Ronald Holloway lived out his faith, never saying “no” to anyone in need.
A former Marine and anesthetist, Holloway spent his retirement volunteering to help fellow veterans in Cumming. His family said he regularly met with veterans and participated in parades and other events. His wife, Xuejun Zhang, said his friendships were so strong that even though he was in poor health he would drop what he was doing to take aging veterans to the hospital.
“It wasn’t his problem and he helped them anyway,” she said. “He never said ‘no.’”
Holloway served during Vietnam and was never one to repress his years in the military.
“They were my bedtime stories,” his daughter, Nicole O’Lenick, said with a laugh. “If it wasn’t a Bible story, it was a war story. He’d talk about being in the trenches.”
Ronald James Holloway, 66, died of heart failure on April 18. He was cremated Sunday and his ashes will be buried at a graveside service at 10 a.m. Tuesday, at Eternal Hills Memorial Gardens in Snellville. Tom M. Wages Funeral Services is in charge of the arrangements.
Holloway told a lot of war stories, but more than anything he loved to talk about God and the Bible. O’Lenick said he was fiercely passionate about his faith and took evangelism seriously.
“If he was passionate about something, he wanted everybody to be passionate about it,” she said. “Most of the time it was about Christianity.”
The 35-year-old said when she visited her father in the hospital about a week ago he told her he wished he could be out witnessing.
Some of those conversations about Christianity got a little heated, said Zhang. Holloway often got into arguments with preachers and friends.
“I used to tell him, ‘If you want people to hear you, you should tell them softly,’” she said.
He was stubborn, she said, and knew it. He credited both his strong will and physical strength to the Marines, she said.
“He would say the Marines made him physically strong and college made him spiritually strong,” she said.
Holloway was attending Covenant College when he enlisted in the Marines, said O’Lenick. While on tour in Vietnam he was in a car accident, injured and honorably discharged. He moved back to Georgia and studied anesthesiology at Emory University School of Medicine.
It was at work in an anesthesiology department that he met Zhang, who came to the United States from China in 1996.
“I was considered a foreigner, but he always talked to me,” she said. “My English might not be perfect, but he didn’t mind. He still talked to me and wanted to know about me.”
Holloway and Zhang were married for 11 years. O’Lenick is Holloway’s daughter from a previous marriage, with a woman now named Elaine Miklos, to whom he was married for 18 years.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Holloway is survived by his sister Toni Holloway, of Waterloo, Il., step-son Ruoyi Chen of Cumming, Ga., son-in-law Kevin O’Lenick, of Smyrna, Ga. and three grandchildren: Jackson, 5, Hudson, 3, and Hadley, 1.
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