Many pay tribute to "Grandma" Holt following her death

By RICHARD KOE

EUGENE -- In Ko-yang, South Korea, hundreds of Korean orphans, along with Republic of Korea’s first lady, Lee Hee-ho, paid tribute last month to Bertha “Grandma” Holt, who died at age 96 on July 31 after a stroke.

Following services earlier in Eugene, Holt’s body was flown to South Korea to be buried beside her husband, Harry, in Koyang, overlooking the Holt Wel-fare Town. Harry Holt died in 1964, and Bertha carried on the adoption agency. The Holts were parents of six children.

Bertha Holt and her husband in 1956 founded one of the world’s largest and best- known Christian adoption agencies, which became Holt International Children’s Services.

The Holts got involved with adoptions a year earlier after seeing a documentary about abandoned Amerasian children after the Korean War.

Months later, they adopted eight South Korean children, prompting many Americans to ask them for help in adopting children. The Holt program now has programs in Vietnam, Thailand, The Philippines, India, China, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. Homes have been found for 100,000 children in the past 30 years.

Scores of officials including U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton sent condolences to the Holt family in Creswell, but most of the tributes came from the many orphans whose lives were changed by the Holts.

More than 600 people attended the services for Holt in the Eugene Faith Center where a huge mound of roses was left on her casket. Different colored balloons were released to symbolize the different races that are a part of the Holt adoption agency.

Fred Beard, lifetime board member of the Holt agency, told the gathering Holt was one of the greatest saints of all ages even though she had always insisted she was just a “meat-and-potatoes” Christian.

Beard added that her work will be engraved on history’s walls forever.