Conversations with the Community

Smallwood Holoman Jr is a native of Virginia, and the great, great grandson of Jason and Martha Brown Holloman (1830 ca), and the great grandson of James Henry and Sharon Crocker (1854 – 1945), all were slaves in southeastern Virginia.  Born in Norfolk and Smallwood was raised in a segregated neighborhood in Chesapeake Virginia, Holoman’s primary and secondary education was also in segregated schools and his undergraduate collegiate education was at Norfolk State University, a Historical Black College/University (HBCU) where he studied Chemistry.

Holoman has been a resident of Midland since July 1975.  Recruited by The Dow Chemical Company (now Dow Inc) as a chemist for their research and development department, his journey to Midland from Virginia, revealed some stark differences he had not anticipated!  Demographic and environmental differences created new life challenges!

During Holoman’s nearly 5 decades of residing in Midland, he has shared his time, talents, and treasure with several not-for-profit organizations throughout the Great Lakes Bay region and the State.  This includes 10 years on the Midland Public Schools Board of Education, 6 years on Delta College Board of Trustees, 20 plus years with the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program (DAPCEP), Michigan (State) 4H Foundation, Midland Council on Aging (now Senior Services of Midland County) and other youth development and senior support organizations.  Holoman considers himself a “community volunteer and a servant of man!”.

Smallwood and his wife Linda, also a community volunteer, have two adult children who are graduates of Midland High School and Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant MI.

In the early 1900’s, Larry Levy’s grandparents and other elders, all Orthodox Jews, emigrated to America from Lodz in Poland and Odessa in czarist Russia.  They left their homes as best they could because as Jews their opportunities were severely limited due to antisemitism, and more and more their neighborhoods, livelihoods, and very lives were threatened by pogroms.

The America they arrived in, in many ways, also discriminated against Jews and other minorities.  However, public education was readily available, as well as the freedom to worship and live as Jews.  Larry’s parents helped to establish a reform synagogue in Rochester, New York where Larry and his brother and sister attended both Sunday School and Hebrew School.  Larry later earned degrees and won awards for his poetry at Ohio Wesleyan University and the University of Wyoming.  His forty year career in teaching included experience at every grade level from pre-school through graduate school. 

For many years he taught at Delta College, including a course he helped design called “Literature and History of the Holocaust.”  As part of his preparation for teaching that course, he received a fellowship which allowed him to study with some of the world’s leading Holocaust historians, to meet several Holocaust survivors, and to tour significant sites, including Auschwitz in Poland and Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. 

In addition to teaching and speaking at many schools, colleges, and workshops, Larry has had several collections of poetry published, all of which include individual poems on many subjects including his Jewish heritage and the Holocaust. 

Larry and his wife Cheryl, raised in an Ohio home and Methodist church, will celebrate their 55^th wedding anniversary this August.  Together they have directed many community theater productions in Midland, including Teenage Musical’s 2007 production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” and the Hath Summer Players’ 2021 production of “Nathan the Wise,” both of which wrestle with themes of religious intolerance and acceptance.

An intense desire to “help others” was deeply engraved in Indira’s soul which never departed since her early childhood in India to her adulthood. Her desire to help people intensified with her Ph. D and research in the field of Immunology and then post-doctoral studies in the USA, in Molecular Biology in breast cancer in the 90’s.  

 Life took another turn for Indira when she met Ed by the divine appointment in Chicago and came to Midland and they got married in December of 1995, just 3 months after they met. “I was a total stranger” here not knowing anybody except my new family and there came a time for a mental shift adjustment of “serving” which was equally strange, uncomfortable and new to Indira as her move to Midland. “I thought to myself, now I am not just Oskvarek’ s daughter-in-law but of whole Midland and all these people are now my people, whom I also must serve”. Indira loved and was used to “being served” and had never in fact “served” anybody, though she loved helping others.

Indira served the next 10-13 years as a volunteer in as many places as she could, from her visits to the hospital, the nursing homes, to the lonely individuals and the women in the county jail. All this “serving” she considered nothing but just a time-pass and deep within, she felt empty, lost and her life as a failure, especially in this small town of Midland, there was nothing worthwhile that could happen. How little she knew that all these years, she was paving her way to the utmost desire of her heart to “help and serve” with something bigger than she had ever expected or even dreamed of. In 2006, a public charity, Global Compassion Inc 501 (C) (3) was born at 3910 Concord St, Midland, MI

Since 2006 to this day, Indira, along with her husband Ed has been helping and serving thousands of people with their charity’s outreach programs by drilling wells for water, support education, empowering women to self-sufficiency, medical camps, COVID- relief, raising funds for hurricane disasters in US and now since the war, helping the Ukrainian refugees in town and projects in Ukraine and also serving the needy in Midland community, as a servant.

Now I have to stand in front of people and spread my hands asking for donations. I begged God to please ask me anything but spare me  from this utter humiliation of myself in front of people. It was the hardest ego pill that Indira would have to swallow but God’s grace pulled her through. Now I have become a shameless beggar but still has not mastered complete humility and selflessness. The making of a servant is an ongoing process.