Mike Lightman still remembers meeting with Alan Holliday for the first time. Lightman, a 1998 College of Communication alumnus, had changed his mind about his journalism major and was nervous about heading into advertising, but Holliday, an advertising professor, made him feel welcome, he said.
‘He wanted to hear about you and what you wanted to do,’ Lightman said. ‘He laughed a lot and made you feel comfortable . . . He showed me that it was OK to have your own personality.’
Holliday died of pulmonary failure Jan. 5. He was 72.
Holliday, a Hingham resident, brought a ‘great spirit’ and creative aura to the COM advertising department, Associate Dean Tobe Berkovitz said. Holliday’s willingness to mentor his students inspired many to start careers in the industry.
‘Whenever I travel, whether it’s New York City, San Francisco or Chicago, I always run into COM alums who got a lot of their education and career from working with Professor Holliday,’ Berkovitz said.
Before coming to BU, Holliday, who graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in history and spent six months in the United States Army Reserve, started his first job at the Warwick & Legler advertising agency in New York.
‘He didn’t study advertising, but he was very fascinated with the creative effort that went into it,’ Holliday’s wife Lucile said.
After working at various other advertising agencies, Holliday co-founded Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Inc., a Boston-based advertising firm in 1968. However, he did not stay for long, after finding the job did not allow him to use his ‘creative side.’
‘He wasn’t a great business man at all,’ Lucile said. ‘He was very creative, witty and fun, and that really wasn’t the business end of it. He left within a year and went to a variety of other ad agencies.’
In 1980, Holliday decided to study at the Harvard Divinity School. After he received his master’s degree in theology, he found that he wanted to take his life in the direction of education.
‘He felt that he wanted to be doing good, and advertising was not necessarily the vehicle to do that,’ Lucile said. ‘He explored different possibilities, and ultimately, education was something that he was really fascinated with.’
During his 12 years at BU, Holliday taught a core course requirement for advertising majors,’ and served as faculty adviser for AdLab, BU’s student-run advertising agency.
‘He loved the students and the opportunity to be with young minds and share his experiences,’ Lucile said.
Holliday’s memorial service was held on Saturday in St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in Hingham. Lucile said she was ‘thrilled to see so many people’ in attendance.
‘It was a real tribute to who he was, and the kind of response that he elicited in other people,’ she said.
In addition to Lucile, Holliday is survived by daughter Sarah, sons Daniel and Thompson, three granddaughters and two grandsons.
Staff Writer Pooja Bachani contributed reporting to this article.
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