Frances Damon Holt, 84, fought for liberal causes
By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist
Frances Damon Holt, descendant of a missionary family who spent a lifetime championing liberal causes, died Wednesday. She was 84.
Holt opposed the H-3 Freeway and further hotel development in Kahala and founded the Moanalua Gardens Foundation to preserve the integrity of the valley.
She was the widow of Hawaiian author, poet and historian John Dominis Holt.
Known from her Punahou days as "Patches," she left in 1933 to attend West Heath, Seven Oaks, England, then enrolled at Bedford College, University of London, in 1937. While vacationing in Switzerland, Austria and Italy, circumstances during World War II prevented her from returning to England.
She entered Radcliffe College in Massachusetts, where she fixed up an old barn, called "Patches' Barn" by Harvard students, for war refugees. The barn became a center of liberal activity.
From Radcliffe, she traveled to Mexico as treasurer of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, an organization critical of Fascism and U.S. imperialism.
Next, she popped up in Moscow at a Communist rally. Her grandfather was S.M. Damon, one-time chief owner of Bishop National Bank, now First Hawaiian Bank.
Her half brother denied that she was the person involved.
In later years, Holt's battles took place in Hawai'i. Having grown up in Moanalua Valley in the 1920s, she struggled to preserve Hawai'i's lifestyle. After approval for construction of the Kahala Hilton in 1960, she called plans for more hotels on Kahala Beach a "great mistake" at a city zoning commission hearing.
She quietly married John Dominis Holt in 1973, a marriage that columnist Sammy Amalu said would never work because Patches was too proper and John too fiery. Instead, the couple remained devoted to one another.
The following year they started Topgallant Publishing, a firm that for a decade printed important if unprofitable books on Hawai'i. Meanwhile, she founded the Moanalua Gardens Foundation, and she and her husband teamed up to unsuccessfully fight H-3 Freeway, financing legal protest action.
Holt remained an art patron throughout her lifetime. In the 1960s she bought a rare painting of Queen Kalama, wife of Kamehameha, from collector Donald Angus, who found it in a London art gallery.
Recently she gave the Honolulu Academy of Arts a folding screen from the Choson dynasty, 19th century, in memory of her husband.
Holt is survived by her daughters, Allison Holt Gendreau and Melanie Holt; son, Daniel Holt; sisters, Harriet Baldwin and Joan Haig; and nine grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held at the Chinese Hall at Moanalua Gardens at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Donations may be made in her name to the Honolulu Academy of Arts or the Moanalua Gardens Foundation.
