The West Columbia Chamber of Commerce presented its 2024 Legacy Award to Cindy Saville and John Holleman Tuesday morning at the Chamber’s Vision 2024 Progress to Prosperity breakfast at the West Columbia Civic Center. Saville currently serves as vice president of the Columbia Heritage Foundation board of directors.
Saville is a former recipient of the West Columbia Chamber’s Woman of the Year, an honor that was bestowed on her grandmother, Gladys Gupton, and her aunt, Peggy Lou Gupton Boone, before Cindy. Her grandfather, longtime area district judge Thurman Gupton, was one of the first to receive the local Chamber of Commerce’s Man of the Year honor.
Cindy is the daughter of the late Lloyd Brandt and Dolores Gupton Rader. She grew up in Fort Worth but visited West Columbia frequently as a child. Her mother’s parents, Judge Thurman and Gladys Gupton, lived across East Bernard Street from the front of the old West Columbia High School gymnasium. Cindy and her brother Ace Brandt would spend lots of time with their grandparents in West Columbia when they were children, and had many cousins and friends to play with here.
Cindy Brandt was in junior high school when her parents moved from Fort Worth to West Columbia around 1970. She now sits on the board of directors of the group that manages Heritage Hall and the old campus of what was West Columbia Junior High School at the time Cindy was in the seventh and eighth grades. She graduated from Columbia High School in 1975 and attended the University of Texas in Austin.
Saville has co-owned and operated Madeline’s Melange boutique in downtown West Columbia for many years. She and her husband, Earl Saville, are residents of Columbia Lakes. Her children are Jake Toney and Brittany Toney Smith of West Columbia. Earl’s daughter Liz Saville Dodds co-manages Madeline’s Melange with her stepmother.
Cindy hosts numerous food and toy drives at Madeline’s and is involved in aiding nonprofit groups such as Columbia Methodist Church, West Columbia Rotary Club, Beta Sigma Phi Xi Nu Xi sorority, local sports leagues and has devoted a great deal of her time to the Heritage Foundation and the West Columbia Chamber of Commerce. She is extremely proud of her granddaughter Bailey Toney’s soccer team that Cindy coaches with Steven Horak.
In recent years Cindy Saville has been helping plan each year’s Roughnecks Blowout multi-class reunion that is put on by the Columbia Heritage Foundation each October at Heritage Hall. She is a valuable cog in the wheel that keeps rolling from one year to the next as alumni of Columbia High School work diligently to maintain the buildings and the campus where most of the CHF board members attended school in their younger years. Several of the women who serve on the board of directors attended classes there when it was West Columbia High School. The current high school in West Columbia opened its doors first for the 1963-64 school year. So many of the CHF board members went to junior high school on the Heritage Hall campus like Cindy Saville did in the early 1970s.
The West Columbia Chamber of Commerce also honored John Holleman Tuesday morning with the Legacy Man of the Year Award. He is a former Houston firefighter and has taught fire safety and preparedness programs for many years since becoming a West Columbian. His wife, Dianne Holleman, is the West Columbia Chamber’s membership and administrative director.
John Holleman served his country in the U.S. Navy. He has been a Central Emergency Medical Service board member and is active in the West Columbia Masonic Lodge.
Michele Hatch was also recognized at Tuesday’s event as this year’s Chamber Volunteer of the Year.