Holly Quillian earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in humanities last weekend.
Holly Quillian ’25 nervously adjusted her grad cap as she headed toward the front of the procession at Eckerd College’s 62nd Commencement on May 18.
She’d finally be crossing the stage and receiving her degree in humanities 50 years after she began.
“People might think that I’m faculty,” she quips. “It’s been such a long time.”
Still, her fear of standing out didn’t deter her from completing a long-held dream—one she’d come so close to before her life was changed forever.
Holly Hall had originally looked for a college where she could be close to her parents, who’d recently moved to Delray Beach, Florida, from Ohio. She was finishing up at a Massachusetts prep school in 1975 when she discovered Eckerd, a three-hour drive from her mom and stepdad.
It was near the beach, and it had a tennis team, which meant she could pursue two of her passions while obtaining her degree. Once she started, she fell in love with the art program and had ideas of becoming a photographer. She even did a Winter Term at the then–St. Petersburg Times in pursuit of that goal. When she wasn’t competing on the court or hanging out at her Pass-a-Grille apartment with friends, Holly was playing Frisbee with the campus dogs.
Everything was going well until the end. Holly’s mom got diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.
“In my senior year, it just spread all through her, and when she died, it was just devastating,” Holly recalls. “So I lost my way. And even though all I had left to do was my thesis or to do an art show for my mentor [Professor of Visual Arts] Arthur Skinner, I just lost my way.”
She retreated to Delray Beach. Her stepdad had a stroke after her mother’s passing, and the parental guidance she’d once relied on disappeared. Without someone to push, Holly started a different path.
“I got married, and then a year later, I had my daughter, Charlotte—so then just, really, the thought of returning to Eckerd [seemed impossible],” she says.
She used her critical thinking and people skills to land her first real gig as an assistant manager at Blockbuster Music and spent the majority of the rest of her career managing operations for corporations and nonprofits alike. Her adaptiveness helped her continually land on her feet as industries changed and chains went out of business. Four years ago, she was working in operations for the Manatee County Girls Club when a Saks Fifth Avenue employee told her they had some positions available.
As a frequent customer, Holly had never dreamed of returning to retail. But she felt ready to retire from office life and thought, Why not? She took a job as a women’s shoes associate and applied her skills in diplomacy and quality assessment to serving her clientele. Life was sweet.
She married a tomato grower and moved into his Palmetto home on Snead Island looking out at the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Still, there was more to do.
“I just never even thought of it until recently,” Holly explains. “I felt I had divine guidance to call the school, and I did.”
The registrar located her records and saw she simply needed to complete a capstone course and thesis paper to receive her degree. Professor of Religious Studies Davina Lopez, Ph.D., agreed to take Holly on as an independent-study student and shepherd her thesis to the finish line.
Getting back into the rhythm of being a student went more smoothly than Holly could have dreamed. Her first task was drafting an intellectual autobiography. Lopez assigned the text The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities and required Holly to submit reflections on each chapter. When it was thesis time, Holly tapped into her passion for collecting midcentury modern furniture for inspiration. She submitted her draft bibliography and received Lopez’s blessing to write.
“I’m a collector, and I had these great books about midcentury furniture,” Holly says. “So I did my paper on the midcentury modern chair, and I had these great books that I never really had a chance to sit down and read. A lot of them I thought of as just being picture books, but they weren’t.”
The reservoir of knowledge pouring out from her own bookshelves helped Holly fill the pages of a thesis that examined the artistic importance and social ramifications of midcentury seating design. After she hit “Submit” at the end of the semester, she was elated to receive a response from the College telling her she’d earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in humanities.
On May 18, Holly smiled brightly at every interaction and soaked in the moments from the processional until the very end of the Commencement ceremony. What had seemed a pipe dream merely one year ago was now a reality. She was an Eckerd College graduate. Her next chapter might include more roles in her Episcopalian church or maybe even some writing—perhaps about midcentury modern furniture.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen really. I’m not sure,” Holly admits. “But I think having the degree gives me confidence. It does … it really does.”
