October 9, 1924 - November 3, 2022
Paul Howard Holdeman was born on the 9th of October 1924 in Bates County, Missouri, the youngest of the seven children of Ezra K. Holdeman and Anna Jantz Holdeman. Paul’s parents were members of what we call the Holdeman Mennonite church—officially, The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite which came out of a reform effort by John Holdeman in 1859. John Holdeman was Paul’s first cousin twice removed. Two things stand out for me about the Holdeman Mennonites. One is that they limit the education that is considered tolerable for a good Christian. The other is that they didn’t allow photographs. So, there are no images of Paul before he was eight years old. By the time he was five the family had moved to Kiowa County, Kansas where he grew up. When he was eight his parents and older siblings were kicked out of the church because, as their letter of excommunication states, they had, caused what the Apostle Paul described as “division and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned” by following and being in fellowship with their pastor, E.M. Yost, who had also been expelled. One of the reasons for this was Ezra Holdeman’s curiosity about the world of ideas. Ezra and Anna came to believe that service should be an important part of a Christian’s life and they thought that education was necessary to be of effective service. Ezra said that his family was excommunicated after they had already gone a mile down the road. They became members of a new congregation that affiliated with the Mennonite Church.
Paul’s sisters had stopped going to school when they finished eighth grade as prescribed by their church. So, when they were excommunicated, they returned to school. Paul’s sister, Vesta, was 21 years old when she began ninth grade. Vesta went on to become a registered nurse. Her sisters, Cleda and Alma earned bachelor’s degrees and became elementary school teachers. Their oldest brother, Menno, became a teacher and later a college librarian. Ivan, just older than Paul became a history teacher and Paul became a social worker, eventually. I tell you all this to show you that Paul’s family valued education and some of them valued freedom of thought.
Paul and Ivan played football while they were students at Greensburg High School. Paul was not allowed to play basketball because of the short pants. They went to Hesston College after high school and Paul got one year in before the draft began during World War II. He recently told me that he had gone to work for a rancher near Greensburg. This man had two sons who were serving in the military and the rancher needed Paul’s help to run his operation while his sons were away so every time Paul got a letter from his local draft board, Mr. Einsel “took care of it”.
In 1945, after hostilities had ended but the need for soldiers for the occupation continued, Paul left his employment on the ranch in order to participate in an effort begun by the Church of the Brethren to take farm animals to Europe to replace those destroyed by the war. Church World Service, which took over the effort, called the ships “cattle boats” and the men who tended the animals were “cattlemen” or “sea-going cowboys”. Paul helped care for a load of horses, mares in foal—777 to begin with—that were being taken to Danzig, now known as Gdansk, in Poland. This trip happened between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The draft board in Kansas thought that if he could be spared to go on the cattle-boat trip he could be drafted and he was. One of the tenets of Mennonitism is “non-resistance”. This translates into pacifism which is the basis for conscientious objection in times of war. So, Paul satisfied his obligation to the Federal government by serving first in Civilian Public Service at Glacier National Park in Montana. When that unit was closed, he went to work at Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) headquarters in Akron, Pennsylvania.
In the meantime, his mother and some of his siblings had moved from Kansas to Denver, Colorado where they began participating in the newly formed Mennonite congregation. And when Paul found himself in Denver he participated, too. Another family came to Denver at about the same time from western Pennsylvania. Through dating a member of the Cutrell family, Paul met Helen Frances Cutrell who was learning to be a nurse at La Junta Mennonite Hospital School of Nursing in La Junta Colorado. Paul left Colorado to complete his assignment at MCC in Pennsylvania but when he returned Paul and Helen reconnected. They shared a strong commitment to be of service in a Christian context. At Christmas in 1947 Helen gave Paul a present--a shirt--and then agreed to iron it for him. That is how they became engaged. Since Mennonites, at that time, shunned the wearing of jewelry she didn’t get an engagement ring nor was there a ring ceremony when they married in June of 1948 in Denver.
I, Bonnie, was born in 1949 and in the fall of 1950 Paul and Helen, with me in tow, went to Gulfport, Mississippi to serve as interim directors of a Mennonite Central Committee Voluntary Service unit there. That unit’s purpose was to attempt to ease racial tensions by serving both the Black and White communities. Young Mennonites and members of other like-minded “peace” churches volunteered for varying amounts of time to participate in the program.
At the end of their term of service the local Mennonite church asked Paul to be ordained and serve as an assistant to the regular pastor. Mennonite tradition was that pastors were “called” by the congregation and were paid little if anything. There was actually a distrust of any kind of theological education so seminary was not required. By the 1950s this was beginning to change but for many Mennonite congregations these values remained important.
Paul was reluctant to be ordained. But, on the other hand, it was a way to be of service. If he were to do it, he had to find a way to make a living. In the end he agreed to ordination and borrowed money to start a business. Tim was born while the family was in Denver and while Paul mulled over his decision. Mark was born a year and a half later while the family was back in Mississippi. Neither the business nor the pastoring went very well and Paul has said that his self-esteem took quite a beating.
Fortunately, Mennonite Central Committee offered him a position as a pastor to 1-Ws (think Conscientious Objectors or those doing alternative service) in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota. He could live anywhere in those states. He accepted and found he was not only good at the job but liked it. He has said that his self-esteem was restored. The assignment was for one year and the family moved to Denver. Priscilla was born during this time. At the end of the year, Paul was asked to continue but though he could maintain his family on his salary he couldn’t retire the indebtedness he had incurred in Mississippi. So, when a small congregation in the Texas panhandle “called” him, he accepted and the family went to live in Perryton, Texas.
The significant thing about the Texas sojourn was that he found he was effective working with the youth of the community. He was so good at it that the other churches recognized it and the Methodists offered him a position as Education Director at better pay and a better place to live. Paul had come into conflict with more traditional Mennonites over his willingness to have an organ in the church and perform wedding ceremonies with rings. So, Paul, with Helen’s enthusiastic support went to work for the Methodists. The expectation was that he would pursue further education and seminary and become a bona fide member of the Methodist clergy. Paul has said that he couldn’t see how he could meet those expectations when he had four children and lived in a place that was over 100 miles from the closest college. The pastor of the Disciples of Christ Church in Perryton told him that the way to go about it was to first decide what he wanted to do then figure out how to accomplish his goal.
So, a move was in order. Paul and Helen decided to go back to Colorado where they had family. The idea was to live in Longmont and commute to the University of Colorado to attend school. Paul couldn’t find a house to rent in his price range in Longmont and someone suggested looking in Loveland. There he found a little house on Lake Loveland which is where the family moved in 1959. Paul and Helen decided that it was more important to worship in the community where they lived and worked than to drive the 53 miles to the Mennonite Church in Denver. So, we went to the Methodist Church and shortly after we began to attend, he was asked to fill in for the regular high school Sunday School teacher. That person never returned and with Paul as teacher the class grew rapidly. The Loveland Methodists also wanted to support his efforts to get more education so they offered him a position as assistant minister, a “local preacher’s license” serving as his credentials, with full-time pay and the expectation that he go to school full time.
After a year to establish residency for in-state tuition, Paul began studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1964. His decision to not go to seminary ended his position with the Methodists. He did graduate work in social work at the University of Denver and in sociology at Colorado State. Then he found out that the Thompson School District (Loveland and Berthoud) was looking for a school social worker. He was hired and from there he became a probation officer, later “counselor”, for the Eight Judicial District. He went from being a part-time juvenile probation officer to the head of the department that included both juvenile and adult probation counselors—thirteen people in all. His work was considered to be especially effective and was recognized in 1981 with the Judge Conrad L. Ball Award, given to a person who has contributed significantly to improving community justice in Larimer County.
When he left the court, he tried private practice but found a better place with a colleague forming The Center for Life Skills Education. One of their functions was to teach the classes that were required by the court when a person was convicted of drunk driving. He served a year as interim pastor for the Greeley Mennonite Church and then was invited to be the leader of Unity of Fort Collins. Later he became the leader of Tapestry of Life, a group that met on Sunday morning but was not church, he was not the minister and his talk was not a sermon. That association effectively came to an end only with the onset of the Covid pandemic. Over the years he officiated at 1097 weddings and over 300 funerals
Paul and Helen celebrated 50 years of marriage in 1998. They had been supportive of each other throughout their marriage and after Helen retired from her widely varied nursing career they continued to serve together as a team. Helen died in 2004. Their son Mark died in 2013. When his eyesight became too impaired, Paul voluntarily gave up driving and Priscilla drove him around to all the places he met with folks including the Tapestry meetings on Sunday. After Paul fell and broke a hip in 2020 it looked to me that he was coming to the end of his physical life. But he “soldiered” on. Recovering from the hip replacement surgery enough to return to this room in the basement of our house. He continued to go out to meet with various folks until earlier this year and after he had fallen several times. When it became clear that he was not stable enough to move about on his own, we, his children, debated how to go forward but his preference was to get the assistance of hospice and remain at home. We were able to arrange that though seven months were more than we thought likely. Priscilla took primary responsibility for his care with help from me and, more often, Mike and Tim.
Paul was the last of his family. He said he didn’t want to outlive his sister, Vesta, who lived to be 98 years and seven months old. Paul was 98 years and almost one month old when he died on the 3rd of November 2022. He is survived by his children, Bonnie Holdeman Dalke and her husband Mike Dalke, Priscilla, Tim Holdeman and his wife Delaine, his daughter-in-law Kathy Holdeman, and his grandchildren Susan Dalke Rau and her husband Evan Rau, Reuben Dalke and his wife Stephanie Pendergrass Dalke, Ryan Holdeman, Andy Holdeman and his wife Elly, Rachael Holdeman, Adam Holdeman, and Meagan Holdeman. There is one brother-in-law and a whole slew of nieces and nephews as well.
Memorial services will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at Kibbey-Fishburn Funeral Home.
If you would like to honor Paul’s life and contribution to the community we suggest: Heifer International and Pathways Hospice.
