Rachel Holt, of Oak Ridge, died with her family at her side and peacefully of natural causes at Greenfield of Oak Ridge on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2013. She was 91.

Rachel Mildred Beadle was born March 21, 1922, in Giles County, Tenn., the first and only daughter of Raymond Beadle, a farmer and storekeeper, and Nannie May Russell Beadle, a homemaker, who also had seven sons but two died as infants. Rachel spent happy childhood years with her five brothers in the rural village of Campbellsville and later Pulaski in Middle Tennessee. She was an ambitious and energetic child who helped raise three younger brothers, worked in the family grocery store, and made her mark as an eager and serious student and skillful basketball player.

After high school, with financial help from a brother Lawrence, a naval officer, Rachel attended Martin College in Pulaski, Tenn. Rachel’s childhood girlfriend, Ethel Holt, introduced Rachel to John Cecil Holt, a brother home on leave from naval service, and the relationship blossomed quickly. Upon graduation from Martin College, Rachel took a job as a clerk in the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, D.C. She left that job to marry John in Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 19, 1943, and she occasionally traveled by train across the country to rendezvous with him. Rachel gave birth to their first daughter, Reba Rae Holt, on March 28, 1945, in Yorktown, Va. [Read more…]