Virgil Dean Holleman

Virgil Dean Holleman died in Muskogee on September 5, 2026, at seventy-eight. He was born there on February 28, 1948, when a car shop was a clock and a river was a weekday neighbor. His father walked a yard. Virgil learned a bead of weld before he learned a highway. Thirty-two years of his life went into freight cars that other cities only ordered. He arrived early. He did not advertise. Foremen called him because he would write up a cracked sill even when the extra was already called. He charged a fair hour and a smaller one when a church van needed a lift more than a sermon. He kept a notebook of machines, not clients. The notebook had grease on the edges. He married Imogene Holleman in 1970. They raised three children in a frame house that needed a new porch every twenty years. After Imogene died in 2015 he still came out for a favorite car, moving slower, doing the same honest work. Friends remember a man who wiped his hands before he shook yours, who could stand in a noise without making it a personality, and who left a floor cleaner than he found it. He loved the river at evening and a glass of tea he did not finish. He died in Muskogee, in the city whose yard had written his calendar. The line still starts.