Services Set Saturday for William Holway
Services for William N. (Bill) Holway, a pioneer in building GRDA water projects, are set this Saturday at 2 p.m. at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa. Holway worked on the construction of the Pensacola Dam while in college and later his company engineered the Markham Ferry Dam and pumpback project as well as the coal-fired steam plant in Pryor. He was 86.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Bill in the spring of '05 while working on a history project for GRDA…people still alive who had worked on the building of Pensacola Dam.
We went to Holway Point, near the entrance to Drowning Creek, via boat and tied up at the dock. There, having driven down the hill in his car, was Bill, waiting to greet us.
We sat inside the Holway Family compound, built by his father, W.R., of limestone rock taken from the spillway south of the Dam in 1945-49. He and his wife Polly patiently talked about the old days and gave us copies of the history of the Holway family and showed us many photos in the family collection.
Bill's father, W.R. Holway, was the chief engineer for the Pensacola project and his wife Hope, assisted in the engineering office. She had been his high school English teacher, eight years his senior. Bill's mother in her 20's was a drop dead gorgeous woman while his father was a Robert Redford type character and no nonsense brilliant engineer. W.R. built the Spavinaw Water Project while still in his 20's. He designed the Spavinaw Dam to be a half inch taller at one end, so that the water across the 800-foot span would run evenly to match the earth's curvature.
Bill told us of how he spent one summer vacation from college at MIT painting the insides of the Pensacola dam's four penstocks with gooey black tar to make them slippery. "That was one hot, smelly job," he recalled. It took him nearly a month to do it.
He also did surveys around the lake to elevation 755 with survey crews using 1940 Dodge automobiles. He recalled being dropped off someplace on Drowning Creek, with a promise that the crew would return in an hour. Three hours went by and he was beginning to think the rest of the crew would never return for him, deep in the woods. He also did computations on the amount of concrete in the dam's buttresses, which are five feet thick at the bottom and two feet thick at the top.
When asked if he ever thought there would be 18,000 property owners on Grand Lake he said "never in my wildest dreams."
Then he shared a secret with us which has never been revealed to this day.
"The elevation marker at the dam is one foot off," he said, "but don't tell anyone."
"When the elevation of the lake is 743, it is really at 744," he said. "It was just a mistake."
We will miss Bill Holway's bright spirit, sense of humor and smile, and his contributions to many of GRDA's projects.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Bill in the spring of '05 while working on a history project for GRDA…people still alive who had worked on the building of Pensacola Dam.
We went to Holway Point, near the entrance to Drowning Creek, via boat and tied up at the dock. There, having driven down the hill in his car, was Bill, waiting to greet us.
We sat inside the Holway Family compound, built by his father, W.R., of limestone rock taken from the spillway south of the Dam in 1945-49. He and his wife Polly patiently talked about the old days and gave us copies of the history of the Holway family and showed us many photos in the family collection.
Bill's father, W.R. Holway, was the chief engineer for the Pensacola project and his wife Hope, assisted in the engineering office. She had been his high school English teacher, eight years his senior. Bill's mother in her 20's was a drop dead gorgeous woman while his father was a Robert Redford type character and no nonsense brilliant engineer. W.R. built the Spavinaw Water Project while still in his 20's. He designed the Spavinaw Dam to be a half inch taller at one end, so that the water across the 800-foot span would run evenly to match the earth's curvature.
Bill told us of how he spent one summer vacation from college at MIT painting the insides of the Pensacola dam's four penstocks with gooey black tar to make them slippery. "That was one hot, smelly job," he recalled. It took him nearly a month to do it.
He also did surveys around the lake to elevation 755 with survey crews using 1940 Dodge automobiles. He recalled being dropped off someplace on Drowning Creek, with a promise that the crew would return in an hour. Three hours went by and he was beginning to think the rest of the crew would never return for him, deep in the woods. He also did computations on the amount of concrete in the dam's buttresses, which are five feet thick at the bottom and two feet thick at the top.
When asked if he ever thought there would be 18,000 property owners on Grand Lake he said "never in my wildest dreams."
Then he shared a secret with us which has never been revealed to this day.
"The elevation marker at the dam is one foot off," he said, "but don't tell anyone."
"When the elevation of the lake is 743, it is really at 744," he said. "It was just a mistake."
We will miss Bill Holway's bright spirit, sense of humor and smile, and his contributions to many of GRDA's projects.
posted by Editor | 2:00 AM
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