Deborah Hope Fry

Companion, sweetheart and wife. Mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Friend, gal pal and colleague. Maker of quilts and communicator extraordinaire for the deaf and hard of hearing: Deborah Hope Holloway Fry’s spirit left her body during the evening of July 29, 2026.

She leaves behind an enduring legacy of hope and love as her name implies. Hope is a family name shared by 4 generations of strong and intelligent women across many branches of the Holloway legacy.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow captured Debbie's attitude toward life perfectly when he wrote: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep…” in his poem Christmas Bells, which later become the words to her favorite Christmas carol. Debbie personified hope.

Debbie experienced a joyful reunion with a lot of people on the 29th. Notably her parents, Edwin Carlton Holloway Sr., and Gloria Hope Frick Holloway, her older brothers, Eddie Jr. and Teddy (who passed at age 16 from Muscular Dystrophy), and her son Keith Fry.

Debbie, is technically survived by everyone currently on earth, that’s 8.3 billion people, but let’s be honest…she’s the one who survived raising five children. She loved being with them, even though their teenage years, most of the time. Debbie is the hero and champion of our family, but for the sake of tradition, here’s the stuff some readers may want to know about.

Marlin Lee Fry, her spouse, best friend, and die hard (no pun intended) loyal companion of 52 years, is still rocking life. If there was an award for Perfectly Imperfect Marriage, it would go to Marlin and Debbie. Their love and loyalty for each other is the stuff that’s found in books and rom coms. Karin Hope (Eric) is the talker and questionably - (kidding Karin!) the wisest. Suzannah (Stuart), is the organizational talent and go-getter. If you want something done, Suzannah will get it done. Leslie (Jay), is the funniest with a clever wit and the ability to insert the appropriate movie line into any situation. Keith (Lisa) was the only son and beat our mom to heaven. He had the best falsetto and made our mom laugh. Robin (Kevin), the self-proclaimed favorite of her parents and siblings and is the snarky Switzerland of the fam…well, mostly Switzerland.

Debbie, aka Grandma/Yaya, was fiercely proud of her grandchildren. She thoroughly enjoyed them and the evidence is on the ratty, but loved, deck of Skip Bo and Phase 10 cards, and the books she collected and read to them. She accumulated hours, over the years, refereeing the grandkids on the back porch because everyone wanted the deck swing. We can still hear the way that thing groaned and creaked from the multiple little bodies she let snuggle in, which eventually changed to single teenage then adult bodies. Many heartfelt conversations happened in that swing between grandchildren and their grandmother. Ezra and Gabriel Maldonado, MacKenzie Hope Little, Wyatt, Lyla, and Rylan Tronge, along with Tasha, Corinne Hope, Micah White and Jericho Judson are going to profoundly miss their gentle, highly competitive, ice cream obsessed, card playing, reading grandmother. Her wisdom and love will be felt for generations. While sweet Harper and Henry (Ezra’s children) will not have memories of her, they made Debbie a great-grandmother, and she loved them.

Debbie’s favorite place in the world was the family cottage “down the rivah” near Deltaville. She loved being on the porch with her grandmother and her grandmother’s sisters as they played cards, cheated, argued and laughed together. She learned how to play cards and how to cheat from them. Crabbing was a major part of a stay down the river. Debbie didn’t like crab but enjoyed taking mallet in hand, cracking shells and removing the meat for her family to enjoy. The times she spent with her own family down the river were her favorite, and are the source of many, many choice memories her children have.

Her favorite chore, believe it or not, was doing laundry. She loved to sort the clothes for washing, then to fold them so she could sort them again into the appropriate owner’s pile. Our large family provided ample opportunities for her to wash clothes almost every day. Sometimes she’d wash clothes even if there were not enough to make a full load. She often joked she hoped her job in heaven would be doing laundry.

Speaking of sorting, she could not eat M&Ms without sorting them by color first, one of many quirks. The number of items in any group of things had to be an even number or divisible by 5. A sock without a mate was a problem, she’d eat two cookies but not three, there had to be an even number of M&Ms, it really threw her for a loop when she got her 11th grandchild, you get the idea. The one place she let it slide was with ice cream, her favorite food. She would allow three scoops in her bowl, but preferred four, and there had to be Nes-Quick powder sprinkled over the top. As her memory started to decline, she would forget how many times she’d had ice cream during the day, and would want to know who had eaten it all. She was also thoroughly entertaining to watch her favorite movies with. She’d always laughed in the same places no matter how many times she’d seen the movie.

Debbie liked to stay busy and became interested in quilting through a friend who taught quilting to a group who met in her home. She started going and soon became friends with everyone in the group and they would often meet outside of quilting for lunch. When the lady whose home they met in moved, the core group continued to meet at church and still went to lunch occasionally. Everyone in the family benefitted from her acquired quilting skills and were gifted with at least one quilt. She made baby quilts for the grandchildren when they were small and then a bigger quilt when they were older. Her last quilt was a tee shirt quilt for her sister-in-law, Marsha, made from the tee shirts of her late husband, Eddie Jr., Debbie’s brother.

Debbie was a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many volunteer hours were spent serving within the congregations. She was the girls’ basketball coach several times, a teacher in Primary (the children’s classes) and a teacher in Relief Society (the women’s organization). She also served as the President of the Primary, leading that group, but her favorite was working with the young women, she liked teenagers – go figure. Maybe that’s why she liked the missionaries so much, often inviting them to dinner. Working with the young women’s group at church, which included a young woman who was deaf, rekindled an interest in ASL and signing, something she’d been introduced to as a young girl by the deaf parents of one of her neighborhood friends. She started night classes in ASL at, then, John Tyler Community College, and went on to earn 2 professional Certificates in ASL and Educational Interpreting at J Sargent Reynolds. She proudly achieved a level 3 in interpreting proficiency at the beginning of the next 10 years she spent working as an ASL Interpreter in Chesterfield County at L.C. Bird High School. After her own children were launched, she fulfilled a promise made to her dad and went back to school to obtain her degree, graduating from VCU in Dec. of 2003 with an interdisciplinary degree specializing in education. She took additional classes at Radford University to obtain the necessary professional certifications to become a licensed Special Education Teacher for the deaf and hard of hearing. She finished her career teaching at Salem Church Middle School in Chesterfield County, overall dedicating twenty-two years to Chesterfield County Public Schools. She loved ASL, the deaf community, her students, and the lifelong friendships she had among colleagues who shared her passion for deaf communication.

Debbie, along with Marlin, gave back to the community by raising multiple puppies for Canine Companions for Independence. As puppy raisers, their most important job was to socialize them, so the pups went to school with Debbie, to work with Marlin, shopping, to doctor and dentist appointments, the hairdresser and to church. Simply put, they went almost everywhere Debbie and Marlin went. Their first puppy, Verity, failed to make the grade, she was too friendly, and became the 6th child of the family–the real favorite. The second pup, Olympia, turned out to be the cream of the crop and was chosen for the hearing dog program, and when Debbie found out she cried because it struck so close to home. Olympia graduated and was placed with a college professor who was losing her hearing. Their fourth puppy, Frita (known as Frita Fry at school) was placed with a physical therapist who specialized in TBI at the Kettering Institute in New Jersey. Anyone who knew Debbie, knew that she loved and adored and was so proud of those puppies! She always wanted to come back in another life as a dog, with an owner just like her.

Debbie’s life was one of service. Family, friends, community-near and far, and church. She was a gentle soul, a Southern Lady; a born and bred Virginian. She grew up in Richmond, spent several early adult years tagging along and supporting Marlin, having a baby here and there, then settled back in the Richmond area for the rest of her life. She was lucky enough to have many lifelong, true-blue friends, whose associations continued through her illness. She had regular visits from her tribes of friends at Brookdale where she was in memory care.

Degenerative brain conditions are a real be-otch. Her lengthy battle with her neurological illness was devastating to experience, and we, the people who love her, feel a mixed bag of emotions. She’s not suffering anymore and that is a blessing but, for those of us left behind, we will miss her deeply. It’s hard to see the person you love slipping away while they are still physically present.

Trying to capture the impact and meaning of one’s life is no small challenge. Words don’t capture the love, memories, laughs, tears, and wisdom that Debbie’s life imparted on us. She lived her life by these words, and hoped other would too, “Be nice, and play fair” (except at cards). While we find peace in knowing we will all be together again someday, it feels appropriate to shout a ginormous, “THANK YOU” to our Heavenly Father for the gift Debbie’s life is to us all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Endlessly, thank you.

If you feel inclined to honor the memory of Debbie, in lieu of flowers, consider donating to Canine Companions for Independence or the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

She would have loved that gesture.

Canine Companions Northeast Region

286 Middle Island Rd

Medford NY 11763

Attention: Denise Monaco