David Holladay, age 70, of Westford, Massachusetts, passed away on February 15, 2024 at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts. He was married to Caryn Navy with whom he would have celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary on January 2, 2025.
Born in San Andreas, California, he was the beloved son of William Lee Holladay and Jean Grosbach.
He graduated from Newton North High School with the Class of 1971 and also attended American Community School-Beirut for many prior years. He is a graduate of MIT with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering.
He was employed by Duxbury Systems, Inc. for many years.
He was a member of Congregation Shalom in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
He loved the work he did with software to enable computer-assisted production of braille material in many languages around the world. He also loved creating software tools for archiving the wide-ranging information he always sought. While being cared for at home by the loving hands of his nurses and home health aides for over three years, he enriched their lives with his broad interests, humor, compassion, and generosity while he continued his enthusiastic work for Duxbury Systems.
Besides his wife, he is survived by his mother Jean Grosbach, son Seth Holladay and partner Morgan Hallion, his daughter Diya Holladay, his brother Martin Holladay and wife Karyn Patno, his brother Peter Holladay and wife Elana Wolkoff, brother Clark MacKenzie, and brother-in-law Joel Navy, Martin’s sons Moses and Noah, Peter’s daughter and son Mara and Josh, and Joel’s daughters Allison and Heather.
He was the brother of the late Catherine Holladay of Boston, Massachusetts who died on June 12, 1985, survived by her husband Mike and children Anna and John with their newer family members Judy and Sarah. He is the son of William Lee Holladay of Amherst, Massachusetts who died on May 13, 2016, survived by his wife Patty and their daughter Meg along with David’s brothers.
FUNERAL NOTICE
David Holladay of Westford, Massachusetts died February 15, 2024.
Funeral Monday, February 19, 12 noon at Congregation Shalom, 87 Richardson Rd, N. Chelmsford, MA 01863, with streaming available at congregationshalom.org/worship-2 for at least several days; press the button labeled Play just after the level 3 heading “Live streaming of services is now available”! Burial follows at 1 pm at Beth El Cemetery, intersection of Waverly Ave and Housatonic Ave in N. Chelmsford.
Shiva will be held at the home of Caryn Navy in Westford on Tuesday, February 20 from 7 to 9 pm, on Zoom on Wednesday, February 21 from 7 to 9 pm, and at the home of Peter Holladay and Elana Wolkoff in the Roslindale section of Boston on Thursday, February 22 from 7 to 9 pm.
Memorials may be made in his name to OXFAM America (give.oxfamamerica.org), the Greater Boston Food Bank (my.gbfb.org), or Westford’s Cameron Senior Center (westfordmafriendsofcameron.com).
2 responses to “David Holladay of Westford, Massachusetts”
David was a wonderful guy and my best friend i college. We kept in touch ever since. David was the best man at my wedding and i was the second best man at his. [I was alternate best man in case Caryn’s brother’s wife was in labor at the time of the wedding. Caryn’s father said, “I gained a son-in-law on January 2 and became a grandfather the next day.”] I joined the two of them for their honeymoon in a snowbound cabin where we went crosscountry skiing in the Vermont mountains.
David was quite the hacker at MIT. Two examples: When Caryn’s dorm floor was “at war” with a different floor, David convinced the elevators on the floor to temporarily forget that the floor existed. He also installed a phone landline on top of the Great Dome . He was temporarily stuck up there, but he called a friend from the dome line to come set the ladder back up after passing through the locked main library at 4 a.m.
Upon hearing the passing of David Holladay last week I can’t help but thinking what a profound influence he and his wife Caryn Navy had on my professional career. He and Caryn really democratized the production of Braille and revolutionized access for blind people around the world. They were among the first to utilize off-the-shelf technology to provide access to print sources.
I was a teacher at the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind (now the New York Institute for Special Education) and I was just beginning to explore the use of access technology. The technology emerging was the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the Optacon, the VersaBraille and the Visualtek CCTV. The tech was expensive, difficult to learn and extremely narrow in its scope.
I was approached by Edith Patt, the senior social worker at the Institute and she said that one of her past client’s daughter was doing something with computers and that I may want to call her and her husband. She didn’t know what they were doing but she knew that I had an interest in personal computers. With that, she gave me a number in Pennsylvania asked me to call if I was interested.
When I called, I spoke to David, who told me that he had written a program on the Apple II computer that would allow him take files that his wife Caryn has written on the VersaBraille (an early Braille notetaking device and possibly the first laptop computer), transfer them to the Apple, translate them from contracted electronic braille into text. He further said he could then edit the files, translated them back into contacted electronic braille and transfer the file back into the VersaBraille. I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about, but the Institute had an Apple II computer and a VersaBraille. He also told me that he didn’t foresee a use for this technology in education. HE excitedly told he was a 6502 programmer (again, no clue), and that he was expanding the role of the program to print to several Braille embossers that were hitting the market.
David and Caryn lived in Lewisburg, PA at time where Caryn was a professor at Bucknell University. I wanted to get a live demonstration of the program which David called Braille-Edit and I arranged to visit them at their home while I was attending my Army Reserve annual training at Fort Indiantown Gap. I met with them on a rainy evening where David demonstrated the program and the transfer to and from the VersaBraille and cooked and served a very tasty turkey dinner to boot!
I left Lewisburg with a less murky understanding of his and Caryn’s work and a complimentary copy of Braille- Edit to try out at the Institute. I also have to say that this encounter was instrumental in what became my chosen professional path for the next 45 years. I was in awe of his talent and vision and my life is richer for all the “David Holladay encounters” I had over the ensuing years.
My final encounter with David and Caryn was a few months ago when he asked me to communicate with my formed employer over a braille translating program they where working on to expand braille literacy in Africa. David was in a hospital bed still affected by the serious health issues he was dealing with, but the spark never left him. He was still the David Holladay that I remembered in that first encounter in Lewisburg.
Godspeed, David! I was proud to know you.