“He seemed to have what he wanted, but he didn’t want much,” said Edwin “Smokey” Smith, Holt’s best friend and former employer.
But Holt died earlier this year with a secret: He was a multimillionaire. And what’s more, he gave it all away to this community of 4,200 people.
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His will had brief instructions: $3.8 million to the town of Hinsdale to benefit the community in the areas of education, health, recreation and culture.
“I don’t think anyone had any idea that he was that successful,” said Steve Diorio, chairperson of the town selectboard who’d occasionally wave at Holt from his car. “I know he didn’t have a whole lot of family, but nonetheless, to leave it to the town where he lived in … It’s a tremendous gift.”
The money could go far in this Connecticut River town sandwiched between Vermont and Massachusetts with abundant hiking and fishing opportunities and small businesses. It’s named for Ebenezer Hinsdale, an officer in the French and Indian Wars who built a fort and a grist mill. In addition to Hinsdale’s house, built in 1759, the town has the nation’s oldest continually operating post office, dating back to 1816.
There’s been no formal gathering to discuss ideas for the money since local officials were notified in September. Some residents have proposed upgrading the town hall clock, restoring buildings, maybe buying a new ballot counting machine in honor of Holt, who always made sure he voted. Another possibility is setting up an online drivers’ education course.
Organizations would be be able to apply for grants via a trust through the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, drawing from the interest, roughly about $150,000 annually.
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Hinsdale will “utilize the money left very frugally as Mr. Holt did,” said Kathryn Lynch, town administrator.
Holt’s best friend Smith, a former state legislator who became the executor of Holt’s estate, had learned about his fortune in recent years.
He knew Holt, who died in June at age 82, had varied interests, like collecting hundreds of model cars and train sets that filled his rooms, covered the couch and extended into a shed. He also collected books about history, with Henry Ford and World War II among his favorite topics. Holt had an extensive record collection too, including Handel and Mozart.
Smith also knew that Holt, who earlier in life had worked as a production manager at a grain mill that closed in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont, invested his money. Holt would find a quiet place to sit near a brook and study financial publications.
Holt confided to Smith that his investments were doing better than he had ever expected and wasn’t sure what to to do with the money. Smith suggested that he remember the town.
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“I was sort of dumbfounded when I found out that all of it went to the town,” he said.
One of Holt’s first investments into a mutual fund was in communications, Smith said. That was before cellphones.
Holt’s sister, 81-year-old Alison Holt of Laguna Woods, California, said she knew her brother invested and remembered that not wasting money and investing were important to their father.
“Geoffrey had a learning disability. He had dyslexia,” she said. “He was very smart in certain ways. When it came to writing or spelling, he was a lost cause. And my father was a professor. So, I think that Geoff felt like he was disappointing my dad. But maybe socking away all that money was a way to compete.”
She and her brother grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their father, Lee Holt, taught English and world literature at American International College. Their mother, Margaret Holt, had a Shakespearean scholar for a dad. She was an artist who “absorbed the values of the Quaker Society of Friends,” according to her obituary. Both parents were peace activists who eventually moved to Amherst and took part in a weekly town vigil that addressed local to global peace and justice issues.
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Their children were well-educated. Geoffrey went to boarding schools and attended the former Marlboro College in Vermont, where students had self-designed degree plans. He graduated in 1963 and served in the U.S. Navy before earning a master’s degree from the college where his father taught in 1968. In addition to driver’s ed, he briefly taught social studies at Thayer High School in Winchester, New Hampshire, before getting his job at the mill.
Alison remembers their father reading Russian novels to them at bedtime. Geoffrey could remember all those long names of multiple characters.
He seemed to borrow a page from his own upbringing, which was strict and frugal, according to his sister, a retired librarian. His parents had a vegetable garden, kept the thermostat low, and accepted donated clothes for their children from a friend.
She said Geoffrey didn’t need a lot to be happy, didn’t want to draw attention to himself, and might have been afraid of moving. He once declined a promotion at the mill that would have required him to relocate.
“He always told me that his main goal in life was to make sure that nobody noticed anything,” she said, adding that he’d say “or you might get into trouble.”
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They didn’t talk much about money, though he would ask her often if she needed anything.
“I just feel so sad that he didn’t indulge himself just a little bit,” she said.
But he never seemed to complain. He also always wasn’t on his own, either. As a young man, he was briefly married and divorced. Years later, he grew close to a woman at the mobile home park and moved in with her. She died in 2017.
Neither Alison nor Geoffrey had any children.
Holt suffered a stroke a couple of years ago, and worked with therapist Jim Ferry, who described him as thoughtful, intellectual and genteel, but not comfortable with following the academic route that family members took.
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Holt had developed mobility issues following his stroke, and missed riding his mower.
“I think for Geoff, lawn mowing was relaxation, it was a way for him to kind of connect with the outdoors,” Ferry said. “I think he saw it as service to people that he cared about, which were the people in the trailer park that I think he really liked because they were not fancy people.”
Residents are hoping Hinsdale will get noticed a bit more because of the gift.
“It’s actually a forgotten corner in New Hampshire,” said Ann Diorio, who’s married to Steve Diorio and is on the local planning board. “So maybe this will put it on the map a little bit.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s New Hampshire State director, Mak Kehoe, has parted ways with her 2024 presidential campaign. A campaign spokesperson confirmed to CNN that Kehoe “is no longer with the campaign for personal reasons.”
Deputy State Director Tyler Clark has assumed the role.
The departure comes ahead of next month’s Republican primary in the Granite State, which may be pivotal for Haley’s chances of challenging former President Donald Trump, the current front-runner for the GOP nomination. Despite Trump’s strong lead over the rest of the primary field, Haley has experienced a recent ascendance, threatening Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the main Trump alternative.
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She won the backing last week of Americans for Prosperity Action, the network associated with billionaire Charles Koch, which could boost her candidacy with vast spending and grassroots resources.
Haley moved ahead of Trump’s other rivals in the Granite State in a CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire last month. While 42% of likely primary voters said they would vote for Trump, 20% said they’ve vote for Haley – followed by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 14%, DeSantis at 9%, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 8%.
Those four candidates are set to meet on stage in Alabama on Wednesday night for the fourth Republican presidential debate, which Trump is skipping, as he has the earlier debates.
New Hampshire lawmakers are working on bipartisan legislation to prevent dangerously mentally ill people from buying or possessing guns in response to the fatal shooting of a psychiatric hospital security guard last month.
The deadline to draft bills for the upcoming legislative session already has passed, but the House Rules Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to allow a late bill co-sponsored by Republican Rep. Terry Roy, a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, and Democrat David Meuse, who has pushed for gun control. Republicans hold the slimmest of majorities in the 400-member House, meaning cooperation will be essential for anything to pass next year.
A man accused of threatening to “shoot up” a southeastern New Hampshire high school has changed his plea to guilty.(Fox News)
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“For us to be together here today tells you something,” Roy said. “We think that this is serious, and we think it needs to be addressed now.”
Federal law prohibits anyone who has been involuntarily committed to a mental institution from possessing a firearm, and purchasing guns through a licensed dealer requires a background check that asks about such hospitalizations. However, New Hampshire does not provide mental health records to the national database that is used for background checks.
“There’s a gap between our recognizing it and it actually happening,” Roy said of the federal law.
NEW HAMPSHIRE CRASH LEADS TO AMMUNITION EXPLOSION
He and Meuse said their goal is to ensure that those who are involuntarily committed cannot purchase or possess firearms until it is determined that they are no longer a danger to themselves or others.
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“One of the things that we want to make sure of is that if we have a prohibition on weapons for people with certain mental health conditions, if those people get better, they have a way to retain their right to own weapons again,” Meuse said. “So there’s a way to reverse this process when people get better.”
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It remains unclear how and when the man who killed officer Bradley Haas at New Hampshire Hospital on Nov. 17 acquired his weapons. Police had confiscated an assault-style rifle and handgun from John Madore after an arrest in 2016, and authorities said those weapons remain in police custody. Madore, 33, who had been involuntarily admitted to the hospital in 2016, was shot and killed by a state trooper after he killed Haas.
A state commission charged with studying how to legalize marijuana in New Hampshire has issued its final report, capping off months of meetings at which members failed to agree on a way forward for cannabis policy in the state.
“Ultimately, the Commission voted not to recommend legislation for the 2024 Session,” the new report says. “The Commission was unable to reach a consensus because of a large number of unresolved issues.”
As the new legislative session kicks off next month, says the report, submitted by commission chair Sen. Daryl Abbas (R), the commission “expects legislation to be introduced but with no recommendation.”
Among the issues the group failed to craft agreements on, Abbas said, were the allowable THC levels in legal cannabis products, penalties for public consumption, rules around the operation of motor vehicles, the creation of an oversight body to approve Liquor Commission rulemaking, measures to prevent access by minors, the number of allowed retail stores statewide and whether to allow or prohibit home cultivation.
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During the bulk of its hearings, the Commission to Study With the Purpose of Proposing Legalization, State Controlled Sales of Cannabis and Cannabis Products conducted a line-by-line review of draft legislation submitted by Abbas in October, which his staff emphasized was intended as a starting point. But after weeks of sometimes testy debate among members, the body voted against recommending the bill to lawmakers.
“The first motion of recommending draft legislation that the Commission worked on be introduced next session was defeated by a vote of 5-4,” Abbas wrote in his report to Gov. Chris Sununu (R), leaders of the House and Senate and other state officials. “A subsequent motion to make no recommendation was made and passed by a vote of 7-2.”
The panel was initially formed this summer to consider state-run cannabis stores, a model supported by Sununu that would mirror how the state handles liquor sales. But in September, members turned to consideration of an alternative, franchise-style system, under which the state would regulate the marijuana industry and oversee its look and feel while private licensees would handle cultivation and day-to-day retail sales.
While the body was already at loggerheads going into its final meeting, a list of last-minute demands by Sununu was a dealbreaker for some of the committee. The governor said he would support no more than 15 licensed marijuana retailers statewide and wanted to include provisions specifying that cannabis businesses be barred from lobbying or making political contributions.
Included in the commission’s December 1 filing are four additional reports submitted on behalf of certain members of the group. Abbas’s note says explicitly that those reports represent the views of the members who signed them, not the commission as a whole.
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Notably, the so-called “majority report” included in the commission’s filings represents just four of the body’s 19 members. Several of those members—including Rep. Tim Cahill (R) and Debra Naro, executive director of Communities for Alcohol- and Drug-Free Youth (CADY)—seemed to broadly oppose legalization during commission meetings.
Naro, for example, at one point called the emerging legalization proposal “the most irresponsible, dangerous legislation that I have ever participated in,” while Cahill openly relished establishing harsh penalties for illegal use.
The four-member faction wrote in its report that “the majority concludes the proposed legislation proffered by the Commission is insufficient to protect the citizens of NH from the harmful public health and public safety effects arising from the legalization and commercialization of marijuana or cannabis in NH.”
Moreover, the four said, “the majority concludes there are no set of comprehensive safeguards, laws, policies or procedures that will adequately protect the health, safety and quality of life NH currently enjoys if marijuana was legalized.”
The group of four, which also included John Bryfonski of the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police and Sen. William Gannon (R), said it “strongly rejects the proposition that legalization is inevitable but rather cites the fact that use of harmful controlled substances is a choice, not a foregone conclusion.”
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In comments to local news station WMUR this week, two bipartisan lawmakers on the New Hampshire panel—Sens. Becky Whitley (D) and Timothy Lang (R)—disagreed.
I sat down with @AdamSextonWMUR to discuss why I support legalization. Failure to legalize cannabis in NH means we will continue to miss out on substantial revenues going to our neighboring states AND see continued harms caused by prohibition. #NHPoliticshttps://t.co/g6TqKxVAdq
Lang said while he personally has “almost…no position” on legalization, he agrees with Sununu that the policy shift is inevitable.
“I think I agree with the governor. It’s inevitable,” Lang said. “And so under that condition, being inevitable, I want to make sure that we have a good strong regulatory environment that will keep it away from children and keep our public safe.”
Whitley, the elected official on the commission who appeared most supportive of legalization, said that 74 percent of New Hampshire residents want to see marijuana made legal, “and so I think we have an imperative from our constituents to work towards that.”
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Both Lang and Whitley doubted whether Sununu’s proposed ban on marijuana businesses lobbying or engaging in political advocacy would survive a court challenge.
Lang said he understood Sununu’s goal in restricting political activity, but he worried the proposal would raise First Amendment concerns.
Another of the included reports, from CADY’s Naro alone, consists of 18 pages of “substance misuse prevention guardrails” such as criminalizing public consumption of marijuana and setting a “presumptive level of marijuana impairment” at a blood THC level of 2 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood.
Naro attempted to raise some of those issues during the commission’s meetings, but the suggestions were not incorporated into the group’s draft bill.
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A third included report comes from ACLU of New Hampshire, which was represented on the commission by Frank Knaack. It opposes increased fines or criminal penalties for public cannabis consumption, saying they would “further the harms created by marijuana prohibition without any evidence to support the stated claim to curb public smoking.”
Knaack argued in commission meetings that there is no evidence to suggest that stiffer penalties effectively reduce public consumption, but Abbas and Cahill argued that with harsh enough penalties, people would get the message.
The ACLU report also recommends the establishment of a justice reinvestment fund that would reinvest in communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the drug war. That fund, which was recommended by the nonprofit New Futures, was left out of the commission’s final draft legislation despite Abbas saying he intended to include it.
ACLU also supported annulling past cannabis arrests and convictions and explicitly stating that the smell of marijuana alone does not constitute probable cause for purposes of a search. Abbas had said such a provision was unnecessary due to a state precedent involving alcohol, but some members of the commission pushed to include the provision in statute.
Yet another report, from the New Hampshire Medical Society, which was represented on the committee by Kimberly Youngren, encourages “increased research” on the impact of adult-use marijuana legalization as well as “the biologic actions and interactions of active constituents in cannabis and the development of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cannabis medications.”
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So far no legislative member of the commission has indicated they will introduce the body’s draft bill in the new session, though many nevertheless expect another push for legalization.
Already a number of proposals have been pre-filed or requested by lawmakers for the 2024 session. Among them include measures to legalize home cultivation of cannabis among medical patients and add eating disorders to the state’s list of qualifying conditions for medical marijuana.
Another requested bill, sponsored by Rep. Erica Layon (R) and eight lawmakers others, would legalize and regulate cannabis for adults. Other lawmakers are expected to introduce competing proposals.
Meanwhile another Republican-requested bill, from Rep. Kevin Verville, relates to “the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes.”
Under the legislation that created the legalization study group that issued the new report, commissioners were tasked with studying the feasibility of a state-run cannabis model and specifically drafting legislation that:
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Allows the state to control distribution and access
Keeps marijuana away from kids and out of schools
Controls the marketing and messaging of the sale of marijuana
Prohibits “marijuana miles” or the over-saturation of marijuana retail establishments
Empowers municipalities to choose to limit or prohibit marijuana retail establishments
Reduces instances of multi-drug use
Does not impose an additional tax so as to remain competitive
Rep. John Hunt (R), a commissioner who chaired the House Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee this year, worked extensively on marijuana reform issues during the session and attempted to reach a compromise to enact legalization through a multi-tiered system that would include state-controlled shops, dual licensing for existing medical cannabis dispensaries and businesses privately licensed to individuals by state agencies.
Hunt’s House panel, however, reached an impasse on the complex legislation, which was being considered following Sununu’s surprise announcement that he backed state-run legalization. Meanwhile the Senate defeated a more conventional legalization bill, HB 639, despite its bipartisan support.
In May, the House separately defeated a different marijuana legalization amendment that was being proposed as part of a Medicaid expansion bill.
Also, the Senate moved to table another piece of legislation that month that would have allowed patients and designated caregivers to cultivate up to three mature plants, three immature plants and 12 seedlings for personal therapeutic use.
After the Senate rejected reform bills in 2022, the House included legalization language as an amendment to separate criminal justice-related legislation—but that was also struck down in the opposite chamber.
States Where Marijuana Is Illegal Typically See Higher Rates Of Treatment Admissions, Federal Study Says
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Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
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