W. Paul Holt, Jr.

Paul Holt will be honored during an 11 a.m. dedication ceremony Friday, Sept. 5, at the campus library. This is the first time a building on the Jackson Campus has been named for an individual.

Except for a brief stint in 1968, Holt has served as a trustee of Southwestern which began in 1964 as a satellite of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Institute.

“Paul is a quiet, humble man, not ego-driven at all,” said SCC President Cecil Groves, who has worked with Holt for 10 years. “Paul knows how to get things done and he does so by working quietly behind the scenes. After all of these years of his dedicated behind-the-scenes work it’s time we pulled him to the forefront and publicly recognized his invaluable contributions.”

“Paul is very deserving and we honor his generosity,” said SCC Board Chairman Conrad Burrell. “He worked very hard to get the college started and has been very generous to the college- in his time, in his expertise and in his contributions.”

Holt said it was “quite an honor to have a building named after me; it’s totally unexpected and I’m very humbled. For it to be the library is even more special because of my late wife Pat’s early literacy initiatives.

“Pat was always a big reader and so were our two sons so books have always played an important part in our life,” said Holt, whose favorite authors are John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell.

Sylva attorney Holt and his late wife Pat moved from Greensboro to Jackson County in 1957 when he joined David Hall and Lacy Thornburg’s law firm.

“I thought I’d give it two years here and move back to Greensboro,” said Holt, who earned his law degree at UNC- Chapel Hill. “Now I never told that to David or Lacy- or to Pat. But once I got here, I never looked back. Pat and I just fit right in with the community.”

His late wife was a teacher, with a great passion for education, especially literacy. “Pat always felt if you couldn’t read, you couldn’t really accomplish your full potential. Even when she quit teaching to raise our two sons, she volunteered as a tutor and in literacy initiatives.”

That blending of his late wife’s educational involvement with his political involvement created his awareness for the need of a training school.

“The Good Lord didn’t give us all the same capabilities,” said Holt. “But we all have our talents and we just need to use those talents to the best of our abilities. We needed a school in this area to help educate and prepare people in the community to best use their diverse talents.”

“The late Bill Dillard was as instrumental in starting Southwestern as anybody,” said Holt. “Bill was a county commissioner and a contractor and he saw a need for training people in the trades, such as plumbers, carpenters, electricians, masons and mechanics.”

Holt said even though the curriculum and name have changed over the years, Southwestern’s strength is in staying true to its purpose- to serve the communities of Jackson, Macon and Swain counties and the Cherokee Reservation.

“Most of the trades are changing and along with that change students today need computer skills,” Holt said, noting. “Southwestern is visionary and innovative in keeping up with the times and new developments.”

Groves attributes Southwestern’s innovativeness to Holt’s leadership.

“Paul is a very community-minded man and has always focused on Southwestern’s service to the community,” Groves said. “He’s never strayed from that and it’s his leadership that has provided the college’s continuity. Whenever there have been difficult decisions, Paul’s counsel has always been sought and considered. As an attorney he’s been the thoughtful, conscious voice of the board and the college’s careful guide.

“And look where he has guided us! Washington Monthly rated us number four community college in the nation. The N.C. Community College System rated us exceptional this year- one of only seven of the state’s 58 community college’s to receive this status.”

“With Paul, you know he is going to steer you right,” said Burrell.

Board members agree with Holt’s long-time staff members who say, “You will never meet a man who is more honest or who has more integrity than Paul Holt. He is a hard act to follow.”

Holt initiated the SCC Foundation and served as its first chairman. “Our endowments now are over $2.8 million,” he said and sees the foundation’s future as “only going up. More people are investing in it now than ever and we’re seeing more people establish scholarships, too.” (Holt himself established scholarships in memory of his son Andrew “Drew” Holt, who died unexpectedly July 23 at the age of 43, and for his late wife Pat, who died in 1996.)

Holt also served as chairman of capital improvements and remembers traveling to sparsely-populated Iowa to learn how instructional television works in remote areas.
“ITV closed the distance there and we figured it could do the same for the mountains,” said Holt, who helped bring that technology to campus.

He says the future will be in online classes because “they are such a time and gas saver.”

For Southwestern’s future Holt would like to see the college “continue to offer what is needed in the area- all the way from college prep courses to the trades. I’d like Southwestern to continue to be that opportunity for all the people in the region and not forget any segment of the population.”

Holt’s long-time educational involvement included serving until recently as the Jackson County Board of Education attorney for the past 50 years.

“Years ago I was a workaholic, but I’ve cut back on that,” said Holt, who has been an attorney for 51 years. “My sons used to say, ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer like dad. You have to work too hard.’” His son, Flip Holt, vice president of an engineering company, lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. His late son Drew Holt was general manager of Hobe Sound Golf Club Resort in Florida.

Although he may have cut back on his hours, he still practices because, as he says, “I’ve always enjoyed the law and, even after 51 years, I still love going to work. I plan to stay healthy and be as active as I can for as long as I can. I don’t ever want to just go home, sit down and do nothing.”

Jackson County has been good to him, Holt says, and he believes in giving back to the community. In addition to his educational service, he is president of the board of directors of Jackson Savings and Loan, former president of the Sylva Rotary Club, past president of the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce, was an original member of the board of Mountain Projects and an elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Sylva.

He has been married to Brenda Oliver for almost six years. Oliver, mayor of Sylva and also an avid reader, describes her husband as “a man with a wonderful sense of humor and a dry wit; he is a great story teller. He has a warm, loving, gracious spirit and his family is his first priority.

“Paul enjoys a bowl of ice cream in the evening and he calls it ‘nourishment.’ When my grandchildren come to visit they thought that was so funny so the evening quote at our house is, ‘Is it time for nourishment yet?’”

Speaking of nourishment, Nelda Reid, SCC librarian for 38 years, said she was reminded of this quote from Sydney Smith, “It is no more necessary that a man should remember the different dinners and suppers which have made him healthy, than the different books which have made him wise. Let us see the results of good food in a strong body, and the results of great reading in a full and powerful mind.”

“We are so proud and honored to have our library named for Mr. Holt, who is a strong supporter of our college and of literacy,” said Reid, “We invite the public to join in our celebration.”

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