By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
While growing up Catholic in Latter-day Saint Northern Utah, the trademarks of my distinct faith heritage were the stained glass windows through which colored light illuminated my boyhood places.
One such space was the Quonset hut church at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville. I focused the first chapter of Monastery Mornings— my 2021 book about the monks—on the chapel’s spectacular 20-foot-tall window of Jesus and Mary.
Another venue was at home in front of the television. I remember the funniest joke directed at Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen when he appeared in the 1970s on the “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast” show claimed that Sheen’s limo had stained glass windows.
My youthful notion that stained glass was the ultimate Catholic art form was not unreasonable. Although originating in ancient Egypt and Rome, stained glass use and popularity did peak in the Middle Ages with colorful Catholic church windows that told congregants who could not read about the Bible and the saints.
Today, as an adult, I appreciate that the word “Catholic” means “universal.” Perhaps that’s why it seems so wonderful that two Utah Latter-day Saints now are some of the best stained glass artists in the world.
I met them—Tom and Gayle Holdman—last year when we sat together at a lunch honoring 150 years of Utah service by the Holy Cross Sisters from Notre Dame, Indiana. The Holdmans were there to unveil a stained glass window they created for the landmark anniversary.
We stayed in touch. A few months later, Tom and Gayle gave my wife Vicki and I a tour of their beautiful art studios and I learned about their interesting backstory.
Like me, Tom grew up in Utah, but in Orem just a few miles from Brigham Young University. As a child, Tom had a bad stutter.
One day after classmates teased him without mercy at recess, a kind teacher handed Tom a box of colored pencils and said, “There are other ways to communicate.” He learned to draw and then, in high school, to make stained glass.
After serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Tom traveled in Europe to see the world’s finest and oldest glass art, mostly in Catholic churches in Prague and Paris. Between those visits, he slept in his rental car.
Back home again, he supported himself by selling windows he made in a glass studio he’d built in his parents’ garage. Tom also met Gayle, fell in love, and gave her an engagement ring.
After she accepted, Tom said they had to start work on the stained glass window he’d promised to the jeweler as payment for the ring. To paraphrase a line from Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful partnership.
When Orem decided to build a new library, Tom convinced the director to include a colored window with illustrated children’s stories. A Latter-day Saint leader saw the window and asked Tom to propose one for the Palmyra Temple, near the sacred grove where Joseph Smith received his first revelation.
Tom and Gayle won that bid, launching an artistic career that has endured for over three decades. Gayle has written a charming children’s book called The Piece That Is You telling their remarkable story.
Today, the couple owns Holdman Studios in Lehi, Utah. Their glass art accentuates two hundred Latter-day Saint Temples around the world. It also graces Protestant churches, the Kol Ami synagogue in Salt Lake, Catholic churches, the CommonSpirit Catholic hospitals, private homes, and many public places.
Tom and Gayle even created a nine-pane glass rendition of the life, miracles, and teachings of Jesus that toured several European cities in 2023. The Paris venue was just a few blocks away from both Notre Dame Cathedral and Saint-Chapelle, two stops on Tom’s youthful pilgrimage years before when he started to explore his chosen vocation.
For the 75th anniversary of Utah Valley University, the Holdmans created “Roots of Knowledge.” Their masterpiece project—twelve years in the making—includes eighty ten-foot-high panes and over 60,000 pieces of hand-crafted and hand-painted glass.
The Guardian newspaper called it “one of the most spectacular stained glass windows made in the past century.” Tom calls it their Sistine Chapel, but what the Holdmans are working on right now might fit that lofty description even better.
Tom and Gayle have established the Roots of Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit seeking to showcase core human values such as love, kindness, creativity, and resilience, through collaborative artistic endeavors.
The Foundation plans to build the Sphere of Light, a monumental 10,000-square-foot structure designed to showcase those core values in stained glass. The Holdmans hope to open their new glass museum—inspired by Sainte-Chapelle and the Sagrada Família in Barcelona—in 2030 in Lehi.
Tom’s stained glass has left a lasting impression wherever he has installed it. His ecumenical work, however, has left a mark on him too.
After he created a rose window of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the La Virgin de Guadalupe Catholic Church in Mesquite Nevada, Tom could not find the check the parish sent in payment. He called to ask for another one.
Instead, the church secretary suggested they follow a long Catholic tradition and say a prayer to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. They did, and Tom found the check the next day.
Looking back on his remarkable artistic journey, Tom never forgets the Latter-day Saint boy from Orem with the terrible stutter. During our recent visit together, he repeated to me what he has said many times before, “I had to look for other ways to speak with people.”
The rest of us can only be grateful that the voice he discovered resonates so profoundly and universally, including with a Northern Utah Catholic boy like me who cannot speak—but who most definitely understands—the lovely language of stained glass.
(The Salt Lake Tribune published a version of this article on June 5, 2026.)
(Photos: left- Huntsville monastery window; right- Tom and Gayle Holdman.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026
