OPINION | TOM MURPHY: Bob Holt touched many with sincerity

We celebrated the life of Bob Holt this past Friday at Cross Church.

I think Bob would have been pleased at the massive number of people from all the areas of his life who came to honor the man who devoted his entire professional career to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Monica Hall, the wife of Democrat-Gazette sports editor Wally Hall, Kevin Trainor with the University of Arkansas athletics department and Matt Jones of the Hawgs Sports Network played massive roles in making the event a success. Chuck "Pigskin Preacher" Monan presided over the event.

Not one day has gone by since Bob's medical emergency at Faurot Field in Columbia, Mo., that I haven't wanted to send him a text, forward a funny meme or give him a call. We communicated all the time and I'm missing him dearly.

The sporting public in our great state has probably heard and read a lot about Bob in the past two-plus weeks. There has been a series of touching tributes to him in all of our modern mediums: printed and digital columns, podcasts, radio and TV.

Why all the fuss? Because Bob touched each of our lives with his gentle demeanor, compassion and his uncanny gift of being able to relate to every person he met on a personal level. That ability made people feel closer to Bob and endeared him to them. It could be cats, deer hunting, animal adoption, their favorite sports teams, travel. Bob discovered his friends' passions and loved to discuss them. This is a unique character trait.

Sitting next to Bob in press boxes and traveling with him to road games for the last 17 years has given me an inside look at how he operated, what made him tick, his passions and even the things that irked him. I only saw Bob mad a few times and very frustrated a few times more than that. Largely, Bob was a jolly sort who loved to chat, one who was super curious and inquisitive about basically everything. He loved to tell long, winding stories, and loved being with people (and cats).

I had the pleasure and honor of working side by side with him all that time and speaking at his celebration of life. I touched on a few things that were meaningful to me, like his last question to Sam Pittman. It was about Pittman's upcoming surgery and how he felt about it because it would relieve the pain Pittman has been in with dreadful bone-on-bone issues since the summer. That's Bob, concerned about how somebody else was feeling.

Any other reporter could have asked about the surgery and the pain -- and we have -- but Bob brought a personal touch that Pittman knew was genuine, even in the face of a difficult loss that day to Missouri.

However, there were a couple of stories I wanted to tell that just didn't fit the time frame allowed or, in one case, was forgotten, even though it was written on my reminder card.

That's this story. I know of no other single event that brought Bob more joy in our time spent together than the fact he named a "condition" I have, which involves loud noise, competing conversations and basically audio stimulus that is too much or too severe. Bob gave it the title Acute Sound Sensitivity, or A.S.S.

Used in a sentence, as Bob loved to do: "Don't mind Tom, that's just his A.S.S. kicking in." Or "Hey, you have to forgive Tom, that's his A.S.S. flaring up,"or "Tom's being kicked by his own A.S.S."

All the rest of the media on the Arkansas beat would get a kick out of that. Bob laughed the most. That has been going on for probably 10 years or more. I'm proud of him for having put a name to it and bringing him such fun.

Here's another. As longtime fans of the Detroit Tigers and Atlanta Braves, Bob and I talked often of the trade back in the late 1980s that sent young prospect John Smoltz from his home-state Tigers to my Braves for veteran Doyle Alexander.

As it happened, this fall after we landed in Atlanta for the Arkansas vs. Auburn football game, Bob and I were on the "The Plane Train" that runs underneath all the terminals at the big airport. As the door was closing, I saw Smoltz walking along the platform and I said aloud, "Bob, that's John Smoltz!" He turned to look but it was too late, the train was moving.

When we got to baggage claim, Bob went to grab his suitcase as I sat in wait to catch the departing passengers from the next train. About the time Bob came rolling up with his luggage, Smoltz emerged from the long escalator into the terminal. I had interviewed Smoltz a couple of times from my days with the Mobile (Ala.) Register -- not that he would remember me -- and I walked straight up to him to introduce myself. Smoltz was as gracious as he could be after being aggressively approached by a reporter, who I might add was wearing his brand-new throwback Braves cap from the mid-1970s, the glorious lower-case A model.

In our few minutes, Smoltz indulged a couple of jabbering old sports writers. Bob walked up and lamented the trade that sent Smoltz away from his beloved Tigers, though he added, as usual, "Doyle Alexander helped the Tigers make the playoffs that year." But of course Bob would have preferred having a future Hall of Fame talent like Smoltz, the only pitcher in Major League history with 200 wins and 150 saves, for the long term.

I'm an Atlanta Falcons fan too, but I wore a green pullover to the celebration of life in honor of Bob's Green Bay Packers.

So many people gave amazing personal accounts of Bob at the event and so many great Arkansas coaches and administrators past and present came out to honor him. Just as impressive, sports journalists from retirement age to their early 20s came to celebrate Bob.

You should have seen it. I think it would have made Bob grin to know how many people he touched.

Love you, brother.