Gladys Gayle Davis was born in the depths of the Great Depression on May 18, 1934, in Sheridan Wyoming, as the second of two children to a Protestant preacher and his wife, Harry and Blanche Davis. The family, including Gladys’s older brother Charles, moved to Belle Fourche,

South Dakota when she was 5 years old and she grew up there on her grandparent’s cattle ranch. At the age of 14, she went off to boarding school for high school at Oak Park Academy in Nevada, Iowa, where she graduated in 1952. She continued her education at Union College in Lincoln, Nebraska, studying music and teaching organ lessons. She finished her collegiate studies by moving to Southern California to attend Loma Linda University for her senior year.

After she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music, she married Ivan Holmes in August of 1956. The early years of their relationship included stops in Arizona (Thunderbird Academy), Michigan (Andrews University) and Oregon (Oregon State University). Along the way, Gladys taught piano and organ, and in 1962 she had her first child, Lori, in Corvalis, OR. After Ivan finished his Ph.D. at Oregon State in 1965, the young family returned to Michigan where Ivan took a job on the faculty of Andrews University. Gladys worked as a dental assistant, and had her second child, Michael, in 1967.

In 1972 they moved back to Southern California so that Ivan could take a position on the faculty of the La Sierra campus of Loma Linda University. They would spend the next 27 years living in Riverside, CA, where Gladys would serve as an assistant to the campus Chaplin. While there she also continued her education by earning two master’s degrees from LLU, one in Family Life, and the other in Guidance and Counseling. Beginning in 1992 she took on the role of Associate Dean of Women at the University.

In 1999, she and Ivan decided to retire and move to scenic destination of Grand Junction, Colorado. Her retirement years allowed her to indulge her love of the mountains and great outdoors by Jeeping and exploring through much of the Southwest. She was passionate in her Christian beliefs and was always quick to serve her church and community in any way possible. She traveled to Scandinavia to help in the building of a church, to Russia to see the sites of St. Petersburg and the Hermitage and toured her ancestral homeland of Wales with her family as part of a celebration of her 50th wedding anniversary. Throughout her journey, Gladys maintained a love for the good and beautiful that can be found in life, and never lost a sense of curiosity, and desire to learn and grow.

She passed away peacefully in her sleep in Grand Junction on Jan 15, 2026. She is survived by her husband Ivan, her daughter Lori, son-in-law Michael, her son Michael, daughter-in-law Kristy, and beloved grandson David.