Mrs. Betty Gage Holland, Widow of James M. Cox Jr., Dies in Atlanta
Mrs. Betty Gage Holland, widow of James M. Cox Jr., died in Atlanta on May 15. Mrs. Holland supported the work of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia as a living memorial to Mr. Cox, who died in 1974.
Mrs. Holland married James M. Cox Jr. in 1958. At his death Mr. Cox was chairman of Cox Enterprises newspaper publishing company and Cox Broadcasting Corporation. In 1979 Mrs. Holland married William Jackson Holland, who died in 2001.
Services for Mrs. Holland were held on May 21 at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Atlanta, where she was a devoted member.
Mrs. Holland supported the Cox Center through The Jim Cox Jr. Foundation, located in Atlanta, beginning in 1990. The Center, created in 1985, was renamed at that time. The Jim Cox Jr. Foundation and Mrs. Holland also have supported the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Newspaper Management Studies at the University of Georgia since 1990.
Both the Cox Center and the Cox Institute are units of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The Cox Center has worked with journalists all over the world in support of its mission: To encourage the development of a free and independent press throughout the world.
"It has been a true honor and pleasure to have known Mrs. Holland these last seven years," Dr. Lee B. Becker, director of the Cox Center since 1997, said. "Because of her, the Grady College has been able to share its resources with journalists all around the world. The Grady College is better because of these exchanges, and I believe journalism around the world is at least a little better as well."
In 1998, the University of Georgia redesigned and replanted a garden in front of the Journalism Building on the Athens campus and named it in honor of Mrs. Holland.
