Love for Ashland University President Jon Parrish Peede struck in a publishing house.
The year was 1994 and Peede recently started his first professional job as a book editor at Mercer University Press, in Macon, Georgia.
The warm, spring day welcomed Peede to his shift, where he was giddy and grateful. Before this day, he didn’t believe in love at first sight.
“She was in a blue dress, and I remember her smile and she had short hair the way Princess Diana was wearing it at the time,” Peede said, as he recalled the first time he met his now wife, Rev. Nancy Hollomon-Peede. “She had really large blue eyes, and [she was] warm without pretention.”
Peede felt intimidated by Hollomon-Peede. He didn’t know how to work the coffee machine or where the bathroom was.
“I don’t believe in love at first sight, but it happened to me,” Peede said. “I remember this sophisticated, this together person,” he said, talking about Hollomon-Peede. “I remember not wanting to be a dork.”
They worked together for a year in different publishing houses under the same management. Peede edited works at the MUP, and Hollomon-Peede edited works at Smith and Helwys, a religious publishing house.
“He had to come down and get things approved by the managing editor. So, when he’d come down, I’d think, ‘This is a nice guy,’” said Hollomon-Peede as she recalled working with her husband years ago. “‘He’s intelligent, he reads a lot,’” she laughed.
Before working at the press, Hollomon-Peede lived in Boston and worked at Harvard for six years as a chaplain. She returned to the south and planned to take a year for discernment, a year to find her calling.
Dating was not in the cards.
During their shifts, the two would edit around each other, talk about books and their favorites of different covers. They were speaking each other’s language.
Somerset
After working within the same job together for a year, Peede remembers himself reading alone.
But Hollomon remembers it differently, as being a part of a book club.
One thing remains the same: Peede reading, “The Razor’s Edge,” by W. Somerset Maugham. The book that continues to play a significant role in their lives.
The couple separately praised this book, and explained that it’s about life, the good and the bad.
When Hollomon-Peede saw Peede reading the book, she took this as a way to learn more about him.
“I got to hear about what he thought about deeper things, personal things,” she said. “You got to talk about what kind of meaning it brought to you. These were deeper things that are not happy and frivolous, but serious. . . I thought that was important.”
To continue the conversation about, “The Razor’s Edge,” the two editors decided to discuss it over lunch.
But these lunch plans turned into dinner, which turned into many more where that came from.
These conversations led Peede and Hollomon-Peede to begin dating.
“There was this charge between us,” said Peede.
They married within that year, on Dec. 16, 1995. Peede and Hollomon-Peede brought one child named Somerset Peede into the world.
They bonded over this novel, which they collect from every second-hand bookstore they can find, writing a snippet of their lives on the inside.
“This book brought us together,” said Peede. “So, for almost 30 years, anytime I’m in a used bookstore or antique store, and I see, “The Razor’s Edge,” I buy it. . . I write what’s going on in our marriage. At the end of life, there will be a shelf with our marriage captured in this book.”
Peede shared one of his earliest diary entries written inside of the book during their honeymoon in Italy. He expressed this as being a sentimental time for his family and himself. The entry reads, “Nancy O Nancy, what we have we are blessed to have. I love her. I love that she breathes, even, on this pale green Earth.”
Combining libraries
Peede and Hollomon-Peede have been married now for 29 years.
“We’re very intentional in this house,” said Peede.
The house is filled with physical representations of memories and passions. There’s collected seashells, paintings from Hollomon-Peede’s life before meeting Peede, and similarly, paintings that have moved with Peede from all his former homes.
“Our art and our books,” Peede started. “We never felt the need to suppress our individualism to celebrate our togetherness.”
Both holding a deep love for literature, the couple own around 7,000 to 8,000 books together in their shared library. Hollomon-Peede favors theology and Christian mystics and Peede favors poetry and civil war novels.
Hollomon-Peede said that their days 29 years later are filled with a lot of communication. They talk about what they’re reading, what they’re thinking about, and they’ve made a habit to say ‘I love you,’ often.
“You shouldn’t give up who you are for the person you love,” said Peede. “But, if that person loves you, it will change who you are.”