By Pauline Masson –
Jerry Holloway is one of the best kept secrets and arguably the most widely known Pacific community booster in the region.
A record setting high school runner, former St. Louis Football Cardinals tight end, City of Eureka alderman, Pacific restaurant owner, renown Blues and Gospel singer, and all around Good Will Ambassador, Holloway was one guy TV reporters wanted to see when Fox 2 “In Your Neighborhood” came to Pacific Nov. 11, 2017.
When show anchors Margie Ellisor and Kevin Steincross turned their cameras on Holloway he showed off the entire menu of his eatery, and hawked support for the Historic First Baptist Church renovation project, in a plea that was so effective Fox 2 put the church project on its webpage. Holloway also touted Pacific’s location on Historic Route 66 that brings a continuous stream of visitors who find him on St. Louis Street, and belted out an a cappella rendition of “I’m Saving All My Love for You.”
Holloway opened Brown Jerry’s Blues, Brews and Barbecue restaurant at 147 West St. Louis Street June 22, 2016. He previously operated Brown Jerry’s Barbecue at Fee Fee and Olive in Maryland Heights in St. Louis. Pacific attracted him, he said, for two reasons, St. Louis Street with all the restored buildings is beautiful to look at and it’s in the path of westward migration.
“This is a beautiful place to have a business,” he said.
From the outgo, Holloway’s family was on hand as part of the restaurant staff, and cheering him on during interviews and impromptu presentations.
Stephen Flannery III, said he met Holloway when the former football personality was in the process of opening Brown Jerry’s as a restaurant and live music venue. Flannery, who was Pacific Partnership president at the time identified he new restaurant, First State Community Bank, and G’s Barbershop across he street – all in renovated St. Louis Street buildings – as examples of the Partnership’s primary goal of attracting new businesses to Old Town.
Flannery, who was also president of the Park Board tapped Holloway to sing the National Anthem when he emceed the City’s grand opening of the renovated Jensen’s Point as the newest city park on Memorial Day 2016 – 77 years from the date the historic wayside stop on the new Route 66 first opened.
“I’m not sure how I learned he was a singer,” Flannery said. “But I’m glad I found out. He gave the ceremony a grand kickoff.”
In 2019, Holloway sparked a bit of razzle-dazzle when he introduced a new kind of Italian pizza into a town that already had four pizza parlors. He ordered a Valoriani – built to order – wood-fired brick oven from Healdsburg, Calif., and Reggello, Italy.
Holloway found the oven after he and his wife Teresa discussed how the southwest corner of the dining area at Brown Jerry’s had become a catchall for items not in use at the moment. He Googled pizza ovens and found Andrea Mugniani an olive oil and wine importer turned pizza oven manufacturer who had made a trip to Tuscany and happened upon the Valoriani pizza ovens made in the Florence suburb of Reggello. Holloway liked everything about the story. He and his sons, Michael and Jonathan, flew to the Sonoma Valley town of Healdsburg, Calif., to visit the Mugniani headquarters and ordered one of the ovens.
A new double door had to be cut into the St. Louis Street west facade of the building to get the ebony tiled igloo-shaped oven, approximately the size of a traditional Volkswagen bug, into the building where its installed in plain sight for diners to see pizzas as they are being made.
He didn’t stop there. Holloway persuaded the city to approve a fenced and heated outdoor eating area in the former parking spaces in front of the restaurant that serves food year round.
Responding to a comment on his eclectic repertoir, he laughed. “I used to be a pretty good runner,” he said. Was he ever!
The Rockford Register Star Newspaper, did a feature story on him in 2020, naming the 25 greatest football players in the town history. Going back fifty years to Holloway’s halcyon years as a star football, basketball, and track star at East High School in Rockford, Illinois. The Register named Holloway Player No. 21 of Rockford area’s 25 greatest football players.
“His reluctance to give up track is why he didn’t play football for a bigger college,” the register said.
“In Holloway’s junior and senior years, East High School in Rockford laid waste to the rest of the state,” the register said. “They went 22-0 and outscored their opponents 656-130. In 1974, the first year of the IHSA playoffs, East rolled to the Class 4A state title, winning each of their four playoff games by at least 17 points with what is regarded as the greatest football team in NIC-10 history.
“It was just magical,” Holloway ssid. “It was the most magical time of my life.”
Holloway was a first-team all-conference basketball player as well and a track star. His senior year, he finished second in the state in the 440-yard dash. He lettered all four years at Western Illinois and was picked in the 10th round (255th overall) 1979 draft to play for the St. Louis Cardinals.
In retirement, he and his family settled in Eureka, where he has served as an alderman for the past eight years. Placing his business in the sister city of Pacific was an easy choice, he said.
“Brown Jerry’s has been a friendly place,” he said. “A good place to come in strangers and leave friends.”
Norbert Gildehaus, owner of Gildehaus Comfort Systems and one of the city’s top fundraiser for community projects said since opening Brown Jerry’s Holloway has been a supporter on all downtown events. He can always be counted on when the communty needs help.
“He let us hold a celebrity bartender fundraiser for the Historic First Baptist Church project and we raised a ton of money,” Gildehaus said. “And he always a sponsor of the annual Turtle Run fundraisers, the T shirts and other promotions that increases what we can raise. He’s definitely a fixture in the downtown.”
Great place, great person