Norma Holder

Norma Holder of Livermore died April 17. She was 90.

Holder was born Dec. 14, 1924, in Denver, Colorado, the youngest of three children and the only daughter of Claude Kindig, a train conductor, and Lillian (Heath), a homemaker. 

Holder graduated in 1942 from North High School and attended the University of Denver, where she was a member of Kappa Delta sorority, Alpha Sigma Chi chemistry fraternity and Phi Delta Theta mathematics society. In her college chemistry classes, she met her future husband, Bert Holder, a World War II Army Air Corps veteran. They married in June 1947, one day after she graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry. 

The couple moved in 1949 to Boston. Her husband pursued his doctorate at MIT, and she worked in the university's general library and its guided missiles library. In 1953, when her husband began his career with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, they made their home first in Livermore and later in Pleasanton. In 2005, they returned to Livermore.

Holder was a homemaker while raising daughter Robin and son Russell. In 1974 she became employed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as an office assistant in the chemistry and materials science department. There, she worked for Brigitta Dobratz, Gay Maestas, Jack Robbins and Harry Rizzo. She left the Laboratory in 1985.

She was an avid reader, devoted diarist, an accomplished weaver and spinner and a decades-long member of a stitchery group. A birder, wildflower hobbyist and longtime wildlife conservation supporter, she delighted in watching the California quail, hummingbirds and other birds that visited the feeders she kept filled at her home.

She and her husband traveled widely around the U.S. as well as to Europe and Japan. But when asked what she was most grateful for in her life, she said, without hesitation, family and friends.

Married for 65 years, she died three days shy of the third anniversary of her husband's death.

In addition to her two children, survivors include son-in-law Dave Herrera of Long Beach; daughter-in-law Kathleen Holder of Davis; and granddaughters Lauren Herrera of Long Beach, Alessandra Holder of Denver and Kalysta Holder of Davis.

Interment was at Pleasanton Pioneer Cemetery. A celebration of her life will be held later this spring.