Harold T. "H" Holden

© Enid News and Eagle

Submitted by: Jo Aguirre

© Enid News and Eagle

Harold T. "H" Holden
March 28, 1940 - December 6, 2023

A Celebration of Life Service for Harold T. "H" Holden, age 83, will be 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, December 12, 2023, at Emmanuel Enid Church, with Rev. Shonn Keels and Rev. Wade Burleson officiating. A private burial will precede the service in Memorial Park Cemetery. The family will receive friends Monday, December 11, 2023, at the Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Arrangements are under the direction of Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home and Crematory. The service may be viewed live at www.emmanuelenid.org. or later at www.ladusauevans.com. Condolences may be made online at www.ladusauevans.com.

HAROLD TWEED HOLDEN, or "H" as he is called by most folks, was born in Enid, Oklahoma, March 28, 1940, to Patrick Miles and Betty Jane (Failing) Holden.

Although H was the first professional fine artist in the family, he comes from a family of creative and talented inventors and engineers. In 1915, his great-grandfather George Failing invented the bottle capping machine that is still used on beverages today. His grandfather, oil pioneer George E. Failing, invented the first portable drilling rig, as well as numerous drill bits, still used in the industry today.

H credited his love of horses to his father who was an avid horseman and polo player. Tragically, when H was 6 years old, his father was killed in a plane crash in Enid, OK, leaving his mother a widow at age 31 with 3 children under the age of 10. With help from grandparents, his mother provided a stable and loving home for H, his older brother Tim and younger sister Katy. Subsequently his mother remarried and sister Myrlane was later born. H attended and graduated from Enid High School in 1958 where he played football and ran track, medaling in the State 880 relay. As a sophomore, H attended summer school at Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where he won the lightweight boxing championship, following prior championships won in boxing by his older brother Tim.

After graduating from Enid High School, H attended Oklahoma State University, but a trip to Houston to work on an oil rig in 1959 resulted in a chance meeting with an instructor at the Texas Academy of Art, where he subsequently graduated with an art degree. He then began his career in the commercial art field, working in Wichita, Kansas, and in Houston, Texas, where he eventually took the position of art director at Horseman Magazine. While working during the day for other folks, H began his fine art career at night, painting and sculpting his first love, the West. He was completely self-taught as a sculptor.

In 1963 H married Mary Lou Church in Houston, TX, and afterward Tim Patrick Holden and Shannon Jane (Holden) Meyer were born. On March 22, 1989, he married Edna Mae (Simmons) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the Church at Loretto, and they built a loving partnership of over 34 years, raising longhorns and quarter horses.

After a tour of duty with the Navy during Vietnam aboard the USS Rainier, H ventured out on his own in 1973 to try and make it as a professional fine artist. Commissions from the National Cattlemen's Association from 1982-1986 helped, and collectors began taking notice of his work at a time when very few people were making their living as fine artists in the Western genre.

In 1987 H was chosen to sculpt a series of commemorative bronzes to depict the 165-year history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas, and that same year he completed his first of many monuments, "Boomer", for the City of Enid, Oklahoma. The image of Boomer was used on a U.S. Postage Stamp and became the symbol of the Cherokee Strip in both Kansas and Oklahoma. Since that first monument 36 years ago H completed 24 additional monuments for placement in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and Arkansas. Monuments include "Oklahoma's Native Son" at Will Rogers World Airport; "We Will Remember" at Oklahoma State University; "Headin' to Market" at the OKC Stockyards, which H dedicated to his first grandson, Patrick Martin Meyer, who died at the age of 4½ days; "World Champion" at the OKC Fairgrounds; "Monarch at Rest" at the Oklahoma History Center; and "Cherokee Kid" at Rogers State University. He also completed several monuments for universities to assist in their endowments through the sale of maquettes, including the Northwestern Oklahoma State University "Ranger" in Enid, Alva and Woodward; the "Broncho" at the University of Central Oklahoma; "Crossing the Red" for the Altus Public School Foundation; "Vision Seeker" for the Altus and Enid Public School Foundations; along with the "Bison Spirit" for Oklahoma Baptist University. His "U.S. Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves" monument in Fort Smith was the first equestrian sculpture to be dedicated in Arkansas, and his larger-than-life monument of "E.K. Gaylord" graces the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. His most recent works include the life and one-half monument of Boone Pickens and the life and one-half monument of Barry Sanders, which stand on the Oklahoma State University Campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

In 2007 H was diagnosed with a fatal lung disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, for which there is no known cause or cure. Thereafter, in 2009, he closed his studio and got his affairs in order. Wade Burleson, his minister, and his church family at Emmanuel Baptist Church along with many others in Enid and elsewhere continued to pray for H's healing, and those prayers were answered on July 2, 2010, when he received a lifesaving single lung transplant at the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Center at Integris Medical Center in Oklahoma City. At that time H was the oldest recipient of a lung transplant at the facility. In gratitude for his second chance at life, a casting of his 6' monument "Thank you Lord", graces the garden at Emmanuel Church in Enid and a second casting stands outside the Emergency Room of the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Center in Oklahoma City. Other accolades include:

- Received the Lifetime Achievement award from the Oklahoma Sculpture Society in 2000
- Inducted into the Mountain Oyster Club as a lifetime member in 2000
- Awarded the Governor's Art Award from Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating in 2001
- Elected to Professional Membership in the National Sculpture Society in 2004
- Honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from Oklahoma State University in 2005
- Invited into membership in the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America organization in 2013, which he then served as an Emeritus member
- Inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, in 2014, the highest honor the state can bestow on one of its citizens
- The first Oklahoma artist to be inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City in 2017 in recognition of his lifelong pursuit of capturing the West through his art
- Won the Ray Swanson memorial award at the 2019 Cowboy Artists of America show in Fort Worth Texas
- Won the James Earle Fraser sculpture award at the 2020 Prix de West art show at the National Cowboy Museum for excellence in sculpture
- Scheduled induction into the Oklahoma State University Hall of Fame on February 2, 2024.

2023 was a big year, with H celebrating his 83rd year of life, his 13th year with a new lung and 50+ years as a Professional Fine Artist. At the time of his death, H was working on his last monument, a larger-than-life sculpture of Frank "Pistol Pete" Eaton on horseback to go on the OSU campus in Stillwater. Upon completion of this piece by his sculptor friends, H will have created 25 different monuments throughout his 58-year career.

H is survived by his wife Edna Mae of the home; son Tim Holden (Allison) of Clifton, VA; daughter Shannon Meyer (Marty) of Enid; sisters Katy Rieger (Warren) of Tulsa, OK, and Myrlane Mendenhall (Ken) of Edmond, OK; grandchildren Payton Meyer, Morgan Meyer, Silas Holden and Benji Holden; and brother-in-law Bill Simmons of Granbury, TX. He is also survived by a multitude of cousins, nieces and nephews, friends, collectors, and fellow artists that he considered brothers. He was proceeded in death by his parents, his big brother Tim (Joyce) Holden and his first grandson Patrick Martin Meyer.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Oklahoma State University Foundation, with Ladusau-Evans Funeral Home, P.O. Box 3501 Enid, OK 73702, serving as the custodian of the funds.

"I fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." 2 Timothy 4:7-8 NIV.


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