Veteran Holt Maloney

Holt Maloney

Holt Maloney’s interesting personality and accommodating ways reflect his early childhood training as well as the numerous years he worked in the tourism industry. He began this kind of work early in life and continued in it until his final retirement.

While in high school, he enjoyed a wide range of sports and played on the school’s baseball and football teams. His fondest memories of those years are his many schoolmates and friends, but he also has special memories of his sponsoring teacher through high school, Ms. Margaret Grable. He has felt her influence on his life through the years that followed.

One humorous incident of his childhood was one Halloween when he and others pushed a car from a parking lot about a mile downhill, only to be met by a cop who made them push it back up again.

Upon graduation from high school in 1942 he had plans for college under a sports scholarship from Randolph Macon College, and his father urged him to take it. But by then Holt was in love with his high school classmate Betty who later became his wife. Influenced by the war which was now in progress, he opted for one year post high school study, and married Betty in June 1943.

Holt was subject to the draft but on learning he could make his choice of which armed service he would enter if he volunteered (the Navy, of course!), he chose that route. Soon after his marriage he found himself in boot training at Sampson, NY. From there he went to the Hospital Corps School at Bainbridge, MD, and then on to the naval Operations Base in Norfolk. He remained there until February 1944 and was then placed on a LST bound for England. At Plymouth, after several months of additional training and service, he was put aboard the LST 47 and on that ship he engaged in some of the most dangerous fighting of the war.

The Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944 called D-Day, was about to take place and Holt’s LST was on the front line. Along with four other LSTs, it was sent ahead of the main fleet to seek and destroy obstacles in the water off the beach, and to interrupt communications of the enemy. It was dark when his ship arrived at its destination about one mile off the beach, and at that time they could not see the huge armada behind them.

Their LST remained in the same position all day, and Holt remained at his battle station at the 40 millimeter gun turret on the starboard bow. Around five in the evening the ferry returned with a load of prisoners, about 200 in number, and LST 47 took them back to Southampton, England. A picture of the ship and prisoners departing from the beach was later posted on the front page of the NY Times. Holt’s father saw the picture and recognized Holt’s ship. He kept the picture (above, right) for Holt to see, and Holt told his dad that he is one of the specks shown on the bow of the ship.

The war was not over for Holt on D-Day. Later his LST took part in the invasion of southern France, and still later he was sent to do duty in the U. S. Naval Hospital in Oran, North Africa. Holt was given an honorable discharge on December 13, 1945.

Holt took a job with his father-in-law at a Pontiac dealership on return from the service. He and his wife Betty soon had two little girls, Vickie and Nancy, but Betty unfortunately died in 1961 leaving him and his parents to raise the girls. God remedied his domestic situation in 1964 when he met and married his second wife Cornelia, who had three children by her first marriage; Alice, Charlotte, and Charles. Holt says he will always remember how fortunate he was to find her, and for their 44 happy years together. He also remarked how close their whole family became; it was as if they had been one family from the beginning.

Holt left the Pontiac work in 1951 to work in the tourism industry at Endless Caverns. He left that work in 1968 to work in Public Relations at the Luray Caverns, and before his retirement in 1995 he had become its Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations.

Though Holt regrets having chosen not to go to college, surely few Americans have made such remarkable contributions to their native land as he. It is difficult to see how any other track he might have chosen in life could have enriched him more in the real substantive enjoyments that life offers, or better helped him to use his substantial talents.

All of us who know him appreciate his genuine friendliness and positive attitude. We stand in debt to him for his service to our nation, and through these means we wish to express our gratitude.

As told to Dick Young