August 16, 1916 – June 18, 2010
by Shara Partin, Church of the Holy Comforter, Burlington, 2010
My friend was born and reared in Eufaula, Alabama. She graduated from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA, attended UNC Law School and got her LLB from the University of Alabama in 1941. Luckily for us, she married a North Carolina classmate who, after WWII, took her to live in Burlington where they reared three children. At Holy Comforter she became one of their treasures, loved and respected by all. Always outspoken, she was the first woman elected to the Vestry and the first female Senior Warden. The Diocese was also blessed by her leadership and example. She was the first women elected to the Standing Committee, served on Diocesan Council and numberless committees. She was often the first woman blazing a trail for others.
In 1975 she was appointed to represent the 25th District in the North Carolina House of Representatives and served until 1994. With grace, warmth, charm and a bee pinned on her shoulder she determinedly sponsored and got passed legislation to provide a chapel in the Women’s Prison, inmate substance abuse programs, half way houses for female inmates and their children and the marital rape law. In 1995 she was a member of the delegation to the 4th UN Conference on Women held in Bejing. Until her death this past June at age 93 she spoke with a clear and urgent sense of what’s right and just on behalf of those unable to speak for themselves or whose voices were unheeded.
She received numerous awards, among them the Distinguished Alumnus Award from UNC; an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Agnes Scott, and the Frank Porter Graham Award. In 1995 the ECW of the Diocese of North Carolina made her their Honored Woman at the Triennial Meeting in Indianapolis. In her acceptance of the Faith Active in Public Life Award given by the NC Council of Churches in 1987 she defined her life when she said “I had to do some re-thinking in my mind about religion and politics. I asked myself, shall I divide myself into two little compartments — one that says Church and one that says State: I realized I couldn’t possibly do that.”
Bertha Merrill Holt, “B” a woman to remember.