While growing up Catholic in Latter-day Saint-dominant 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 former 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 Archbishop Fulton Sheen when he appeared in the 1970s on the “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast” show, claiming that the priest’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.

Finding another way to ‘speak’

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 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 persuaded 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 faith’s Palmyra Temple in New York, near the sacred grove where church founder Joseph Smith reported receiving his ”First Vision."

Tom and Gayle won that bid, launching an artistic career that has endured for more than three decades. Gayle has written a charming children’s book called “The Piece That Is You” telling their remarkable story.

Today, the couple own Holdman Studios in Lehi. Their glass art accentuates 200 Latter-day Saint temples around the world. It also graces Protestant churches, the Kol Ami synagogue in Salt Lake City, 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 Notre Dame Cathedral and Sainte-Chapelle, two stops on Tom’s youthful pilgrimage years before.

The couple’s ‘Sistine Chapel’

For the 75th anniversary of Utah Valley University, the Holdmans created “Roots of Knowledge.” Their masterpiece project — 12 years in the making — includes 80 10-foot-high panes and over 60,000 pieces of handcrafted and hand-painted glass.

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 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 the two of them 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.

Note to readers • Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City who frequently represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. He is the author of “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks.” His new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks of Shamrock Valley,” will be published in time for Christmas. He blogs at theboymonk.com.