Educator Elsie G. Holland dies at 73

Five-year-old Elsie cried when her older brother went to school because she couldn't go, too.

She went anyway, unenrolled, though she was younger than the minimum starting age by a few months. She credited the head start with her graduation from Dinwiddie Training School, an all-black high school, at age 15 and college at 19.

Dr. Elsie Goodwyn Holland was born in 1935 in McKenney in rural Dinwiddie County, the daughter of a school janitor. She earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia State College (now a university) in 1955 and her master's there in 1969. She was 37 when she moved to an apartment in Charlottesville to earn her doctorate in elementary education from the University of Virginia, graduating in 1975. Her husband continued to live and work in Richmond.

Dr. Holland died Sunday at age 73. A funeral will be held Friday at 11 a.m. at Big Bethel Baptist Church in McKenney.

She became active in politics as a Republican in the late 1970s and served as director of Equal Opportunity and Employment practices in the state Department of Personnel and Training during the administration of Gov. John N. Dalton. He appointed her to the VSU board of visitors.

Later, she was the first minority woman to serve on the U.Va. board of visitors. Gov. George Allen appointed her to that board in 1994, and Gov. Jim Gilmore reappointed her. She served a total of nine years.

In 1996, she unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Robert C. Scott, a Democrat, for eastern Virginia's 3rd Congressional District seat. She said the main issues of her campaign were reducing the size of the federal government, simplifying the tax code and allowing school choice.

"For everything Bobby voted yes on, I would have voted no on," she said in a 1996 interview in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "I'm offering the voters a choice."

In 1994, U.Va. Rector Hovey S. Dabney welcomed Dr. Holland's appointment to the board of visitors.

"She's an outstanding educator, and she was in Charlottesville at one time . . . so we're mighty glad to have her back," Dabney, who died in 2007, told The Times-Dispatch.

Dr. Holland was principal of Stony Point Elementary School in Albemarle County in 1974-75. She also worked as a reading specialist and English teacher in the Powhatan County and Petersburg school systems. She taught in Richmond, Fredericksburg and Chesterfield County and was an assistant supervisor for the state Department of Education.

"She was always focused on children," said her husband, Kenneth Holland of Richmond. "She encouraged them to get their degree and further their education."

Dr. Holland's family described her as conservative, outgoing, opinionated and motivated.

She was a founding member of Womensbank in Richmond, the first modern Southern bank founded by women and the first women's bank in the United States to have a branch facility.

She was on the board of the Richmond chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a leader in the Capital City Republican Women's Club.

Besides her husband, Dr. Holland is survived by her mother, Etta Goodwyn, and sisters Debra Morgan and Gloria Harvell, all of McKenney; two brothers, William H. Goodwyn Jr. of McKenney and Larry Goodwyn of Petersburg; an aunt, an uncle, seven nieces and two nephews, and many great-nieces and nephews.

When she was assistant principal at Jacob L. Adams Elementary School in Henrico County in 1974, Dr. Holland told The Times-Dispatch that although people who have doctoral degrees usually hold administrative jobs, "my experience told me I would be happiest close to the children."