Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Dr. Anne Holt, who for years was a frequent attendee at local government meetings and other community events, and who has since had to cease her activism because of a degenerative eye disease, made a rare appearance at the Monticello City Council on Tuesday evening, Sept 3.
It was a good thing that she did too, as the council used the occasion to honor her. Then again, her presence in the council chamber possibly wasn't coincidental, based on her remark that she had wondered why friends had pressed her to attend the meeting.
Councilman Troy Avera did the honors, presenting Holt with a certificate that served as a civic achievement award. Presented, in Avera's words, for “her boundless energy and advocacy in historic preservation and making the City of Monticello and Jefferson County much better communities for the benefit of our citizens.”
Among Holt's many contributions to the community, as enumerated in the certificate, were invigorating and revitalizing Main Street of Monticello and gaining it statewide recognition as a dynamic and progressive organization; securing numerous invaluable grants that enabled the city to carry out a crucial inventory of its historical resources; restoring and establishing the old county jail as museum and getting it listed on the National Register; and establishing three widely recognized and acclaimed local conferences that have attracted national and international attention among scholars.
“Your energy, effort, successes and achievements have made the City of Monticello and Jefferson County much richer places culturally and much better places to live,” Avera said. “You have touched and improved virtually every area of our community.”
Holt, an optimist by her own telling, is a scholar in her own right and a published author who has penned numerous Westerns.
A high school dropout who attributes her 'can-do attitude' to her father, she eventually returned to school and earned a Ph.D. in history at FSU in her 70s. Not one to be discouraged by obstacles, she views challenges as incentives to action.
“I'm a total optimist,” she once told this reporter. “I always believe that I can do anything. If you have an idea, you have to be willing to work and fight for it. A lot of things fail because they simply weren't followed through.”