Marion Holley information

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Marion E. Holley (later Hofman, May 17, 1910 – December 15, 1995) was a US track and field athlete who competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics and went on to many years of service in the Baháʼí Faith.

Holley^[1] was the first child born to Harry and Grace Holley living in Visalia, California. Harry was a successful water resources civil engineer active in Tulare County from circa 1900 through 1963.^[2] While being raised by college graduates the family encountered the Baháʼí Faith circa 1917 and were part of the organized community when they elected their first local Spiritual Assembly in 1925. Holley attended her mother's alma mater, Leland Stanford Junior University starting in the fall of 1926 when she was 16 years old. Her freshman year she was noted in the school newspaper active in the debate club as well as performing piano and was accepted into the Delta Delta Delta sorority. That year she also made the newspaper being named to the all-star women's basketball team. With the advent of women participating in track and field in the 1928 Summer Olympics, women's sports was covered in the newspapers much more, and records were being set and beaten often - and Holley was among the Stanford leaders and received significant coverage including beyond the college newspaper. She also served in management arenas of college and then inter-college organization of women's sports. This pattern of success included advancing into those 1928 Olympics where she specializing in the high jump, (in the era before the Fosbury Flop.) Though she only placed 9th ultimately, her success back in Stanford reached the point of the leading scorer of overall achievement the following year and winning the presidency of the regional women's athletics association her junior year in college. She was also listed in a Baháʼí directory of contacts though she had not been named active in the college club of Baháʼís or their meetings.

Things changed significantly her senior year of 1929-1930. Holley took a year's advanced studies at University of California at Berkeley but from the standpoint of newspaper coverage, the biggest change is she did not appear in any sports coverage other than to advocate for women participating in the Olympics. She was not noted in any sports activity whatsoever. She returned to Stanford the fall of 1930 for her final semester, joined Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors. She returned to Visalia and was elected to the Spiritual Assembly of Visalia however she felt agnostic about God and alienated from the community. She has not written about this time in any available record though in a couple years she would address the challenges youth faced in American society, as well as matters of faith. What is known is that two significant women of the religion stayed at the Holley home, did not discuss religion or her situation with her, but she was in a position to see and hear them. Particularly Holley was impressed by Keith Ransom-Kehler, soon to leave on a trip among many countries in which she would soon lay down her life. As a result, in early 1932, Holley made a formal declaration of faith at a meeting of the Pasadena Local Spiritual Assembly. By June it was announced Holley was part of the committee to put together volume 5 of the Baháʼí World series covering worldwide developments in the religion for 1932-1935.

From 1932 Holley would be visible in newspapers and magazines inside and outside the religion in various circumstances. She was a leader in a multifaith World Youth Council held in Los Angeles, was appointed to the first Baháʼí National Youth Committee, contributed articles to all major Baháʼí periodicals of Star of the West, World Order, and multiple volumes of Baháʼí World while also being covered in Baháʼí News while in America. She was a leading figure performing the first survey of Baháʼí youth circa 1935–6 and aided the development of support programming at all three major Baháʼí schools in America as a member of their faculty and suggesting reforms - Geyserville (the precursor of Bosch), Louhelen where the largest concentration of youth was to be found and the most developments occurred, and Green Acre. She also coordinated communications among youth and awareness of youth in other countries. She and Baháʼí institutions received direct support for this wave of development from Shoghi Effendi, then leader of the religion.

Then, as part of a nationwide implementation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá applied by Shoghi Effendi and the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháʼís of the United States, Holley began to coordinate a regional project of outreach for the religion in southern California based on youth engagement and bringing in people from larger Baháʼí communities to places there wasn't any Baháʼí presence or where only a small community existed. For herself, this was the small Baháʼí community in San Bernardino, California though her affect was greater in coordinating work across many cities of California as part of the regional teaching committee. Holley was also particularly impressed with May Maxwell during this period and would later call her her spiritual mother arriving at a unity of intellectual and heartfelt life as a Baháʼí. From there Holley moved to San Francisco and began some years mostly speaking at a local Baháʼí Center or on early AM radio or the not very distant Geyserville Baháʼí School. She would be employed at the time in city budgeting but also be visible associated with a philanthropic non-profit. She had also begun correspondence with her future husband, David Hofman, another youth she had encountered through Maxwell and been in-coordination on youth activity who had returned to England after being in Canada and the US for a period of time. They married in 1945. She moved to the UK, was elected to their National Spiritual Assembly of the British Isles the next year, and would serve on their National Teaching Committee. Later she would be appointed as an Auxiliary Board Member assisting former Anglican minister George Townshend now identified as a Hand of the Cause of the Baháʼí Faith. The Hofmans would pioneer or move to various cities in the UK for the establishment or growth of the religion and Marion was noted herself giving various presentations and classes in the UK and as part of European-continental meetings, visible in the Journal of the Baháʼí community of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the American Baháʼí News, as well as individual community histories.

In 1963 the Baháʼís world wide reached the point of electing their leading institution for the first time, the Universal House of Justice, to which her husband was elected. Management of the UK publishing company George Ronald was shifted to be run by her even as the family moved to Haifa, Israel, where the Baháʼí World Centre had been established. After about 12 years management of George Ronald by her, it was shifted to a son of theirs. The Hofmans would make trips to Baháʼí communities around the world and then David retired, after being re-elected consistently, in 1988. The couple returned to Oxford, UK, and they would make appearances at various conferences and Baháʼí schools until her health ebbed. She died in 1995 in London, UK. David Hofman died in May 2003.