and this seemed like a big improvement to him.  The Holms', who were not able to have kids of their own came to visit the orphanage one day intending to adopt one child but left there with two;  my dad and Sharon who was three at the time.  The Holms' were good, hardworking, honest farm people and had deep family roots.  They lived on a 365 acre farm outside of La Junta and Mr. Holms' dad and mom lived on the farm too in a separate house.  This is where my dad grew up.  Later, the family moved into town but I'm not sure how old he was when that happened.  My dad was happy with them and I asked him one time if he ever wanted to find his biological parents and he said no, that as far as he was concerned The Holms' were his parents.  To this day they hold an annual  "Scoville Family Reunion" on the last weekend in July complete with documentation of the events, newspaper clippings, prizes awarded for different things and presidents and treasurers to organize it all beginning in 1935.  Much later, in 1983 when he was 42 years old and his parents both passed away he would do a search and find this family.  Turns out that, while it was very interesting to find another family, he definitely got the better end of the deal by being raised with the parents he was adopted to. But that is another story.  .As far as all of us kids went, we only knew them as our grandpa and grandma and we loved them dearly.  This is a picture of my dad when he was 18 years old:

Richard Holms 18 yrs old

Handsome Hu?  My girlfriends were all crazy about him even when I was in high school.

So dad was going to school in La Junta and had plans to go to college to become a large animal veterinarian when he and my mother met and it seems to be pretty much an instant attraction.  But there were some problems from the beginning that I could see while reading about their courtship.
     Mom was hopelessly in love with dad and always felt insecure about whether he really loved her and she was unhappy at home.  Remember she's dreaming of marriage and kids and thinks dad is the greatest and that she has found 'the one'.
        My dad is a young man and still likes to go hang out with the boys and drive fast cars. My dad really likes her but also feels that he is 'just a country boy' that a girl like that wouldn't be interested in and so he has insecurities about whether she really loves him.
     They both are kids and do things like playing games to make the other one jealous to see if they really like them.  This causes lots of problems in the beginning between them but it is clear that as time goes by they are both in love with each other and can't be apart.  But dad would have been willing to wait and finish school, mom wanted to get started on a family.
     My dad did continue to try to go to college.  But two years later another baby was born and than a year later another baby and at this point he had to give it up and ended up working on the Rail Road as an engineer.  I know this always bothered him very much.  It is because of him that I went to college and stayed in it.  He was encouraging and pushed me to "never quite".  As a family man he provided well for our family, was a hard worker, a firm and fair disciplinarian but at times was probably too hard in his approach.  He could be hard on my mother, constantly criticizing and ran a tight ship.  His outings with the boys continued too at times upsetting my mother very much.  But I remember him coming home and tossing us in the air when we were little.  I remember him working in the yard and keeping our house up nice and he didn't allow us kids to lay around in front of the TV either, if he was working, so were we, which we weren't too happy about. Little by little over the years these criticisms and hardness though took their toll on the marriage and eventually it wore my mother down and someone else stepped in to fill that void of romance and love she so desperately needed. My mother wrote a poem about this once called "Little Hurts".  It goes like this:

"Little Hurts"

Be careful of the little hurts,

     the smallest of them all

can generate resentment,

     that will spread from wall to wall.

Think twice before you hack away

     at dignity and pride.

Remember it's the little things

     that churn around inside.

Don't harbor try-fulling grudges,

     they seem to have a sneaky way

of sprouting ten feet tall

     if they are lived with every day.

Don't under rate a brief caress

     a fleeting kiss or touch.

A gentle little touch that says;

     I love you very much.

For married life at first is like

     a field of virgin earth

and on each little seed you sow

     depends it's future worth.

So give it tender love and care

     and you will surely reap

a harvest full of memories

     to cherish and to keep.

Sue Holms

MY MOM

     My mom was born in La Junta, Colorado on February 27, 1944 to Betty and Bob Dowler.  At some point her parents moved to California.  That is where she is living when her diary starts.  Her parents are divorced, she's living with her father and stepmother and it's January 1960 so she's 15 years old, about to turn 16.  There are several moves in mom's life after this point and I'm assuming several moves before as her mother had been married several times and my mother had various step fathers or boyfriends she did not always like.    She was not happy living with her dad and stepmother and step siblings and felt like that they just wanted her there to do all the cooking and cleaning and and in March of 1960 she moves to La Junta, Colorado to live with her mother leaving her father, brother and a sister behind.  She enrolls in the La Junta High School and is well liked and makes friends easily.  She and her friends go to the local drive in movie show, shop at the local stores for clothes, and 'hang out' together, sometimes spending the night at each other's house.  She has several boys who are interested in her and she in them and it seems that most of what the girls talked about together was who was going with who and who would marry who and having a family and kids.  She and her mother have frequent arguments over various things; clothes, her mother's boyfriends, cleaning, etc. and this does not seem to be a new thing.  They have three more moves in the next 8 months and eventually end up living with, or next to, her grandmother.  This is a picture of her at about 18 years old.  It's the earliest one I have.  She is sitting in front of a piano which she could play pretty well.  It's a piano I still have in my living room now.

Sue Holms Dec. 26, 1963, 18 years old

According to her diary and letters from friends, mom was the same then as she was when I knew her later one.  She was happy, kind, and honest.  People were drawn to her and loved her.  She was an excellent mother and wife.  She did not work, staying home to take care of us.  She loved animals and took in every stray in the neighborhood which didn't make my dad very happy.  When she met people they remembered her and she was the one who brought people together as friends and mended disputes between friends.  Our house was the gathering place in the neighborhood, another thing my dad wasn't too happy about.  Not that I could blame him really I guess when you come home from working hard you'd like to see your family and some dinner.  My friends in school came to her for advice and support before they went to their own parents saying that she listened and cared.  And it's true she did.  She would have taken in all the stray kids in too if dad would have let her.  I can say that at 17 years old she was my best friends and I thought she was the most wonderful person in the world.  She hated gossip and stayed on the positive side of things and always had a smile.  I miss her.

THE DIARY

      As I said, my mother kept a diary which begins July 1960 so she would have been 16 years old at the time.  No one thought very much about this diary and it had been long forgotten.  After my mom had been dead about 5 years, my grandparents died and my dad and his sister were going through my grandparents belongings, cleaning out the house and they found this diary hidden away in the basement.  I read it page for page.  It was so interesting because she spoke of businesses, stores, and people that I was familiar with in a town that had hardly changed.  Also because you read of a time in the sixties with their hairstyles, slang, interests, concerns and worries.  She wrote about arguments she and her mother, my grandmother, had and about good times too.  I learn who her friends were and where she worked and what pets she owned.  When they moved and where.  But mostly I could read about and follow the courtship of my parents right up until the time when she became pregnant with me.  She was a kind and caring person who people loved even then.
     She begins her diary saying that she and Richard, my dad, broke up that night.  She wrote about him constantly and I do mean constantly, worrying about how, when and if they would get back together again and about whether he loved her like she loved him.  Reveling in the times they spent together and down and depressed when they didn't.  By January of 1961 they are going steady and are either having sex or pretty close to it as she places a code (x) by times they are together.  They reminded me of the 1961 movie Splendor In The Grass staring  Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty about a young in love in the 1920's struggling with sexual repression and guilt.  (No wonder my parents liked that movie so much).  They are 16 & 19 years old.  My dad is now in College doing well and she's in High School but not doing so well.  All she can think about is 'Rich', and she and her mother argue daily.  It becomes too much for her, and in February she decides to go live with an aunt and uncle in New Mexico.
     She and my dad write each other daily and he comes to see her in July.  They spend six days together and sleep together (x) outside 'under the stars' at least twice. She writes on July 4th 1961; "Slept outside tonite again & this time it was pretty bad.  Seems like we came pretty close-but am sure nothing happened.  Love him very much. Wish he'd never go home!"   This happens to be her ovulation period I know because she's been writing when she starts her periods and I'm able to back track it.  Ten days later she packs up and moves back to La Junta.  Of course she misses her period that month which was due to start on the 18th.  She tells my dad and things kind of begin to spiral out of control as the parents get involved.  Her mother is mad at her and mad at my dad, his parents are really mad, mostly at her and say that the baby is not dad's.  This causes my dad to doubt and he confronts my mother about it and she is devastated that  he would doubt her loyalty and love to him.  And in truth, in her diary while there is numerous mentions of 'other boys' who like to flirt and try to ask her out she does stay devoted to her love for my dad and says that "just the idea of any other boy touching me except Rich repulses me".  But by September the rings are bought, license signed and they are married.  Much to the dismay of his parents.

This is them on their wedding day:

Richard & Sue Holms 1961

They are 17 & 20 years old and she is about 2 months pregnant with me.

Isn't it odd how the foundations of a relationship are laid in the beginning?  This scenario never changed for the next 15 years of their married life.  He having conflicting emotions between his love for her and his desires for his future, she having insecurities about whether he loves her, his parents never fully accepting her or me.  Much to their credit though, I never did know this until after they were both gone.  We felt love and happiness when we came to see our grandparents.  One thing is for sure though, there were pictures of Sharon's kids all over the house and very little of us.  That's the only sign I ever saw.  Even now.  And as far as my parents went, I think it was the same, they loved each other but there were tensions but we never knew it.  They were very affectionate to one another and arguments were kept between the two of them.  It was only towards the end of their marriage, maybe the last 6 months or so that I ever saw them fight and I can tell you it was scary to me.

IN THE BEGINNING

     This story really begins before I, or any of us were born.  It begins with my parents, Richard and Sue Holms.  They were young, just 16 and 18 years old when they met.  They would be married 16 years and that marriage would end in divorce.  But in the beginning they were in love.  I know this because my mother saved things.  Letters written between she and her friends when she was 15 years old, letters between she and my dad, poems she wrote and a diary she kept for almost 2 years from the time she was 16 years old until she was 17 years old, 7 months before I was born.  Through these letters I was able to put together a pretty complete scenario of their early years together. I found these things interesting not only because of the insight I gained into their lives and thus mine, but also because it is written during a time in the early 60's.  I found it fascinating to go back in time and see it through a young girl's mind.  I know I was conceived in love and I also know that there was a lot of controversy around the pregnancy and that some people wanted my mother to abort the pregnancy (me) so I'm glad I'm here today telling this story.  I am the oldest of five children that would be born to them.  My name is Debbie.

  Anyways, my parents met in high school in the small town of La Junta, Colorado.  Not in the pretty area of Colorado, near the mountains but in more of a dull, flat place.  But the mountains were only an hour or so away.  The town was primarily a farming and ranching community and my dad's family had roots pretty deep there with lots of Aunts, Uncles and Cousins.  I remember dad wearing cowboy hats daily and friends and family with various ranches and farms.  Get-togethers with homegrown food and kind country people.  This was before Wal Marts and big chain grocery stores.  You had your downtown Randall's Drug Store, small individually owned clothing Stores, churches and a very nice park with a duck pond in the middle that would freeze over in the winter and then there was ice skating.  This is where all of us kids would be born, except for my sister Jill who was born in Fort Collins, Colorado and it was a nice place.  Still is.

INTRODUCTION

     This is the story of a family, the Holms'.  It's the story of five kid's struggle to cope with loss, heartache and tragedy.  It's the story of how, in an instant, unexpected events can change everything you know to be true and good and right and how your whole world can be turned upside down, changing everything about who you are or ever were going to be.  It is my story as seen through my eyes.  It is a story that is in my heart desiring to be told.  As the title suggests there were five of us kids; Me (Debbie), Jill, Rick, Dean and Reisa in that order.  The story at times is different as seen through their eyes but theirs is not my story to tell.  I only have my own version of things.  Whether it is interesting to anyone else or not remains to be seen.  It is written in memory of my mother and father, both now deceased and in honoring my brothers and sisters who have traveled this journey too in their own way.  I love you all.  This is a picture of our family in 1973:

All the Holms' June 1973

Back Row: Reisa, Sue, Dean, Richard

.  Front Row: Jill, Debbie, Richy,

A MEMOIR

My mother died when I was 17 yrs old.  She was 35.  She was killed in a car accident.  She fell asleep driving one night and ran into the back of an 18 wheeler and was killed instantly.   That night she had a special job she was doing.  She had been picked as the hostess from her Steak and Ale to go to a job in Houston to represent her Steak and Ale from the Clear Lake area. So, she got off late and was tired and that's how she ended up dying in a car accident.  At home there were 5 kids asleep.  I was the oldest and that night I left a note for her on the kitchen table asking her to wake me up when she got home and let me know she got home safely.  She never did.