Thomas Holland's Obituary
Thomas John Holland, 85, of Alachua, Florida passed away peacefully on April 4, 2026.
Born in Adams, Wisconsin, Tom came from modest roots — a dairy farm kid who delivered papers in the snow, later rode his bike everywhere in the Florida sun, and eventually hitchhiked his way to the University of Florida. He never forgot where he came from or what a dollar was worth.
It was at the University of Florida where Tom met the love of his life, Nancy. He'll tell you he put the first pair of bobby socks on her. She'll tell you she almost became an airline stewardess instead. She chose Tom, and on September 24, 1966, they made it official. The rest, as they say, is history.
He went on to build a life of purpose and generosity. A pharmacist by trade, Tom owned and operated Family Pharmacy in downtown Wauchula, Florida for 13 years — six days a week behind that counter, knowing everyone by name, making people laugh, being the kind of man a small town trusts. In Hardee County, that meant something.
Tom was a man of conviction, humor, and an unfiltered opinion on just about everything. He loved golf, fishing, poker, Gators football, and a cold Budweiser with good friends. He was devoted to his family, generous to a fault, and witty and sarcastic in the best possible way. Those who knew him best knew him simply as the King of the Civilized World. It suited him perfectly.
He is survived by his beloved wife of almost sixty years, Nancy Holland; his three sons Michael (Diane) Holland, Robert (Shannon) Holland, and Daniel (Gina) Holland; his grandchildren Megan Holland, Ryan Holland, Adam Holland, Luke Holland, Paige Holland, Claire Holland, and William Holland; and his brother Joseph (Marjorie) Holland
He was preceded in death by his parents Thomas Holland and Beatrice Keefe, his sister Susan Holland, and his beloved grandson Steven (Mary Kate) Holland.
He was one of a kind. And he knew it.
A longer remembrance written by his youngest son Daniel is available for those who wish to know the whole man. It is attached below
A Funeral Service will be held Monday, April 13, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. at William-Thomas Downtown Chapel, 404 North Main St. Gainesville with Fr. Emmanuel. The family will receive friends one hour prior to the service beginning at 1:00 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to a charity of your choice.
Thomas John Holland
King of the Civilized World
April 22, 1940 — April 4, 2026
Tom Holland grew up in Adams, Wisconsin — a modest dairy farm town where a few coins
from a paper route actually meant something. His father Thomas S. Holland — Gramps — was
a Navy Seabee who served in Guam during World War II, came home from the Pacific, and
decided he'd had enough of cold winters. Granny Bea, Gramps, Pop, his younger brother Joe,
and his younger sister Susan packed up and settled in Bradenton, Florida — five people in a
trailer home, one car between them, making it work the way working families do. The new
chapter came with heartbreak — Susan was lost far too young not long after the family arrived.
Life went on the way it has to. With one car and four people left in that trailer, Pop learned
early that if you needed to get somewhere you figured out how to get there yourself. He rode
his bike everywhere. When it came time for college he sometimes hitchhiked to the University
of Florida.
A paper route in the Wisconsin snow teaches you things that can't be learned in a classroom.
The value of a dollar. The reward of showing up. The satisfaction of earning something with
your own two hands. Pop carried those lessons his entire life — through pharmacy school,
through the pharmacy counter, through everything he built. He never forgot what it felt like to
have just enough. Even when he had more than enough.
He didn't come from much. But he came from something real. And he made something
beautiful from it.
That's where he met Nancy.
He'll tell you he put the first pair of bobby socks on her. She'll tell you she almost threw it all
away to become an airline stewardess — she had her pharmacy degree, she had options, she
had wings ready. She chose Pop instead. Nobody who knew Mom would call that a small
decision. She was a black haired woman, affectionately known as Pie Nose, with a pharmacy
degree and exactly zero tolerance for nonsense — the greatest chick that ever lived, as Pop
would say. The tick of all ticks. She could get under his skin like nobody else, and he loved her
for it.
She chose Pop over adventure. And then she became his adventure. And his anchor. And his
business partner. And his better half. And eventually his caretaker.
But we'll get to that.
After getting married they settled first in Lakeland, where Pop worked as a pharmacist at
various locations including some time with Polk County at a government facility in Bartow.
Then one day, for reasons that remained somewhat mysterious to Mom, he decided to take over
Beeson's Drug Store in the small town of Wauchula — which he later renamed Family
Pharmacy. And just like that, a new chapter began. Six days a week behind that counter,
knowing everyone by name, making people laugh, being the kind of man a small town trusts
with their health and their stories. Witty and sarcastic in the best possible way. People looked
forward to coming in. You don't go to the pharmacy for fun — but somehow with Pop you
didn't mind. The pharmacy had a soda fountain where customers would come in, nurse a cup of
coffee with free refills, enjoy the hospitality — and then take their prescriptions elsewhere. Pop
had strong feelings about that particular arrangement. One day he just closed the soda fountain.
That'll show them. He ran that pharmacy until 1991. In Hardee County, that meant something.
And let's be honest about who was minding the store while Pop snuck out for the Tuesday
afternoon smoker with his golf buddies. Mom was a pharmacist and a business owner in her
own right — probably more so than anyone fully acknowledged. She was the one who made
things run. The protector. The scheduler. The one you approached strategically and never
surprised at the last minute. If you wanted to go to the movies with friends you asked Pop first
— and he'd say don't spring it on her, just rip the bandaid off and ask her right away. Pop knew
exactly how that household worked and exactly who ran it.
He valued education above almost everything. Get your brains full of knowledge so you can go
off to college — he said it so many times it became its own kind of family rule. He wasn't
hovering over homework or drilling anyone for tests. He just kept planting the seed. College.
Knowledge. Critical thinking. Humanities. Public speaking. Not just a major but a whole mind.
He hitchhiked to UF to build a life and he wanted his boys to walk that same campus. All three
of them did. And one of them — the youngest — graduated as valedictorian of Hardee High
School. Even in his final years, mind diminishing and world shrunk down to that chair, Pop still
had enough left to worry about his grandsons considering skipping college. Still fighting
against what he called being a mental midget. That never left him.
He had rules. You order what you eat and you eat what you order. You don't order chicken at a
steak restaurant. You can't have too many onions unless you're baking a cake. And perhaps
most importantly — you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit. These weren't just rules
about food. That was his whole philosophy. Be decisive. See things as they are. Don't dress
something up and pretend it's what it isn't. He took that straight from the dairy farm in
Wisconsin and never let it go, no matter how far he traveled.
He took the family to Chalet Suzanne once. It was the kind of restaurant with several courses
and even some sherbet at the end to clean the palate. This was the early 1980s. I looked at the
prices on that menu and asked — is that for everybody? I was only seven or eight years old.
But Pop looked at us boys and said what he always said — order what you eat and eat what you
order. So I did. The bill with the extended family running up the bar tab could have easily hit a
thousand dollars (ok maybe it felt like that much). He never flinched. Not once. That was Pop
— he set the standard and he lived it. No exceptions. Not even at Chalet Suzanne.
And if you want to know where those standards came from — Pop could grill. The man cooked
the family turkey every year, turned out roasts and steaks that nobody argued with, and made
ribs that had no business being that good. That grill was his kingdom. Nobody questioned him
there.
He set about giving his family everything he never had. When the family moved to Wauchula
the first thing off the moving truck was five cases of beer. The neighbor across the street — a
little old lady named Tootsie Davis — watched the whole thing unfold from her front porch.
Priorities. The house eventually had a kegerator full of Budweiser and every technology gadget
the moment it hit the market — Pong, the Tandy TRS-80 running VisiCalc (way before Excel),
a VCR, one of the first hard drives, an answering machine, TiVo, a big screen TV, a plasma
TV, a microwave — even the very first metal wood driver way before they became
commonplace. He wasn't saving it for later. He was living.
He drove a Red Cadillac the family affectionately called Old Pink. He once drove the boys
three hours to a Gators football game, and Old Pink held herself together the entire way home
— only dropping her muffler the moment they pulled into the driveway. She knew when the
job was done. When Old Pink retired Pop moved on to an old blue Ford truck — and that's
when Booger got his co-pilot seat.
And then there was Booger. Registered name Mr. Bughere. Won in a poker game as a puppy —
all 70 pounds of him. Pop loved that dog like nobody's business. He propped him up on a bar
stool at the Elks Club like a regular member. Nobody questioned it. When Pop drove that old
blue Ford truck around town Booger rode shotgun. They got pulled over once — not for a
moving violation but because the cop just needed to know what kind of dog that was. Booger
looked like a small horse. Completely reasonable traffic stop.
Booger slept in the garage at night on a long chain with the door open. Several nights the whole
family would wake up to this enormous dog howling absolutely mad — only to find the chain
was caught on a one inch twig. A dog the size of a small horse defeated by a stick. Every single
time. Pop modified an old lounge chair to support Booger's back and hips for sleeping. He
thought of everything for that dog. What nobody knew until after Booger was gone — he'd
been potty trained the whole time. Mr. Bughere was more civilized than anyone gave him
credit for.
Booger roamed free the way dogs did back then. Kids in the neighborhood loved him and tried
to ride him like a pony. He just shrugged them off and trotted away with complete dignity.
Some neighbors weren't as fond and decided to poison him and a little cocker spaniel who ran
with him. Booger survived. His buddy didn't. He kept roaming anyway. One day he wandered
too far and met his match with a fruit picker truck. It's believed he may be buried in the
backyard of that Wauchula house. If so then Booger never left either. Just like Pop — holding
on until the very end.
He once took us boys on an outing to Silver Springs in Ocala. Sat us down on a bench and
tossed quarters into the grass — a full demonstration of the foolishness of wasting money on
video games. He made his point completely. And then handed us quarters to go play. He
couldn't help himself. That was Pop.
When he turned 40 his birthday cake was a case of Budweiser with the candles 4 and 0 stuck
right in it. Whoever came up with that knew their audience perfectly.
My earliest memory of him is from our first house in Lakeland. We had a pool and Pop was
terrified of us boys drowning — so he did what made perfect sense to Pop. He threw us in to
find out if we could swim. I must have been two or three years old. I remember holding on to
the side in the deep end, scared to let go.
And then I did.
And I could swim.
He knew before I did.
He got us into golf when I was around five. He joined Little Cypress golf club in Wauchula —
nine holes carved out of a cow pasture and an orange grove in Zolfo Springs, and a pool so
Mom and the boys could swim while he played. But eventually we all got pulled into the game.
The real golf pioneer in the family was my oldest brother Mike. He took the lessons first —
from Jamie Jackson, the same man who taught Pop — and ran with them further than anyone
expected. Mike set the record for the low nine hole round in Hardee County high school golf. I
eventually tied it. But Mike got there first. He always got there first. I wanted to be like him on
that golf course. Mike probably had more influence on my golf than Pop did if I'm being
honest. I was watching his every move, trying to learn what I could, borrowing what I could
steal. I'm still trying to beat him to this day. Haven't quite managed it. But I'm still trying.
What Pop couldn't have known was what he was starting. I played competitive golf from age
seven. Captain of the Hardee High School golf team all four years. Not quite good enough to
walk on at the University of Florida — but good enough to qualify for the US Amateur Public
Links in 1997 as low medalist in a field of ninety mostly scratch golfers. I still play to a scratch
handicap today. Still love the competition. Still love the challenge of putting together a low
round. Golf isn't just something I do because Pop introduced me to it. Golf is part of who I am.
It got into my blood at age five on that nine hole course and it never left.
Mom drove us boys back and forth to Little Cypress more times than anyone could count. She
made our golf lives possible without ever making a fuss about it. That was Mom — quietly
making everything possible.
I wish Pop and I had played more rounds together. His back, and then the years, got in the way.
He handed me that game and then gradually lost it himself — the back, the belly, the diabetes
taking him off the course one painful step at a time. But every round I have ever played has his
fingerprints on it. Every low round. Every tournament. Every early morning tee time. All of it
traces back to a five year old kid at Little Cypress who wanted to do what his brothers were
doing.
Pop lost golf. I've been playing it for both of us ever since.
He supported all three of us through Cub Scouts and eventually Boy Scouts through his
wheeling and dealing at the Elks Club. He took each of us boys on a Dad and Lad campout
when we first joined — Mike and Rob had their turns before me, and when my time came it did
not disappoint. We did archery during the day — I couldn't get anywhere close to hitting the
target, much less the bullseye. Turns out that's how I found out I needed glasses. Pop took me
on a campout and came home with a son who needed an optometrist. One evening it rained and
we lay in the tent just talking — don't touch the sides or it'll leak, he said. Nowhere to go,
nothing to do, just the two of us listening to the rain. Those are the hours I hold onto.
He took us on a rare family vacation to Washington DC in 1981 — my first time that I can
remember on an airplane. I got to sit right next to him. Somewhere over Florida he slipped a
little drop of whiskey into my Coke. We spent a week together — the Smithsonian, the rockets
and the space exhibits, a tour of the US Mint, the White House, the Capitol Building, the
Washington Monument, even some live theater with cussing that scandalized us boys
completely. We stayed at a Howard Johnson hotel where I couldn't get enough of the Star Wars
arcade game in the lobby. I remember kids flying kites everywhere on the National Mall — it
felt like another world. I didn't want it to end. When we got home I faked stomach aches at
school just so I could go home — I was in second grade and the magic of that trip was not
something any classroom was going to compete with. But it was gone. We were back to normal
life. It just wasn't the same as having all of us together.
I remember special times when storms knocked the power out. No TV. No distractions. Just
Pop's voice in the dark telling stories. Those nights I had all of him. The whole room went quiet
and he was just there — present, unhurried, ours. I used to love those storms.
Nobody's a saint. Pop would be the first to tell you that — probably in those exact words, or
words considerably more colorful. He was a tell it like it is kind of man. A real Ronald Reagan
American with no patience for anything phony or pretentious. He loved his beer and his
buddies and his stories at the Elks Club and the Moose Lodge. Hardee County was dry back
then — you had to join a club and donate your beer just to drink it. Pop donated plenty. He
knew how to push buttons and needle the people he loved. He was complicated the way real
people are complicated. He came from a long line of men who worked hard and drank hard and
loved fiercely in the ways they knew how.
He was raised Catholic — an altar boy in his younger days. Mom converted from Methodist
and took the boys to Mass every single Sunday. Holy days of obligation in the middle of the
week. No exceptions. Pop didn't attend — something about not liking crowds, though nobody
who watched him hold court at a packed Elks Club was entirely convinced by that explanation.
He never preached and never judged. He just had his own arrangement with God. Private. On
his own terms. Grace before every dinner. Prayers at bedtime. He cared about faith — he just
didn't feel the need to prove it in a pew. The King of the Civilized World and God had an
understanding. Nobody else's business.
But his customers loved him. His buddies loved him. Pop had a nickname for just about
everyone he ever met — and if he gave you one, you knew you'd made it into his inner circle.
His own mother was Cootus Marie. His brother became Uncle Rat Nose. Mom was Pie Nose.
His own boys were his goofy-ass kids — Mike was Turkey Toes, Rob started out as
Round-Eyed Robert before graduating to Rob the Con, and his youngest son Dan was Little
Feeg — whose own children he called the Feeglets. There was Buzzard the mailman, Murph,
Elliot, Big Moe, Hummer, Altie, Parks, Bailey, Alley Rat, Bullet, Toad, and Pooh Bear —
friends from Lakeland, Wauchula, and everywhere in between. He may or may not have been
known as the Witch Doctor himself among the faithful. Either way it suited him. Just great laid
back guys who loved to laugh until it hurt. The kind of friends you only find once. The kind of
town you only find once.
One of his best friends was Maurice Gilliard — Poppy. They were partners in crime on the golf
course, swindling money out of bigger hitters through sheer psychological warfare. Pop and
Poppy weren't the longest or strongest — they just knew how to get inside your head. By the
back nine you'd forgotten how to swing. When Poppy died of cancer about twenty five years
ago Pop said he wanted to be buried right next to him. That's the kind of friendship that already
knows where it wants to spend eternity. Pop got all his boys their first vehicles through Poppy's
junkyard too. I once drove a Smokey and the Bandit knockoff called the Fire Tram — built in
Detroit, assembled in Zolfo Springs. Only Pop and Poppy could make that happen.
While he raised three boys under the same set of rules, each of us turned out different. Mike
was the oldest — Pop's big man. The man child who patted his brothers on the head and meant
it with love. He loved maps from the time he could read them, which probably explained why
he became a civil engineer — always finding the way, always building something. Pop trusted
Mike completely. When he and Mom went out of town Mike was in charge and nobody
questioned it. At fourteen years old Mike led his brothers on a summer trip to Wisconsin —
navigating flights, finding long lost relatives, handling everything like a seasoned traveler. He
was fourteen. That was Mike. He picked on me the way only a big brother can but he had a soft
spot for the youngest and everyone knew it.
Rob was the middle — coolest head in any room, most like Pop in temperament if not in
volume. Where Mike and I would get riled up by Pop's needling, Rob would just let it roll right
off and say sure Pop, whatever you say. Rob the Con. He was the kid who went to the county
fair with $2.50 and came home with $15. While Mike and I became engineers Rob went
straight to finance — dealing directly with the people handing out the money. Classic Rob. He
nearly won the Key Club Governor of Florida election too — all that public speaking, all that
connecting with people, bonding with the common folk without an ounce of pretension.
Everything Pop preached about Rob just lived naturally. Pop loved every minute of it. On the
golf course Rob never threw a club, never got caught up in his score, just smiled and moved on.
Pop was impressed by that. Rob would have seen right through Pop and Poppy's mind games
too. He'd have just nodded along and quietly taken their money.
And I can't forget cousin Bill Holland — aka Billo. Though not genetically a son, he became
the older brother that Mike never had. Billo escaped the bone chilling cold of Wisconsin and
pursued his dream of broadcasting — first as a DJ at WAUC right there in Wauchula, and later
as a news anchor at Channel 40 in Sarasota. Pop treated Billo as one of his own. His
fingerprints are all over that man's life to this day. Billo loved Pop's cooking — in fact he was
often the last one at the table, happily gobbling up every last morsel. The opposite of me. I
would hardly touch anything that wasn't Pizza Hut pizza, and my procrastinating at the dinner
table tested Pop's patience on more than one occasion. One night he'd finally had enough and
struck me on the head with a fork. Billo nearly spit out his food laughing. Some dinners you
just don't forget.
And then there was me — the youngest. Watching all of them. Learning what I could.
Borrowing Rob's ID when I needed it. Chasing Mike on the golf course my whole life. Still
trying to beat him to this day.
He took care of his own until the very end. When his father was diagnosed with throat cancer in
1995 Pop brought him home. Rented a hospital bed. Sat with him. Kept him comfortable.
Wheeled him outside in the Spring sunshine to watch the squirrels and the birds one last time.
When Gramps died Pop called with a tremble in his voice and hung up before I could say
much. He was hurting and he wasn't going to let anyone see it. The King of the Civilized World
completely undone by losing his father. I understood exactly why he hung up.
Because I'm his son.
I have a feeling Pop's decline began after 2001 when he and Mom moved to Gainesville so she
could keep her pension benefits working for the State of Florida. It was supposed to be
temporary — Pop was always planning to head back to Wauchula someday. But his buddies
died one by one and it was never going to be the same anyway. Gainesville had more
amenities, better hospitals, and Mike was only an hour and a half away in Jacksonville. It just
made sense to stay. But Pop was a social man without a social world. The pharmacy counter,
the Elks Club, the golf course with Poppy — all of it gone. It's tough to start over in your 60s.
For a man whose whole identity was built around his people, losing all of that didn't just
change his life. It may have quietly ended something in him.
Back in Wauchula the house sat. Waiting. Twenty years without an occupant. The roof leaking,
the windows rotting, the floors gone, the contents of a whole life reduced to a small pile in the
garage. A hole still open in the ceiling over Pop's side of the bed from Hurricane Charley in
2004. Trees that little boys planted and watered forty five years ago overgrown and rotting.
Mother Nature slowly having her way with the King's castle. It was always supposed to be
temporary. They were always coming back. Maybe that's why nobody could quite let it go.
We close on selling that house this week.
The same week we lost Pop.
Maybe he needed to make one last pass through his castle before the keys changed hands. The
King of the Civilized World saying goodbye to his kingdom. I don't think that's crazy. I think
that's exactly the kind of thing Pop would do.
And Mom loved him. From the moment she chose him over a life of adventure, right up until
the very end — nearly sixty years, tied together on September 24, 1966. Through the pharmacy
and the poker games and Old Pink and Booger and the Tuesday afternoon smokers and the
kegerator and all of his shenanigans. She was the caregiver from as early as anyone can
remember — of her boys, of her business, of her Pop. What Pop did for his father Mom did for
Pop — every single day for fifteen years. Sitting with him. Tending to him. Loving him in the
quiet. Never leaving.
The woman who almost flew away stayed until the very end.
That is its own kind of love story. The greatest one I know.
The last fifteen years were hard to watch. The man who threw us in the deep end, who drove
Old Pink, who propped Booger up on a bar stool at the Elks Club, who could work a room like
nobody else — he spent those years in his chair. Frustrated with a body that hurt too much to
move and hurt too much to stay still. The back, the diabetes, the dementia — taking him
gradually, year by year. But I want you to remember the whole Pop. The dairy farm kid who
hitchhiked to college and built something from nothing. The pharmacist who made people
laugh. The dad who sat in a leaky tent in the rain just to be with his boy. The King of the
Civilized World. The man who gave his wife jewelry and his sons a life and all of us more than
he ever had growing up.
He put us in the deep end because he believed we could swim.
He was right.
You can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit — he'd be the first to tell you that. But Pop
came from a dairy farm in Wisconsin and a trailer home in Bradenton, with a snowy paper
route, a bicycle, and a hitchhiker's thumb.
And he made something beautiful.
Rest easy, Pop. Old Pink is waiting. Poppy's already got the tee time. And Mr. Bughere is there
too — potty trained, dignified, ready to ride shotgun one more time.
Nobody up there stands a chance.
And Mom — the greatest chick that ever lived — Pie Nose herself — she'll be along when she's
good and ready.
Don't rush her.
Written with love by his youngest son, Daniel
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