Obituary: Shirley René April 26, 1961 – May 18, 2023
It is with great sadness and fond memories that we announce the passing of our dear friend and colleague Shirley René Holaday on May 18, 2023. She led a full and interesting life, and touched the life of everyone she met.
René was born on April 26, 1961, in Tarrant County, Texas, the youngest of three siblings. She attended college at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she majored in Physics (BS, 1990) and met her future husband, Jim Cooke. Her extracurricular activities included leadership roles in Sigma Pi Sigma and marching band. During her college years she started her working career in scientific instrumentation by repairing and using an atomic absorption spectrophotometer at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth to analyze trace metals in tissue. She later designed and built electro-mechanical devices for pharmacology behavioral research. She was co-author on a 1981 publication, “Detection of Platinum in Brain Tissue by PIXE” (https://doi.org/10.1109/TNS.1981.4331424).
Between her jobs at UNTHSC-FW, René encountered her first synchrotron. She came to the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in 1986 to use X-ray fluorescence at beamline X26A to measure trace lead in rat tissue, to understand how lead poisoning affects children. In 1991 she returned to the NSLS and worked for five years as a Synchrotron Research Specialist for MIT’s Center for Materials Science and Education, showing herself to be indispensable in a range of roles at the MIT/IBM X20 x-ray diffraction beamlines. She was responsible for an enormous assembly of instrumentation and control systems and applied her many talents as a computer and software engineer, vacuum tech, plumber, electronics/electrical engineer, designer, machinist, administrator, teacher, and entertainer. She played an especially important role in setting up and administering early Linux-based control computers and peripherals, and founded the “Local Linux User Group” at BNL. She was also an avid softball player and white-water rafter.
After taking several Masters-level instrumentation classes at Stony Brook University and setting up computers for her sister’s medical practice in Texas, René came back to the NSLS in 1996-7 to work at two other beamlines. At X27A she helped develop microtomography techniques for forest product research for the USDA and collected data on a variety of biological and geological samples. At X27C she helped develop the Advanced Polymers Participating Research Team and provided beamline instrumentation support and installed data acquisition and instrument-control software.
René was truly a Renaissance woman, and while at BNL played trombone (it masqueraded as a sackbut) and percussion in Measure for Measure, a Renaissance and Medieval music ensemble that played at local fairs, dances, schools, and libraries. The band put out a CD with the group’s title in 1993.
Soon after leaving BNL, she published an eloquent opinion in a local newspaper supporting scientific research in the face of political and community opposition to the restarting of the High Flux Beam Reactor after a leak was found in its spent fuel pool in late 1996. Her opinion piece in Newsday (attached) is inspiring reading.
René took her synchrotron beamline expertise to new facilities in Europe and Japan on behalf of MAC Science. She spent 1996-7 providing instrumentation support and collecting scientific data at the European Synchrotron Research Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, and installing and commissioning data-collection systems at SPring-8 near Himeji in Japan.
She had her daughter soon after returning from Japan in 1998, and named her after her mother, June Johnson.
In 2004, Rene and Jim welcomed another child, Thomas Vincent Holaday.
In 2004 René started a new career as a systems engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), improving environmental efficiency by automating and centralizing HVAC control in many buildings on site. Linux was once again chosen for its security and flexibility. She was constantly challenged by defendants of the old culture of stand-alone, hyper-individualistic, traditional building management. She trained many technicians and managers in the new efficient methods. René also obtained LEED Certification qualification and reviewed engineering drawings for the Design Engineering and Construction Services department.
Throughout much of her adult life René had a company with Jim named Holaday Home Solar, and designed and installed systems in client’s homes. She took woodworking classes while in Santa Fe and made some beautiful pieces, including artistically fine boxes, chairs, and goatskin-topped drums. She took early retirement from LANL in 2015 for family-related reasons, and moved to a beautiful country property in Beulah Valley, Colorado, near Pueblo. She was predeceased by her husband Jim Cooke in January 2023, and is survived by her sister Lisa Holaday, daughter June Holaday Cooke, and son Thomas Cooke Holaday.
Over her 62 years, Rene lived in many places and interacted with many people. She left each place better for having been there. And every person who ever met her will always remember her for her kindness, intelligence, generosity, humor, and loyalty. She had a heart bigger than Texas.
Services for Rene will be held on Oct 20th at the Horseshoe Lodge in Pueblo Mountain Park, Beulah, CO, from 12pm-5pm, and again on Nov 4th in the Planetarium at UTA, Arlington TX, from 12pm-5pm.
Shirley René Holaday April 26, 1961 – May 18, 2023. Courtesy photo