Lefty Holmes

The 1934 Philadelphia Stars, champions of the second iteration of the Negro National League (NNL2), used a balanced four-man rotation that consisted of two righties and two lefties for most of their league games. Slim Jones, a 21-year-old southpaw, emerged as the team’s ace as he pitched to a 20-4 record and a 1.29 ERA in league games during what was to be his lone season as a top-flight player. The Stars’ other portsider, Lefty Holmes, also had his finest season as he contributed seven victories in league play while posting a 2.61 ERA that was second on the team only to Jones’s otherworldly mark.

Holmes had been pitching professionally in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia since 1929, but fans may well have thought he was several different players due to both the various first names (Frank, Eddie, and Sam) and nicknames (Lefty, Sonny, Ducky) that the press used for him. Holmes had his greatest success in the 1932 and 1934 seasons. He continued to play ball into at least the 1942 season, at which time his name conundrum still had not been settled, with one season preview article referring to him as “Sonny ‘Lefty’ Holmes.”1 After his baseball career ended, he resided in Philadelphia another four decades before returning to his native Georgia a few years before his death.

Frank Holmes was born on February 28, 1907, in Brunswick, Georgia, to George and Phoebe (Hall) Holmes. The couple had married on January 28, 1892, and George worked as a day laborer at such jobs as he could find, while Phoebe tended to their family that grew to include nine children. Frank had five older siblings (three brothers and two sisters) and three younger (two brothers and a sister). Leroy (also known as Phillie), who was almost six years younger than Frank, played second base and joined his older brother as a member of the Harlem Black Sox in 1930.

Frank moved from his southeastern Georgia home to Philadelphia at some point in his late teens, though the exact age is unknown; he had still been living at home at age 13 when the 1920 US Census was taken. A maternal uncle, Felix Hall, originally from Darien, Georgia, resided in the City of Brotherly Love, so he had a family member to help him get acclimated to the area. Holmes and Hall maintained a close relationship and often worked together until Hall’s untimely death of tuberculosis on May 1, 1954. Holmes made the most of the opportunities available to him in Philadelphia, which were likely greater than any in the Jim Crow South. In fact, at the outset of his professional baseball career, the Brooklyn Times Union reported that Holmes had “recently graduated from high school.”2 However, since Holmes was already 22 years old by this time, it is more likely that he had been attending a college or professional school.3

Whatever his exact educational status may have been, Holmes’s debut for the New York Lincoln Giants appears to have taken place on June 30, 1929, in a doubleheader against Hilldale at the Protectory Oval in the Bronx. The New York Amsterdam News raved, “A youngster by the name of Holmes came through with some good relief pitching last Sunday [June 30] in the first game of a doubleheader,” a 9-6 victory for the Lincoln Giants.4 Holmes also pitched 5⅓ innings in the nightcap after starter Herb Thomas surrendered nine runs (including seven in the top of the fourth inning). Holmes gave up one more run in a 10-6 loss.

Holmes had made a big enough impression on his manager, future Hall of Famer John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, that he started the first game of a July 4 doubleheader against the Cuban Stars at Dexter Park in Queens. Holmes went the distance in a 21-3 thrashing of the Cubans. He also went 3-for-6 at the plate and scored four runs in support of his three-hit pitching effort.5

Despite Holmes’s impressive showing, he was used sparingly in league games the rest of the season and finished with a 2-1 record and a 4.24 ERA over 17 innings pitched in four games (one start). The Lincoln Giants finished at 40-26-2 in American Negro League (ANL) play, which was only good enough for second place, eight games behind the Baltimore Black Sox.

In 1930 Holmes joined the independent Harlem Black Sox for which “[b]ookings [had] been made for the whole summer in and around New York State by Nat Strong, owner of the Royal Giants.”6 The team trained in Florida and Georgia, where it picked up additional team members, before barnstorming its way north. The New York Amsterdam News observed, “Phillie Holmes, younger brother of Sonny Holmes, is the only rookie of the crop, but to date he has been playing and batting on a par with the big guns and he has every qualification for a star infielder, taking care of the keystone cushion in a fitting manner.”7

The Holmes brothers were joined by twin brothers Herbert “Ruff” and Willie “Lock” Gay, who both had played briefly with the Chicago American Giants the previous year. Apparently, the two sets of brothers were to function as more than just ballplayers: The Amsterdam News concluded its preview by noting, “Sonny Holmes, the elder, is very much like Stepin Fetchit in looks and acts and is very amusing with his brother and the Gay twins. Entertainments of dance, song, and cracks will be put on in each city they play.”8 Extremely few press accounts of the team’s games can be located and most involve exhibition games in Florida before and after the summer; thus, little is known about the 1930 Harlem Black Sox.

In 1931 Holmes pitched briefly for the Cuban House of David squad, an independent team without a home ballpark that received as little news coverage as the Harlem Black Sox had. Holmes started and was the winning pitcher in an 8-5 triumph over the Winsted (Connecticut) Town Team on June 19.9

At some point during the season, Holmes joined the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants – not to be confused with the famous Atlantic City Bacharach Giants – as was evidenced by his appearance in a team photo in the August 27 edition of the Philadelphia Tribune.10 Teammate Halley Harding, who played third base, provided a glimpse of Holmes’s personality in a humorous article for the Chicago Defender, in which he wrote:

Frank Holmes of the Bacharach Giants has a droll sense of humor. For many years his only comment on an error by one of his mates, a strikeout by himself or another player has been, ‘I didn’t thought you’d notice it.’ This phrase has become an institution around the bench and clubhouse wherever the B’s are playing and always draws a laugh.11

Harding also played seven games for the Baltimore Black Sox in 1931, for whom he was to pitch the next season.

At the outset of the 1932 season, Holmes was still pitching for the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants. On April 24 he entered a game against the Lancaster Red Sox in relief of Red Ellis as the Bacharachs triumphed, 13-3.12 Shortly thereafter, he joined the Baltimore squad and made an immediate impact with a 5-0 shutout of the Washington Pilots in the second game of a doubleheader at Maryland Baseball Park on May 8.13

A late-May Pittsburgh Courier article about the East-West League that extolled Holmes’s initial prowess with the Black Sox also created some of the confusion surrounding his identity. The unnamed columnist wrote:

Dick Lundy has uncovered a young lefthander who appears destined to go places. Eddie Holmes is the youngster’s name and in two starts he has blanked the Washington Pilots and lost a hairline decision to the Hilldale club. What makes the feats stand out is that the rookie was pitted against Webster McDonald and Porter Charleston. Holmes is a product of the Philadelphia sandlots and has been passed up by at least two of the East-West Clubs before Dick Lundy gave him a chance.14

“Eddie” Holmes was Frank Holmes and, although he had been discovered in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, he was no rookie. The error became rampant throughout the press for a time as even the New York Amsterdam News, which had covered Holmes when he truly had been a rookie with the Lincoln Giants in 1929, reported that “Eddie Holmes, Lefty Allen and Jay Cook, enjoying their first fling at big time baseball, have been blazing a trail through the ranks of the Eastern clubs.”15

On June 26 Holmes lost a tough 1-0 rematch of his Baltimore debut at Maryland Baseball Park. The hometown newspaper waxed poetic in its recap, recounting, “In the opener, McDonald, star pilot twirler, bested Holmes in a neat hill duel.”16 Holmes continued to pitch well and threw a 9-4 complete-game victory over a team of all-stars from Philadelphia on July 23. The Philadelphia Inquirer, in its coverage of the game, finally set the record straight about Holmes’s identity as it reported, “Frank Holmes, Black Sox hurler, was the master of the homebred sluggers.”17

In all, Holmes made 18 appearances (10 starts) for Baltimore in league play during the 1932 season. He fashioned a 5-6 record in those games with a 3.65 ERA (113 ERA+) over 116 innings pitched. The Black Sox finished at 29-26 in EWL games, which put them in third place, nine games behind the first-place Detroit Wolves and 2½ behind the Homestead Grays; the team finished at 33-33 against all Negro major-league-caliber competition. The 1932 season also marked the first time that Holmes was teammates with Slim Jones, who was to catapult to superstardom with the 1934 Philadelphia Stars but was 0-3 with Baltimore as a 19-year-old.

After the EWL season ended, Holmes had the opportunity to test his mettle against White major- and minor-league players as the Black Sox played a seven-game series of weekend games against an all-star team at Baltimore’s Bugle Field from September through October. Holmes won the second game of the October 9 doubleheader, which was shortened to “the usual five innings,” by a 9-6 score.18 He allowed at least one home run to Hack Wilson, “Brooklyn slugger, imported from Martinsburg, W.Va., to give the All-Stars more power.”19 Holmes started the finale of the series on October 30, but was rocked for seven runs in the seventh inning and surrendered a total of nine runs in a 13-9 defeat.20

On the heels of his most successful season with a team of major-league caliber to that point, Holmes disappeared off the baseball map in 1933. He does not appear to have played ball that year; no mention of his name in game articles or box scores has been found. Additionally, no records have been unearthed to indicate whether Holmes had either a positive or negative life event that interrupted his career. After his mysterious 1933, Holmes resurfaced as a member of the Philadelphia Stars in 1934.

Pitcher Webster McDonald was then the manager of the Stars. He had faced Holmes in some tough pitching battles in 1932, so he knew that he was getting a proven commodity; even though Holmes had been away from baseball for a year, he was still only 27 years old. On May 13 McDonald sent Holmes to the mound as the starter in the first game of a doubleheader against the Newark Dodgers and Holmes’ former manager, Dick Lundy, at General Electric Field in Bloomfield, New Jersey. It was Opening Day for the Dodgers and, as “[f]ive thousand fans turned out … with two bands furnishing the music, a flag-raising preceding the game and Rollo Wilson, the Judge Landis of Negro baseball, tossing out the opening ball,” Holmes garnered the victory.21 He hurled eight innings of Philadelphia’s 5-4 triumph before giving way to Jones when he got into a jam in the ninth.

As the weather became hotter, so did Holmes. On June 15, at Eagle Park in York, Pennsylvania, he struck out 15 batters in a 5-4 complete-game victory over the NNL2 rival Nashville Elite Giants.22 Nine days later, back home at Passon Field in Philadelphia, Holmes fired a 9-0 shutout in the second game of a doubleheader against another league opponent, the Cleveland Red Sox.23

Philadelphia’s primary starters – Jones, Rocky Ellis, McDonald, and Holmes – all had seasons in which they were well above the league average in ERA+, and the Stars were locked in a three-way battle with the Chicago American Giants and the intrastate rival Pittsburgh Crawfords for supremacy in the NNL2. Chicago claimed the league’s first-half title, but the Stars prevailed in the second half.

Although Holmes continued to pitch well, he did not throw a single inning in any of the eight games (Game Seven ended in a tie) of the NNL2 championship series that pitted Philadelphia vs. Chicago. Manager McDonald opted to use a rotation that included Jones, Ellis, Paul Carter, and himself.

However, Holmes did pitch for the Stars during that time. Philadelphia played several exhibition games during the championship series and, after the American Giants had taken a three-games-to-one lead with a 2-1 victory on September 17, the first of these contests took place on September 20. Holmes took the mound against the Newark Dodgers at Windsor Airport Field in Trenton, New Jersey, and went the distance in a 2-1 walk-off triumph.24

On October 2 at Passon Field, Jones threw a 2-0 shutout in the eighth game of the championship series that completed Philadelphia’s epic comeback to claim the NNL2 title. Four days later, Holmes made what appears to have been his last appearance for the Stars in 1934 when he opposed Satchel Paige and the Pittsburgh Crawfords at the same venue on October 6 in a game that ended as a 4-2 loss for Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh Courier commented that Holmes “had too much difficulty with his control” as he issued five walks and that he “also was the victim of weak support from the rest of the cast. No fewer than six errors were charged against Philadelphia.”25

Although it surely was not the way Holmes wanted his season to end, it did not detract from the fact that he had been a key cog in Philadelphia’s 1934 championship machine. He had appeared in 14 league games (12 starts) and pitched to a 7-6 record with a 2.61 ERA (149 ERA+) over 107 innings. It appeared that Holmes was now on his way to a successful stint in the Negro major leagues, but the 1934 season turned out to be the high point of his professional baseball career.

Holmes returned to the Stars in 1935, and the team was expected to contend for a second consecutive championship. An article in the Chicago Defender declared that the Stars’ pitching staff – Holmes, Ellis, McDonald, Porter Charleston, Carter, and Jones – was “rated with the best in baseball.”26 However, the vaunted staff’s ERA climbed from 2.61 in 1934 to 5.28 in 1935 and the team finished in fourth place in the NNL2 with a 37-31-4 record. Jones fell from 20-4 with a 1.29 ERA to 4-5 with a 5.88 ERA while Holmes’s record fell to an almost identical 4-6 mark as his ERA skyrocketed to 6.84 (a 74 ERA+ that indicates his pitching was well under average that year).

Homestead Grays owner Cum Posey, in his Pittsburgh Courier column of April 25, 1936, predicted that the Stars would be a strong club and that “Holmes, who was ill in 1935, will be much better in 1936.”27 Instead, the Stars finished in last place while Holmes pitched sparingly for two different NNL2 squads, appearing in five games with the Washington Elite Giants and one with the New York Cubans. He had no decisions in his six games while posting a 6.05 ERA in 19⅓ innings pitched.

The 1937 season found Holmes back with the semipro Philadelphia Bacharach Giants for the first time in five years. Prior to a mid-May game against the Allentown nine, the local press touted “Sonny Holmes, formerly of the Phila. Stars and a sensational hurler” as a member of the Bacharachs.28 In June, a Lancaster paper referred to him as “Ducky Holmes, another former Phila. Star performer.”29 Whichever name newspapers used, it was Frank Holmes who was doing the pitching, and he seemed to have recovered some of his acumen. After Philadelphia whipped the All-Lancaster team, 7-1, on September 9, a game recap proclaimed, “‘Sonny’ Holmes, who served them up for the Bacharachs, pitched good ball. He limited the locals to five hits during the seven inning [sic] contest and whiffed seven of the All Lancaster stickmen.”30

Holmes had pitched well enough in 1937 to be in demand by various clubs the following year. On May 3 the Allentown Morning Call listed “Sonny Holmes, pitcher, who secured his experience with Ed Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars and Homestead Grays” as being “among the leading stars” for the Bacharachs.31 Two days later, the Atlanta Daily World reported that Atlanta Black Crackers manager Nish Williams had been “very dissatisfied with the showing of his nine against league opposition” and intended to secure, among others, “‘Sonny’ Holmes who pitched for the Philadelphia Stars last season.”32

Despite newspaper forecasts and teams’ desires for Holmes’s services, he saw limited action in 1938. In his only Negro major-league stint, he appeared in two league games for the NNL2’s Washington Black Senators. He started against his former team, the Philadelphia Stars, on June 6 at Elks Field in Chester, Pennsylvania. Holmes went the distance and allowed only five hits, but he surrendered nine walks that resulted in a 6-2 defeat.33 He also took the loss in the second game of a doubleheader on June 12 that gave him a 0-2 record and a 6.75 ERA with Washington.34

The Philadelphia Bacharach Giants became Holmes’s fallback team for the remainder of his career. Game articles and box scores show that he pitched for the team sporadically for several more years. His obituary states that he “played for 20 years,” which may well be accurate.35 For a time, when he was not playing baseball, Holmes was working for his uncle, Felix Hall, at Philadelphia’s historic Touraine Hotel, as is indicated on his World War II draft registration card from October 1940.

In 1942 Holmes played for one other team besides the Bacharachs, joining the Baltimore Grays of the new and short-lived Negro Major Baseball League. He was reunited with his former Stars teammate Rocky Ellis and sometimes also played in the outfield on days when he was not scheduled to pitch.36

Holmes retreated into anonymity during his post-baseball life. At some point – apparently in the early 1980s – he returned to his native town of Brunswick, Georgia, perhaps to be closer to his two remaining siblings. His only surviving brother and former 1930 Harlem Black Sox teammate, Leroy (“Phillie”), who had played numerous years for the Jacksonville Red Caps, died on October 7, 1985, in Atlanta.37

Frank “Lefty” Holmes died on December 27, 1987, in Brunswick after a brief, undisclosed illness. His obituary listed the following family members as his closest survivors: his wife, Mary Holmes of Brunswick; a daughter, Helda Stricklyn of Philadelphia; and a sister, Dorothy Wiggins of Jacksonville.38

Photo credit

Courtesy of Gary Ashwill.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to two fellow Negro League researchers who assisted the author in establishing that Lefty Holmes was indeed Frank Holmes:

• SABR researcher/author Peggy Gripshover uncovered the fact that Felix Hall, whom Holmes named as both his employer and contact person on his World War II draft registration card, was Holmes’s maternal uncle and traced his origins to Georgia; this information provided an accurate locus to search for records of Holmes and his family. Peggy also located an obituary for Frank Holmes, which provided further information that confirmed Holmes’s identity.

• Gary Ashwill of Seamheads.com helped to confirm the suspicion that “Eddie” Holmes (a name that first popped up in press accounts in 1932) was the same person as Frank Holmes. The team for which both “Eddie” and Frank had played in 1931 – the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants – was one and the same. Gary had written a blog entry about that team after discovering a photo that identified all players, including “Frank Holmes, pitcher” (see “July 26, 2017: Philadelphia Bacharach Giants, 1931” at agatetype.typepad.com). In a serendipitous quid pro quo, this author’s research led to information that established that Frank Holmes and Leroy “Phillie” Holmes were brothers and to Leroy’s obituary, which along with Frank’s obituary provided the correct dates and places of death for both players that can now be found on the Seamheads Negro League Database.

Sources

Except where otherwise indicated, all player statistics and team records were taken from Seamheads.com.

Ancestry.com was consulted for US Census information as well as birth, marriage, and death records.

Notes

1 Randy Dixon, “The Sports Bugle/Dr. Thomas’ Experiment Might Be Salvation of Negro Baseball,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 30, 1942: 16.

2 “Lincolns Twice Conquer Cubans,” Brooklyn Times Union, July 5, 1929: 16.

3 The 1950 US Census lists the code “S3” for Holmes on the “School completed” line. This code was probably written in error since that would mean that Holmes had completed only a third-grade education. More likely, the census taker intended to record the code “C3,” which would have indicated that Holmes had completed three years of college or professional school. (See https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1950instructions.pdf.)

4 “Lloyd Men Win and Lose Sund’y/Holmes, Relief Mound Man, Came Through in Splendid Form,” New York Amsterdam News, July 3, 1929: 9.

5 “Cubans Lose at Dexter Park/Lincoln Giants in Batting Spree Against Stars Independence Day,” New York Amsterdam News, July 10, 1929: 9.

6 “Black Sox Heads [sic] North; Play All the Way Up,” New York Amsterdam News, June 4, 1930: 17.

7 “Black Sox Heads North; Play All the Way Up.”

8 “Black Sox Heads North; Play All the Way Up.” This article marks the first time the nickname “Sonny” was used for Frank Holmes in the press. The name would occur occasionally throughout his career, though he was most often referred to as “Lefty” and later was sometimes called “Ducky.”

9 “Cuban House of David Beats Winsted Nine, 8-5,” Hartford Courant, June 20, 1931: 14.

10 Gary Ashwill, “July 26, 2017: Philadelphia Bacharach Giants, 1931,” https://agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2017/07/philadelphia-bacharach-giants-1931.html, accessed December 19, 2022.

11 Hallie [sic] Harding, “I Think So,” Chicago Defender, October 3, 1931: 9.

12 “Local Team Faces 2 Foes/League Nine Badly Beaten by Bacharachs in Opening Game,” Lancaster (Pennsylvania) New Era, April 25, 1932: 9. The New Era mistakenly reported that Lancaster was beaten “by the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City” when, in fact, it had been the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants.

13 “Black Sox Get Half of Spoils with Pilots,” Baltimore Sun, May 9, 1932: 9.

14 “Washington Takes Lead in East-West Race/Detroit, Cubans, Grays Spurt in Battle for Lead,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 21, 1932: 15.

15 “Black Sox in League Lead/Young Pitchers Shaping Up Nicely with the Fast Baltimore Team,” New York Amsterdam News, May 25, 1932: 13.

16 “Black Sox Handed Double Setback by Washington,” Baltimore Sun, June 27, 1932: 11.

17 “All-Stars Beaten by Black Sox Foe/Phila. Clubbers Lost After Dark Battle to Baltimore Clan, 9 to 4,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 24, 1932: 39.

18 “All-Star Nine in Even Break/Defeats Black Sox in Opener, 8-2, but Bows in Nightcap, 9-6,” Baltimore Sun, October 10, 1932: 10.

19 “All-Star Nine in Even Break.” Wilson hit two home runs, but the box score does not indicate in which inning he hit his second, nor does the game write-up make mention of it; thus, there is uncertainty as to whether he hit one or both of his home runs off Holmes.

20 “All-Star Nine Beats Black Sox by 13-9,” Baltimore Sun, October 31, 1932: 10.

21 “Philadelphia Stars Win 2 from Newark,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 17, 1934.

22 “Phillie All-Stars Beat Nashville,” York (Pennsylvania) Daily Record, June 16, 1934:5; “Philadelphia Stars Top Nashville Club,” York Dispatch, June 16, 1934: 7. Oddly, both York newspapers named the Nashville club as the “Colonels” rather than the Elite Giants.

23 “Philadelphia All-Stars Win Four: Capture a Pair Twin Bills and Take 2d Place/Run All Over Strong Cleveland Nine,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), June 30, 1934: 16.

24 “Philly Batters Win Over Dodgers, 2 to 1,” Trenton Evening Times, September 21, 1934: 23. Although the game was played in New Jersey, the box score indicates that the Stars played as the home team.

25 “Satchell [sic] Paige’s Fire Ball Hurling Fells Stars by 4-2 Count,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 13, 1934: 14.

26 “Plenty of Pitching Class Here,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), July 20, 1935: 15. The caption to a photo of the Stars’ pitching staff that was included here erroneously gave Holmes’ first name as “Sam.”

27 Cum Posey, “Cum Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 25, 1936: 14. It is unknown what illness if any Holmes suffered from in 1935.

28 “Bacharach Giants Here Tonight to Battle Allentown Tossers/Local East Penn Leaguers Face Strong Colored Team at Fair Grounds,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, May 12, 1937: 21.

29 “All-Lancaster at Home Today/Strong Bacharach Giants Will Play on Ed Stumpf Field,” Lancaster Sunday News, June 20, 1937: 11.

30 “All-Lancaster Beaten 7 to 1 by Bacharachs/Atlantic City Club Have Easy Time Topping Locals, 300 Fans Present,” Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, September 10, 1937: 22. In what was a common error throughout the history of the semipro Philadelphia Bacharach Giants, the newspaper assumed that the team was still its more famous predecessor from Atlantic City.

31 “Locals to Play Colored Stars/Bacharach Giants Here for Twilight Game Tomorrow Night,” Allentown Morning Call, May 3, 1938: 21. Despite this newspaper’s assertion about Holmes’s prior experience, there is no evidence that he had ever pitched for the Homestead Grays.

32 “Black Crackers Seek New Pitchers; Add New Infielder to Present Combination,” Atlanta Daily World, May 5, 1938: 5. Misinformation about Holmes abounded. The Daily World’s claim that Holmes had pitched for the Philadelphia Stars in 1937 was incorrect. He had last pitched for the Stars in 1935 and had pitched for the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants in 1937.

33 “Negro National League,” Delaware County Daily Times (Chester, Pennsylvania), June 7, 1938: 10. Only the box score is present; there is no game recap article. The newspaper had run a preview article for the game in its previous day’s edition.

34 “Trade Shellackings/Black Senators Beat Shamrocks, 21-4, Then Flop, 10-5,” Washington Evening Star, June 13, 1938: 14.

35 “Holmes Rites to Be Held Here Tomorrow,” Brunswick (Georgia) News, December 31, 1987: 3.

36 “Daisies Defeat Baltimore Grays,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 11, 1942: 25; Randy Dixon, “The Sports Bugle: Dr. Thomas’ Experiment Might Be Salvation of Negro Baseball.”

37 “Obituary: Leroy “Philly” Holmes,” Atlanta Voice, October 19-25, 1985: 7.

38 “Holmes Rites to Be Held Here Tomorrow.” The obituary claimed incorrectly that Holmes was 83 years old; he was 80 (February 28, 1907, to December 27, 1987).