Necrology

Robin Gould Holloway '55

May. 10, 1933-Mar. 8, 2006

Robin Gould Holloway ’55, who combined a career in management consulting with devotion to the performing arts, was born on May 10, 1933, in Madison, WI. The son of the Rev. William Rupert Holloway and the former Constance Violet Gould, both born in England. Robin Holloway grew up in Wichita, KS, where his father was called as a minister of the Unitarian Church. In 1949, the family moved to Dunkirk, NY. Two years later, having been graduated from Dunkirk High School, Robin came to Hamilton. With a strong interest in music, dramatics, and public speaking, he joined the Choir, the Charlatans, and the Debate Club, of which he became vice president. Elected to the forensic honorary Delta Sigma Rho, he also served on the Press Board and Chapel Board. In addition, he became house manager of Delta Phi and, with a passion and flair for statistics since boyhood, the College’s sports statistician. A recipient of the Tompkins Prize in Mathematics, he was awarded his degree with honors in public speaking in 1955.

That year, Robin Holloway began his working life in New York City as an actuarial trainee with the Equitable Life Assurance Society at a salary of $78 a week. Soon drafted into military service, he spent 31⁄2 years in the U.S. Navy, beginning in 1956. Commissioned as an ensign, he ended up with shore duty, running a school for radiomen. Following his discharge as a lieutenant (j.g.) in 1959, he returned to Equitable and continued employment as an actuary until 1970, when he left to join the management consulting firm of Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby, also in New York City.

Elected a principal and later a vice president and director of the firm, Robin Holloway specialized in helping major companies design, finance, and administer employee benefit programs. In 1984, after serving as chief actuary and manager of employee benefit practices for the firm in Chicago and later in New York City, he was appointed managing director of Towers Perrin’s international operations, in charge of more than 20 overseas offices. He held that post for six years until his retirement at the end of 1990.

In retirement, Robin Holloway fulfilled his lifelong love of opera by becoming chairman of the Berkshire Opera Company. So committed was he to its mission to offer the best opera during summers in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts that he even doubled as the company’s publicity director. Previously a resident of New Jersey and Connecticut, he divided his later years between the Berkshires and Doylestown, PA, where he also exercised his commitment to the performing arts as a member of the board and treasurer of the nonprofit Bucks County Theatre, a motion picture house featuring foreign and independent films.

Robin G. Holloway, a very devoted and generous supporter of the College who assisted its fund-raising activities in numerous ways, died in Doylestown on March 8, 2006, of complications resulting from treatment for lymphoma. He is survived by his wife, the former Sharon Ann Malm, whom he had wed on May 29, 1956, in Denver, CO. Also surviving are two daughters, Heather Heverling and Carrie Uzelac, and four grandchildren.

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