SALINE: Home builder was known for show-stopping designs

Saline resident and close friend pays tribute to Dennis Holley, who passed away Jan. 25

Looking out across Sunset Lake in the York Woods subdivision where I live, I can count four homes besides mine that were built by Dennis Holley, a Saline-area builder who passed away on Jan. 25.

Dennis legacy includes many other local custom homes in addition to the ones in York Woods, and I often told him that if I could go around my community as he could, pointing out the beautiful homes he had built, I would indeed feel proud of what I had accomplished in my life.

Dennis mark upon Saline as a builder began in 1965 when he helped his father, Eugene, construct the Thorncrest Apartments on Clark Street. Afterwards he worked at his trade as an electrician until he began his career as a custom home building contractor in the early 1980s.

He is well known for his show-stopping entries in the annual Showcase of Homes, which he participated in for 21 consecutive years starting in 1987. His were often the Showcase homes people most looked forward to visiting each year. They were houses invariably characterized by sumptuous quality, ingenuity and meticulous attention to detail.

I was so impressed when I visited the Holley 1992 Showcase entry that I was determined to meet and talk with its creator. It was then that I first met the team of Dennis and his wife, Joy, who turned out thereafter to be builders of one and later eventually two fine homes for me and my life partner, Jean Burns, as well as to become our longtime close friends.

I suppose its unusual for a customer to form anything like a friendship with his home builder, but thats what happened after all of us started working together. We had so many adventures collaborating about architectural plans, shopping together for building materials, and inevitably eating out at local and sometimes far-flung restaurants, that the process of building our homes became less than just a business deal and more like a creative lifestyle that we honestly wished at times would never end. And the physical results were outstanding residences that we, like so many other clients of the Holleys, have been thrilled to call our homes.

I remember Dennis talking with his hands. He was such a visual person that he often expressed himself by drawing pictures in the air with his hands. He would explain how he was going to do something, like build a curving staircase or attach a heavy wooden form to a 20-foot ceiling, and even though his visual explanations seemed clear enough, the reality of his finished products seemed to go beyond my comprehension of what he described. I would watch with wonderment as he worked his building magic, but I still couldnt quite conceive of how he managed to do the difficult things he did as a builder, and always did so well.

Dennis succumbed finally to a powerful and terrible illness called Lewy Body Dementia, which was strong enough to bring down even someone of Dennis tall stature. He will be greatly missed by me as his friend, and by the many people in our local community he served for so many years as an outstanding builder of custom homes.

Visitation is at the Nie Funeral Home on 3767 W. Liberty Rd., Ann Arbor, from 2 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30, and a church service will take place 11 a.m. Friday, Jan. 31 at the First United Methodist Church of Saline, 1200 N. Ann Arbor St., in Saline.

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SALINE: Home builder was known for show-stopping designs