My Friend Michael Hollman Made His Mark
Michael pre- Chicago White Sox playoff game Oct. 5, 2026 (D. Hoekstra photo.)
Last week, my friend Michael Hollman sat in his wheelchair at a nursing residence in Naperville. He is the husband of my high school journalism teacher, Dr. Marilyn Hollman. We have kept in touch over the 50 years since I graduated from Naperville Central High School.
Michael was in hospice care.
He was dying, but his eyes were full of wonder. His bed was scattered with sections of the Wall Street Journal. The nursing home delivered daily newsletters, similar to the briefings you get on cruise ships. A book of Mary Oliver poems sat beside him, along with a small black radio so he could listen to music on WFMT.
Michael is 85 years old. He asked me why I thought his life was important. I replied that he moved many things forward. With quiet dignity, he offered a helping hand to those who needed it most. There’s many Michael Hollmans out there cobbling pebbles into cathedrals with grace and humility.
Michael was one of two men in the AAUW (American Association of University Women) Naperville area. In 2022 he donated $5,000 for a leadership scholarship to help increase the number of women in the computing workforce. He served on the scholarship board. In a whisper, he explained, “Donald Trump got elected in 2016 and he was such a misogynist I wanted to join the best women’s group I could find. I didn’t know if AAUW took men or not. I went to their meetings. I used to be a very good stock picker. They’d give scholarships to help people finish their degrees and a couple of times , when I did well in the stocks, I was able to give scholarships. Women have made progress in many fields except in science and technology.”
Megan Kairies (L) and Francesca Romano honored with the Sue Topp Inspirational Leadership Scholarship 2023 from Michael’s donation. (Courtesy of AAUW Naperville Area Branch.)
In 2025, Michael was awarded the AAUW Naperville Area Service Award for being “a strong ally to women both in attitude and financial support.” He funded and founded AAUW’s Vision 1948 to bring gender parity back to technology. (In 1948 the Math department of Bell Laboratories was nearly 50 percent women. Today only 26 percent of the US technology workforce is women.)
“We started small, using his donation to bring hands-on activities to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fairs and math puzzles into classrooms,” said Tina Hinch, co-founder of Vision 1948. “Today we bring robots to Girl Scouts and computer programming to middle schoolers, and we have reached more than 3,000 people from K to college students to adults and government leaders, all to encourage girls and women to pursue careers in technology. As our outreach continues to expand, we never lose sight of the fact that Mike’s gift was the seed that started it all. Every community we reach rests on the foundation he helped build.”
And earlier this year to honor America’s 250th birthday, he gave the branch the funds to support two $2,500 Future of American Scholarships to high school seniors. “I guess I’ll be electronically immortal,” Michael quipped during one of my visits.
“He always pushed us to find more male members,” said Lee Eastman, Program Co-Vice President of the AAUW Naperville branch. Former branch president (2022-23) AAUW member Barbara Vernon said they used Michael’s donations to start a meet and greet for prospective members. And the group has grown from 92 members to 118 today. “Mike is one of the kindest people I know,” Vernon wrote in an Oct. 2 e-mail. “Our branch grew in heart and spirit when Mike joined.”
In the 1970s Michael was a volunteer at the Illinois Youth Center (IYC boy’s school) in St. Charles. In the late 1970s he tutored Cook County Jail inmates through a volunteer program at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago.
And in 1962 my friend Michael attempted to urinate on Hitler’s bunker in East Berlin, Germany. As a Northwestern University senior he went on a six-week student tour of Europe. “We were Jewish and my father said, ‘If you can, pee on Hitler’s bunker’,” he said. “A tour bus got us to East Berlin. Along with two other people we rented a Volkswagen and drove down the Autobahn. We went through a checkpoint. (The Berlin Wall was built in 1961.) We got there and you could wander around. I went to the side of the bunker and unzipped my pants. A guard came and cocked his gun. So I went to the other side and another guy cocked his gun. And then a third guard cocked his gun. So I gave up. I didn’t want to get shot while peeing.” It’s the thought that counts.
Michael Hollman was born April 11, 1941 in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago. His mother Sydell was a homemaker. His father Telford was Vice-President of the city’s Checker Cleaners conglomerate. Michael has no siblings and neither does his wife.
Telford’s father Louis founded Checker Cleaners when the family came to America through The Port of Baltimore from Lithuania. In America the family changed their Jewish name from Malamund (“teacher”) to Hollman. With a degree from the University of Chicago law school Telford also practiced law for a brief period.
He was a member of the Chicago Sherlockian society The Hounds of Baskerville, est. 1943. The group was founded by Chicago Daily News crime reporter-feature writer Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett.
Checker Cleaners during 1966 riots. Michael was part of this National Guard battalion.
Because he had no siblings, Michael developed a big imagination. When he was 15 he had a story published in the science fiction magazine Fantastic Universe (1953-60). Early in their marriage a go-to date for Michael and Marilyn (known as M&M by friends) would be to watch the beautiful miniature carved puppets at the Kungsholm Restaurant, 100 E. Ontario. “They had an opera with the puppets,” he said. Some of the puppets now reside at the Chicago History Museum. His grandfather Louis wrote plays for the 11th Street Yiddish theater in Chicago. Michael and his father loved to watch the TV western “Rawhide” on Fridays, often missing synagogue. He learned of the honorable code of the Old West.
The 1955 death of Emmett Till resonated with Michael. He was in South Shore, and the Till family was just two miles away in West Woodlawn. Michael was born in 1941. Emmett was born in 1941. They were unknown brothers. “When I went to (Bloom) high school I wanted to give civil rights talks,” he recalled. “The dean and said it was a great idea. There was a Black classmate who wanted to do the same thing. They arranged speeches for us at area churches. We talked about equal treatment for everybody.”
Michael graduated from Bloom 1959, the same year that former Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo led the Bloom basketball team to the state championship with a 27-2 record. Colangelo is now helming a group to bring the NBA to Las Vegas. Michael’s father took him to White Sox games on a regular basis, where in 1951 he saw Joe DiMaggio play in his final season. Michael remains a White Sox fan. He is getting a kick out of wearing his White Sox cap around the nursing residence. Michael is a tried-and-true Chicago guy.
Michael obtained an undergraduate degree in journalism from Northwestern in 1963. In 1965 he earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and a CPA in 1980. In 1987 he served on the founding board for Naperville Community Television (NCTV17). “I wanted to get into broadcast journalism,” he explained. “It was when there was a lot of radio news. I worked at a radio station (WCGO AM 1600) in Chicago Heights.” After a couple of on-air appearances he was told in firm tones that he needed to talk in a deeper voice. Michael’s boss advised him to smoke a pack of Camel cigarettes a day. Michael made the clean segue into marketing.
“Back then human resources was called personnel,” he recalled. “Personnel was fixated that they should not hire only children. They didn’t play well with others, they were spoiled, things like that. I had a few interviews. It was hard to get a job. So I invented a sister Cindy. She was actually my first cousin.”
“Cindy ” helped open doors to a marketing career that began with Pullman-Standard, the Chicago-based manufacturer of train cars and the since-closed Visible Computer Supply Corporation in St. Charles. He retired in 2002, but he still found time to be a substitute teacher for special needs students in Naperville.
Michael did not want to be drafted during the heat of the Vietnam War so he joined the National Guard. The battalion was headquartered about a mile north of what is now the Obama Center. He said the group consisted of approximately 780 Black guardsmen and 20 white guardsmen. “They got mobilized for Viet Nam,” he said. “I was the company clerk and was typing orders to go to Viet Nam. The major said to type faster. At the same time the (1966 Chicago) race riots broke out. After that Dr. King was marching throughout Chicago and we were demobilized to be there. So you could say I got saved by a race riot.”
Michael met Marilyn in 1967, in the primitive landscape before computer dating. “There were questionnaires at the Illinois Central station,” he said. “For example if you were interested in going to the theater they matched you up with someone who was interested in theater.” Marilyn filled out her forms at Union Station She scored high because she lived the closest to Michael. “My car only got eight miles to the gallon,” he said. “It was an Oldsmobile. I lived near Fullerton and Halsted. She lived by Wrigley Field.” Their first date was December 1967 for lunch in the Art Deco Pittsfield building, 55 E. Washington. They got engaged on Valentine’s Day 1968 and were married May 11 1968. They both declare it was love at first sight. “The first thing I noticed was her wonderful dimples,” he said. “And a cute nose.”
M & M Hollman on their wedding day. (Provided.)
The Jewish South Shore guy met Marilyn’s Iowa farm family. Marilyn is from Aredale Iowa (pop. 62 at the 2020 census) where her parents Violet and Russell farmed 120 acres that included corn, soybeans and feeder cattle. “Her father was a Republican which I was in those days,” Michael said. “So I was okay. We got along. I flipped Democratic in the 1990s although I did vote for Reagan.”
Marilyn added, “We had stuff to talk about. That never seemed to be a problem. We liked to go to the theater. We were curious. We loved to read newspapers. He was impressed I knew what a bagman was.” M & M were in rotation at the old Hobson’s Oyster Bar (that also had awesome gumbo) on the near north side. Michael has been listening to WFMT for 75 years. Marilyn recalled, “Driving home after a party or something else, we would turn on (the folk music and farce WFMT show) ‘The Midnight Special.’ And it was on until one in the morning.”
A 1965 graduate of the University of Iowa with a B.A. in English, Marilyn began teaching English at Naperville Central High School in 1969. “The day of President Eisenhower’s funeral (March 31, 1969) is the day I started,” she said. “I didn’t know it was a holiday. I went to school, and there was nobody there.” She was the school’s beloved newspaper advisor from 1970-75 and retired in 1999. Mike and Marilyn do not have children. They have cultivated a community of voices with respect and understanding.
Michael donated $5,000 in 2022 for a leadership scholarship honoring former AAUW Naperville branch president Sue Topp, pictured. (Provided.)
While volunteering at the St. Charles boys’ school, Michael befriended Angel, a 14-year-old Puerto Rican from Chicago. “He was very small,” he recalled. “He stole cars in Chicago alleys. He used a telephone book to reach the steering wheel. We later took him to a Bruce Lee movie.” Marilyn continued, “After he got released, we picked him up at his parents’ apartment on the northwest side. They let their kid go with these two white people from the suburbs. I’m glad I saw the Bruce Lee movie, which I probably never would have seen.”
Michael Hollman saw a lot. A mighty Chicago heartbeat shaped his life. From taking to the streets as a high school student to talk about equal rights to his empowering work with AAUW, he followed the light toward a better tomorrow. He made a difference. That is the greatest lesson learned from my teacher’s husband.
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