Holroyd leads city into the holidays

By TAMMIE TOLER

PRINCETON — For more than a century, the Holroyd family has stood among Princeton’s leaders in medical, legal, political and civic arenas. Nov. 30, that influence will include ushering in the holiday season in the city the Holroyds have long served.

Robert E. “Bob” Holroyd will lead the Princeton Christmas Parade as the grand marshal presiding over the procession that will make its way up Mercer Street and conclude at the Mercer County Courthouse.

As a Princeton native, U.S. Marine Corps veteran, attorney and political activist, Holroyd was a natural choice to lead the parade, organizers Mary Frances Williams and Gaynell Steuber said.

“His family has been in Mercer County since the early 1800s, and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather have all been physicians at all three of the hospitals in Princeton,” Williams said.

Holroyd was born in 1931, the son of Virginia Lazenby and Dr. Frank Jack Holroyd. Growing up, he was active at the First Baptist Church and excelled in the Boy Scouts, where he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. As a student at Princeton Senior High School, Holroyd took a step toward his professional career as a member of the award-winning debate team.

When it came time for college, Holroyd headed for Morgantown, where he majored in political science and speech at West Virginia University, but the Korean Conflict disrupted his education for a time.

Holroyd enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served for three years before returning to the Mountain State to finish his education. In 1958, he returned to Princeton to practice law, and he’s been hard at work inside the city ever since.

One of his favorite endeavors as a local leader was clearly his term in the Junior Chamber of Commerce, or the Jaycees. Holroyd and retired Concord University accounting instructor Harry Finkelman are the only two surviving charter members of the Princeton organization.

Sitting inside his East Main Street office recently, Holroyd smiled as he remembered the battles young businessmen waged to bring new business to Princeton and safeguard the industry that was here. One of those fights arrived on the railroad.

“We took on the Norfolk-Western Railroad Company when they tried to merge with the Virginian,” he said. “We assumed they would try to close the place down, which they did. At that time, we had close to 2,000 people working on the railroad here, and we wanted to keep those jobs here.”

Norfolk-Western, which later became Norfolk Southern, ultimately acquired the Virginian, and as the Jaycees had predicted, the Princeton shops were soon idled.

“Anyway, we lost that fight, and we were right on that one,” Holroyd said. “Then, we got into the fight over the direction I-77 was going to go.”

The two proposed routes both used Princeton as an interchange, but from there, the road could either turn toward Giles County, Va., or Bland County, Va. The Jaycees hoped planners would send the road through Giles County and open that area for development through easy access. Eventually, highways officials sent I-77 through Bland County. Although it took a while, Giles County did eventually get its four-lane road in the form of an expanded U.S. 460.

“We lost that one too, but in the long range, we were wrong on that,” Holroyd said.

With two defeats in their young existence, Holroyd said the Jaycees got a little down in the mouth during a meeting at the Dinner Bell. That’s when Tommy Seaver, of Seaver Funeral Home, voiced an idea that would change the county forever. He suggested that the leaders start a campaign to create a high-tech Princeton Community Hospital to replace the meager Princeton Memorial Hospital that only featured six physicians.

“The doctors opposed us. The bankers told us there was no way we could raise the money,” Holroyd said. “The only person that was too dumb to know that you couldn’t do it was Jim Morrison, and he went out and did it.”

Morrison was a leader at the North American company then situated in Princeton. He served as the driving force behind the $2.8 million capital campaign that built a brand new hospital on what was soon called Morrison Drive.

The doctors took issue with the idea that businessmen were getting involved in the health care provided locally. Holroyd’s father was one of them.

“I can’t tell you how many conversations I had with him when he said, ‘Who do you think you are to tell the doctors how to run a hospital?’” Holroyd recalled.

In 1970, PCH opened, but keeping it running sometimes proved more challenging. Once, in the early 1970s, Holroyd said Morrison called the board together and told its members that PCH couldn’t post payroll. Banks had refused to offer any more money, unless the board members endorsed the note, putting themselves on the line if the hospital defaulted on the loan.

Morrison, Holroyd and every other board member endorsed the note, and the hospital survived. Today, there are 146 physicians with privileges at PCH, and although Holroyd is no longer a member of the board, he still serves as the panel’s legal counsel.

In between his local missions, Holroyd and his loving wife Emilie found time to stay abreast of politics throughout the state and nation. Holroyd led John F. Kennedy’s campaign through the region, and a bumper sticker preserved under the glass of his desk still calls for Americans to elect Robert Byrd president. It’s an artifact left from the 1976 campaign.

In fact, Byrd and Sen. Jay Rockefeller have always been dear to Holroyd. In 2006, as Princeton Health Care Center dedicated a portion of its facility to Holroyd, who helped found the organization, Rockefeller added Holroyd’s accomplishments to the Congressional Record.

In that document, Rockefeller praised Holroyd for his talent as a “natural born leader.”

“He wrote me an obituary. About the only thing left out was that I was a member of the School Building Authority,” Holroyd said.

He’s also chairman of the Mercer County 911 board of directors.

“Robert E. Holroyd is not only a dear friend of mine, but the work he has done for the state has been beyond extraordinary,” Rockefeller wrote. “Bob and I have been friends for a long time, and in addition to being a wonderful friend, he is also a counselor, and someone on whom I often rely for advice and wisdom.”

The Princeton Christmas Parade is slated to start marching at 6 p.m., Monday. As the grand marshal, Holroyd plans to lead the procession set to include approximately 30 floats and up to 100 units in all. For more information, contact the Princeton-Mercer County Chamber of Commerce at (304) 487-1502.

— Contact Tammie Toler at ttoler@ptonline.net.