Honoring Exemplars of Cultural Renewal

The Eighth Day Institute raised a toast to Jerrilyn Holladay as the recipient of the 2022 St. John of Damascus Award on Friday, August 12, 2022 at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Wichita, KS.

Jeri Holladay moved to Kansas from New York in 1991 to join the theology faculty of then Kansas Newman College and later became the founding director of the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies. Later she became Director of Adult Education at the Spiritual Life Center for the Diocese of Wichita. After retiring from the Spiritual Life Center, she led the Adult Education program at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church where she and her husband are parishioners. She also became involved in the Eighth Day Institute, helping to plan the first and subsequent EDI Symposia and later as an EDI Board member. She is a member of the Greater Wichita G. K. Chesterton Society and remains active in her parish, especially with St. Thomas Scholars and with the pro-life team.

Jeri converted to Catholicism after a long and winding road, which began with being baptized as an infant but raised purely secular to becoming Christian, then Episcopalian, and finally Roman Catholic. Her parents, Dalton and Muriel, and her younger sister Jackie and brother-in-law Justin all found their way into the Catholic Church. 

Jeri studied Systematic Theology at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, was a religion editor at Doubleday and taught at St. Anthony’s High School in Huntington, NY before moving to Kansas, not only to accept the position at Kansas Newman, but to be near her beloved sister and brother-in-law. Best of all, she met her husband Don who hails from Dodge City, Kansas, a meeting that never would have happened had she stayed in New York. God works in mysterious ways!

Congratulations, Jeri, and thank you!