Remembrances of our brothers

Jay Van Holt (7/20/1923 – 4/6/2008): Van Holt, a Golden Cross recipient and member of the Old Men’s Club, passed to the Adytum on High on April 6, 2008, at age 84. He lived in Santa Rosa (Marin County) with his wife Marilyn. Van Holt was friends with Tom Straeter, Fred Thornley, Herb Martin and Mitch Toland while in the fraternity in the 1940s. “He was a wonderful guy,” Bob Baker said. “He didn’t lack for a story. He was a good man. If you knew him, you’d love him.”

Van Holt served in the Navy during World War II and was stationed in Palermo, Sicily. He married Marilyn in 1952, after another tour of military service during the Korean War, and worked as a sales manager for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., Salt Lake City, Detroit and Los Angeles.

Van Holt retired in 1985 to Santa Rosa in the San Francisco Bay area, and stayed busy with bridge, golf, and traveling, with trips to Alaska, Russia, Italy and Sicily, and Greece.

Van Holt’s wife Marilyn can be contacted at (707) 579-5583. They have four children, Jack, Tom, Maxim and Brooks, and one grandchild.

John Selby (6/1922 – 8/1/2008): Selby, a Golden Cross recipient, passed to the Adytum on High on Aug. 1, 2008, at age 85. He lived in Lakewood with his wife Dottie, and had been retired after working for Rockwell for many years. His business work was involved with the NASA Apollo moon flights and space shuttle programs.

Selby was born in Charleston, W.V., and moved to Memphis and Milwaukee before arriving in Los Angeles. He graduated from Hollywood H.S. and attended UCLA in the early 1940s, where he served in the ROTC. Selby was drafted into World War II and served as a radio operator and map reader in the Pacific Theatre, including Australia, the Philippines, New Guinea and the occupation of Hiroshima and Tokyo in Japan. He received the Bronze Star.

After WWII, Selby attended USC and graduated with a degree in Business Administration.
He and Dottie loved music, and they were subscribers to the L.A. Philharmonic, Old Globe Theatre in San Diego for Shakespeare, and the San Diego, Orange County and L.A. Operas. Their trips often centered around music, which included a Mozart-inspired trip to Vienna, and trips to New York for the Metropolitan Opera.

Selby and his wife Dottie also played bridge and golf and enjoyed reading and collecting books. They have two children, a son Richard who graduated from UCLA and is an engineer for Intel, and a daughter Pamela, who lives in Louisville.

Selby was friends with Bill Meyer, Alex Palanach and Tom Ham, and Dottie remembers that Stedman Gould, a Grand Sage from Upsilon, managed the Sears store where she worked after college.

Selby’s wife Dorothy (“Dottie”) can be contacted at (562) 866-6152.