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February 10, 2006
Endesha Ida Mae Holland August 29, 1944 to January 25, 2006
Posted at February 10, 2006 11:07 PM in Books , Theater .A child does not need to dwell in her mother's house forever to be a loyal daughter, I realized, or stay in her birthplace to remember where she's from.
- From the Mississippi Delta (1984)
This has been a worldwind couple of weeks for me. Now, I sit here at my keyboard too tired to sleep. I've honestly been burning the candles at both ends and wishing that Magic Johnson Sport were open right now, or just now.
I missed someone in all of my busy and that someone was noted writer and professor at USC, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, who died recently at 61, January 25, 2006 at a nursing home in the Los Angeles area. Ms. Holland battled ataxia, a degenerative neurological disease, for 15 years.
Known for her autobiographical play "From the Mississippi Delta" which told how the civil rights movement inspired a girl born in poverty to turn her life around. Beginning as a one-woman show, the 1988 play told the stories of Holland's life, including a period spent in a small shack in the 1940s, a rape at age 11, her life as a prostitute and the death of her mother in a fire rumored to have been set by the Ku Klux Klan. She changed her life and began pursuing a college education after working in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Ms. Holland was a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California's theater school and also taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Memorial services will be at noon Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006, at Century Funeral Home. The Rev. Thomas Brown will officiate at the services. Burial will be in Good Shepherd Cemetery.
Memorial services will also be held in Los Angeles, Chicago, Ill., Buffalo, and Washington, D.C.
Links:
- MARGARET KIMBERLEY:Cretta and Endesha Ida Mae
- Endesha Ida Mae Holland, 61; Writer's Life Inspired Students
- Biographical Information