TOLEDO — When Tech Sgt. Melvin Holland of the U.S. Air Force left his home for a mission on his son Rick’s birthday, he was unaware of what the future held. He also was unaware his son would never get the chance to see him again.
“I said goodbye to my father on the day of my eighth birthday,” Rick Holland said. “He left on a mission. They were on a secret mission on a remote mountaintop in Laos, and it was overrun on March 11, 1968, and he’s been missing and unaccounted for since that day … So for 54 years I’ve been waiting for my dad to come home.”
In the years since his father’s disappearance, Holland has aimed at keeping the memory of him alive. Through his affiliation with the Rolling Thunder Advocacy Group, Holland found a way to do that the night of Dec. 3 as Toledo High School unveiled two Chairs of Honor in honor of Prisoners of War (POW) and the people who have been Missing in Action (MIA).
“I want to tell the story about my father and the mission and those men,” Holland said. “I was looking for a way that enabled me to keep telling that story and I learned about Rolling Thunder’s Chair of Honor program and I said ‘I want to do this, I want to put them all over this state.’”
Two chairs were unveiled at the high school during halftime of Toledo’s basketball game against Castle Rock on Dec. 3. Each chair will be left permanently empty as a reminder of the prisoners of war and of those missing in action. Toledo is the first high school in Washington state with POW/MIA chairs, Holland said during his presentation. One chair is a permanent fixture, located on the balcony of the high school gym. The other is a portable chair that can be moved from location to location as needed.
“I thought this was the perfect opportunity to honor all the POW/MIAs and be able to give me the opportunity to keep the story about my father out there and alive.”
The choice for Toledo was a no-brainer for Holland. His father attended the high school before joining the military.
“He went in the Air Force because they wouldn’t let him play basketball,” Holland joked.
Holland, who moved to Woodland with his family before his father’s mission, said he hopes Toledo students will give the chairs their proper respect. He also hopes they can help students understand the impacts of war.
“I really hope that they will treat them with dignity and honor and respect, and that they will learn from them and really do use them,” Holland said. “There’s a good opportunity there for that portable chair to take it into the classrooms and discuss any specific war, because that’s the thing about the POW/MIA issue — it’s every war.”
Moving forward, Holland hopes other schools will take note and follow in Toledo’s footsteps by placing chairs in their schools. He said he will “start planting the seed” about putting chairs in Woodland High School, where he and his siblings attended. He also mentioned Castle Rock as another potential spot, as he has family in that area.
Holland also has big ideas to reach more people by targeting professional teams in the state.
“I’m hoping that this will be a stepping stone for other ones,” he said. “Specifically, the Seahawks and the Mariners.”
Holland encourages people interested in implementing Chairs of Honor to get in touch with him to get the process started.
“Anybody that wants to do one, I’d be glad to help them get it done,” he said.
Holland can be reached via email at rholland59@gmail.com.
