Dr. Jerry Holt Rich

Dr. Jerry Holt Rich, of Fairfax, VA, passed away on 31 January 2022 at Fair Oaks Hospital in the arms of his wife Shirley. He had fought a brave struggle against cancer and passed peacefully surrounded by love. Jerry Holt is survived by his wife Shirley, his son Gregg and daughter-in-law Maria del Rosario, daughter Sarah, and his grandson Santiago. He is also survived by his aunt Nancy Ratcliffe, his sister Karen Rich Douglas, his sisters-in-law Mrs. Barbara O’Hagan and Ms. Virginia Gregg, his two nieces Dr. Susan Douglas Wilson and Amy Fassett, his four nephews, James Douglas, Nathan Cooper, Byron Cooper, and William Cooper, and numerous cousins.

Jerry was born on 23 December 1948 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania to Jerry Rich and Dorris Tomasek Rich. He was a 1971 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh where he met and married his college sweetheart Shirley. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Dental School in 1975, he accepted an officer’s commission as captain in the US Army Dental Corps, and served a tour in Stuttgart, Germany, fixing teeth, skiing the Alps, and making lifelong German friends. Dr. Rich returned to the US in 1979, serving in Fort Sam Houston and Fort Knox. After retiring from the Army with the rank of major, Dr. Rich moved to Northern Virginia to go into private practice in General Family Dentistry.

He was active in serving his community as a member of Kiwanis and former club president, promoting his cultural heritage in and also past president of the Slovak American Society of Washington (SASW), and traveling on religious mission trips to give free dental care to children in orphanages to El Salvador, twice to Guatemala, and twice to Cuba. A deeply spiritual man, Jerry was inspired by friends he met on the missions to become baptized in the Greek Orthodox faith. He was active in St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church, and served as an usher and member of the parish council. Touched by the shocking evidence of the horrors of fascism and Nazism he saw in his travels, Jerry had been a charter member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum where he was a perennial attendee at the Days of Remembrance and, through his generous gifts, joined the Wings of Memory Society and Legacy of Light Society to support the mission of the museum in Washington, DC.

As a longtime season ticket holder, he was thrilled to see the Nationals finally win the World Series, right before the pandemic took away public sports spectatorship. He enjoyed traveling, having visited South America several times to see his son and family in Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, visiting old friends in Germany and family in Slovakia, following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ in Israel, and enjoying the beauty and history of Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Alaska. He loved cars, especially BMWs, and escaped the Northern Virginia traffic for a few days each year to go all out on the race track at the BMW M Performance Driving school in South Carolina near the BMW factory. He loved to spoil his grandson Santiago and passed on to him his love of fast cars, respect for his country, and spirit of service to others.

He touched the lives of many people and will be deeply missed by his family and friends.