Betty Ruth (Jackson) Holland, 95, passed away on August 29, 2026, in Hurst, TX.

Betty was born on July 31, 1931, in Grady County, Oklahoma, she was the daughter of Andrew and Mary Belle (Crouch) Jackson. She graduated from Amber-Pocasset High School as a Salutatorian in 1949. Her father was a tenant farmer attempting to grow wheat in Grady County Oklahoma, at the height of the dust bowl. She was the fourth of five children and only five years old when her mother died of a post-operative infection. Her father remarried and five more siblings came along, all of whom looked to her, the oldest female for nurture and care. Having known real hunger and lack growing up, she loved to cook and found joy in making sure everyone had plenty to eat at all times. The circumstances of her childhood produced a person of both resilience and resourcefulness.

After high school graduation at the age of sixteen, she became one of the first members of her extended family to attend college. She continued her education at the Oklahoma College for Women where she graduated in 1952 with a Bachelors in Home Economics. After graduating she headed off alone to Prague, Oklahoma to take on a high school teaching position where she was only a year or so older than most of her students. There she met her future husband, John Holland. In 1952, at the age of nineteen, Betty started teaching at Prague High School as the Home Economics teacher. Betty married the love of her life, John Holland, in Shawnee, Oklahoma on August 17, 1955. Betty got a job teaching Home Economics and History at Del City High School. In 1956, she was featured regularly on several Oklahoma television station’s morning shows providing household hints and homemaking tips. In 1968, she and husband John built a home on a small acreage in the Centerpoint community north of Wilburton, Oklahoma there they raised four children to adulthood. She became head of the Home Economics Department at Eastern Oklahoma State College in 1971. She attended Oklahoma State University where she received a Master of Science Degree in Child Development in 1972. In 1984 she fulfilled a lifelong dream and launched and took over the Park Restaurant at Robbers Cave State Park, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner 363 days per year. At each step, she had to blaze her own trail and simply figure things out as she went along. Both resilience and resourcefulness were required for her journey, one through which not only survived, but thrived. And caused those around her to flourish as well. The Holland family joined First Baptist Church Wilburton, Oklahoma in 1966, where Betty taught a woman’s Sunday school class for over five decades, until she moved to the Baptist Village retirement community (January 2017).

She founded and carried on a one-person ministry to Wilburton’s nursing homes for many years, bringing Bill and Gloria Gaither “Homecoming” sing-along VHS tapes and playing them to the delight of the residents there.

Betty was preceded in death by her husband, John Holland, and her siblings Harold Jackson, Ralph Jackson, Otis Jackson, Bobby Jackson, Orva Jean [Jackson] Cole, and Alan Jackson. She is survived by her four children and their spouses. David Holland and wife, Tracy (Colleyville, Texas) and their three children and ten grandchildren. John D. Holland (Clayton, Oklahoma), Elizabeth [Holland] Ray and husband Brook (Antlers, Oklahoma) and their three children and one grandchild. Laura [Holland] Harwood and husband, Adam (New Orleans, Louisiana) and their four children. Her legacy lives on with her ten grandchildren and her eleven great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, send designated gifts in Betty’s memory to: First Baptist Church Wilburton Benevolence Fund or the Oklahoma Baptist University Prison Divinity Program (https://www.okbu.edu/theology/prison-divinity)

A graveside service will be held at 10:00 am on Saturday, September 5, 2026, at the Centerpoint Cemetery, Wilburton, Oklahoma, with Rev. David Holland and Rev. Adam Harwood officiating. Services are under the direction of Waldrop Funeral Home of Wilburton, Oklahoma