Hugh Hollowell — ‘a servant’s heart’

Marshall County officials are in shock over the loss of emergency management coordinator Hugh Hollowell from complications associated with COVID-19.

Hollowell died shortly after noon Thursday, Oct. 22, following testing positive October 17, according to Larry Hall, county administrator/road manager and a close associate of Hollowell’s.

Referring to Hollowell in jest as the “Maytag repairman,” Hall talked with him Tuesday night, Oct. 13.

“I said, `Is this the Maytag repairman?’” Hall asked. “Hollowell said he had been sick at his stomach all weekend and that he was weak.”

Hall asked Hollowell if he thought he needed to go get checked for COVID.

“Naw,” he said to Hall. “I gotta stay close to the house (the bathroom).” Hollowell sent a text to Hall while he was getting tested for COVID, saying he had no fever. Saturday, Oct. 17, Hall learned his friend was positive for the virus.

“Me and him got a lot closer through this COVID (emergency response) thing,” Hall said.

The two were responsible for providing personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies for county employees and offices.

Hall said he and Hollowell had each other’s back many times.

“I told him when he needed to be at board meetings,” Hall said. “He was very visible during tornado recovery (after the Dec. 23, 2015, tornado that struck Marshall County). He was absolutely the man to go to. He was a good coordinator.”

Hall recalled Hollowell’s dry humor.

As an example, Hall took his office workers and Hollowell out to lunch on two occasions and picked up the tab.

“You don’t have to take me to raise,” Hollowell told him.

“I’ll get mine back picking your brain,” Hall responded.

Leland Reed, assistant fire chief at the Holly Springs Fire Department, was almost speechless at the shocking loss.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Reed said. “It is a tough one.” The two started working with county fire service years ago when Hollowell was employed with Synergy Gas in Byhalia. Hollowell was the fire chief at Watson for several years while at Synergy.

“Everybody was pleased when he went to emergency management,” Reed said.

Hollowell was a sort of diplomat in working with the fire chiefs and could help bring the chiefs to consensus, Reed said. Hollowell was available to all.

Assistant emergency management coordinator Ron Rhea worked with Hollowell since the mid-90s.

He said Hollowell went from fire chief to fire coordinator and then served as fire investigator and fire coordinator before taking on the big job. Rhea’s main job was training firefighters.

Rhea and Hollowell worked closely together for the county. The two shared duties.

“I did stuff for him when he was busy,” Rhea said.

“He always told me we’ve got too many hats, and I’d tell him we got to keep turning those hats around. He said he wanted to leave things better than it was when we came.”

Hollowell, 69, and Rhea, 73, went to Byhalia High School together.

“Somebody called us brothers and said we were always talking like brothers,” Rhea said. “He became fire chief (at Watson) at age 52 and he brought me up. He was a step ahead but brought me up behind him.”

Rhea missed a meeting of the board of directors once at Watson and he was given an appointment.

“I said I got railroaded; I didn’t have a choice,” Rhea said. “He said that’s what happens when you don’t show up at a meeting. He was always full of it.”

Both of them relied on each other and talked about retiring together.

“He said, `You can’t retire until I retire,’” Rhea recalled. “I said, OK, I’ll hang around. We talked about getting through the COVID pandemic before getting out of the business. It’s going to be hard to fill his shoes.”

Janice Wagg knew Hollowell since first grade.

“I knew him when he was quiet and shy,” she said. “You may find that hard to believe, but he was.” Wagg and another friend were instrumental in nudging Hugh Hollowell to take his future wife, Pat, out on their first date.

Wagg knew him through his many jobs, both before and after his four-year stint in the Air Force.

“He was the kind of friend who always put others first,” Wagg said, “a person you could call on for anything at any time. I have never heard an unkind word associated with his name.”

Wagg said Hollowell told her the last time she saw him he planned to retire this year but “with COVID going on, I am needed.”

“That was his way — others first. His family, his classmates, his co-workers and his many friends have lost one of the best.” A comment on the Barton Volunteer Fire Department social media page called Hollowell “a man with a servant’s heart.”

“Now bask in the Glory of the Kingdom and rest easy. We have your watch from here,” was included in the comments.

Hollowell, who often referred to himself as a tinkerer, started to work part-time for Marshall County as fire coordinator in 1989 when the Mississippi Legislature created the position. He continued working full-time at Synergy and became full-time emergency management coordinator in 1996.

Hollowell described himself as a graduate of the “school of hard knocks.”

He lost of his dad at age 6.

“You play the cards you are dealt,” he said.

In a 2019 profile in The South Reporter, Hollowell said he worked during high school to help his mother with the family expenses.

He spent four years in the U.S. Air Force after high school. He began dating Pat in high school at age 15.

He and his wife lived on the land where he grew up.

“I expect they will plant me there, too,” he quipped in his Profile interview. “I live on the home dirt I grew up on.”

Hollowell’s wife Pat also contracted COVID and they were both sick with the virus when he died at home, Hall said.

His funeral arrangements are incomplete at press-time this week.

“Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” John 16:22 NKJV.