Maurice Holloway
October 12, 1930 - February 27, 2017
On February 27, 2017, Maurice Holloway passed away peacefully in San Francisco after a short illness related to Alzheimer’s disease. His was a life well lived. We will all miss his calm voice, his dry wit, and his beautiful smile.
Maurice was born on October 12, 1930 in Sacramento, the first child of Mildred and Albert Holloway. Second son Richard was born five years later. The family lived in San Leandro, where Maurice enjoyed riding bikes, playing basketball, and participating in the Boy Scouts. After graduating from San Leandro High School in 1948, he attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in business administration. At his campus residence, Bowles Hall, he met Harry Hanson who became a lifelong friend and fishing partner. Upon graduation from Cal in 1952, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He attended Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI and served for two years at Alameda Naval Air Station.
In 1953, he married the love of his life, Janice Normann, his high school sweetheart. While many families were heading to the suburbs, Maurice and Janice chose the more diverse experiences the city had to offer, moving to San Francisco in 1964 with their four children: Susan, David, Annette, and Keith. The family balanced city life with weekend trips to Stinson Beach, Muir Woods, Mount Tamalpais, and Point Reyes.
Maurice’s entire career was spent working for Cornnuts, the snack food company his father had started in Oakland in 1936. Maurice and Richard purchased Cornnuts from their father in 1959, and under their leadership it grew from a small, local business to a national brand. The brothers shared management of the company, with Richard overseeing the agricultural side.
While Maurice enjoyed his business career, he relished the outdoors, particularly when pursuing his lifelong love of fishing. He caught his first fish at Clear Lake at the age of four and was hooked for life. Together with Richard and Harry Hanson, he enjoyed planning fishing trips to remote areas in the wilds of Canada, Alaska, Central and South America, Russia and Baja California. He strongly advocated “catch and release” fishing.
Hiking and camping were also passions, and he and Jan took their children on backpacking trips to the Sierras, Wyoming’s Grand Tetons, the Olympic Mountains in Washington and the Sawtooth Range in Idaho, to experience the beauty of the wilderness. With his family, he climbed Mt. Shasta, hiked the entire John Muir Trail, and walked in Switzerland, Spain and Africa.
Maurice never saw a river he didn’t want to save. Inspired by the freedom and beauty of wild places and the need to preserve them, he became a lifelong supporter of conservation groups, including the Isaak Walton League, the Sierra Club, Earth Justice, the Nature Conservancy, the Pacific Forest Trust, the Wild Salmon Center, the Tuolumne River Trust, Trout Unlimited, Friends of the River, the Wilderness Society, and creek preservation groups in San Leandro and Marin County. In 1984, while serving on the Board of the Tuolumne River Trust, he had some 20 million Cornnuts packages printed with a pitch for contributions to help save the Tuolumne River. The money raised helped achieve passage of a law granting federal wilderness protection to the 83mile Tuolumne as a National Wild and Scenic River.
Maurice served on the Sierra Club Foundation Board of Directors as a trustee from 1983-1989, including a stint as President of the Board. He was also a member of the Sierra Club’s Centennial Campaign Steering Committee from 1992-1998, and helped the Club develop a highly successful major gifts program and endowment fund. In addition, he was long-time chair of the Sierra Club Foundation’s National Advisory Council.
In 1996, the Sierra Club and the Sierra Club Foundation presented Maurice the Richard Leonard Award for providing “inspirational guidance in creating, leading and supporting the Centennial Campaign and in garnering major donor support for the cause of conservation.”
He is survived by Jan, his wife of sixty-four years; children Susan, David, Annette (Guy Ashcraft), and Keith (Nancy So); grandchildren Dylan Fuller, Caitlin Fuller, Kyle Ashcraft, Maia So-Holloway, and Marcus So-Holloway; brother Richard and his wife Jan; nephew Jeffrey and his wife, Virginia, and niece Deborah Rich and her children Mila and Benjamin.
There will be a celebration of Maurice’s life on April 2nd. The family would like to thank his wonderful caregivers at Cypress at Golden Gate: Daisy Dizon and Francisco Jarlos. We would also like to acknowledge the invaluable care of Hospice-by-the-Bay, and Caring for Seniors. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Sierra Club Foundation, Tuolumne River Trust, Compassion & Choices, or to your favorite charitable cause.
If there is a sparkling trout stream in Heaven, where fish rise every morning, Maurice will find the perfect spot to cast his fly.