William H. Holtsnider

William “Bill” Holtsnider passed away on March 24^th, 2024, after a brief illness at the age of 88. He will be dearly missed by his loving wife of 69 years Sheila (Troy); son William of Chesapeake Virginia; daughter Catherine Thompson and her husband Steve Feldman of Naples Florida; daughter Michele Robinson and her husband Steve of Carlisle; son Timothy and his wife Patricia of Milford. He is predeceased by his son George. Bill is also survived by his oldest brother Tom and his wife Barbara of Gardnerville Nevada. He has twelve grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren.

Bill was born in a small town in Arizona on August 22^nd, 1935, the last of six children of an assistant grocer and a housewife. The family moved to California when he was a teenager where he met his soon to be lifelong partner, Sheila, while playing ping pong at the local CYO. He said, “It was the luckiest moment of my life and I fell head over heels in love.”

After attending Saint Mary’s College of California (where he played basketball and once guarded the late, great, Bill Russell), he joined his father’s roofing company and had the first two of his five children, William, and Catherine.

In 1958, he attended and graduated from the Thunderbird School of Global Management at the American Institute for Foreign Trade (AIFT) in Arizona. Shortly after he was hired by the Gillette Company as a Sales Representative in Chicago, where his third child Michele was born.

From there Bill was off and running towards an international career that found he and his family living on three continents and six countries, not to mention all the other places he would eventually travel to for business. In the late fifties and sixties, he was crisscrossing South America living in Peru, Panama – where his fourth child Tim was born, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

In 1968 he and the family moved back to Medfield, Massachusetts where he was the Sales Manager for Gillette South America, and his fifth child George was born. It was here where he would be invited to attend the prestigious Harvard PMD Graduate Business program. After four years he was promoted to General Manager, Gillette Australasia and the seven of them moved to Sydney, Australia.

The territory he covered was vast; it included Australia, the Philippines, Japan and about everything in between. Bill loved Australia and the people - he often said it was one of his favorite postings.

In 1976 he was on the move again, this time coming back to Massachusetts to become the President of Paper Mate at Gillette. He would leave Gillette in 1985 and go on to spend four years as head of international for the Dennison Manufacturing Company and ultimately finish his extensive career consulting for Black and Decker in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

From that point on until his passing this past week, Bill and Sheila would continue to move around – Arizona, Massachusetts, Florida – until finally settling at The Commons, a Senior Living community in Lincoln, Mass. Here they met a great deal of wonderful people and made some terrific friends. 

Services for Bill are private.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
P.O. Box 1999
Memphis, TN  38101
www.stjude.org . 

Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, 74 Belknap Street, Concord, MA 01742  978-369-3388  www.concordfuneral.com