Born Blind and Autistic, Holly Connor is Bound for Glory
Born Blind and Autistic, Holly Connor is Bound for Glory
Written by Jeff Dunlap
Holly Connor. Remember that name. Now 18, this
young lady who lives in Clayton, Missouri, with her
mother and step-dad is heading for fame and glory as
a singer, musical theatre actress, cartoon movie voice,
mentor for people with disabilities and, she hopes, a
professional opera singer.
Holly’s life since birth has been extra-extraordinary
because of many challenges she has overcome,
setbacks she has beaten, risks she has averted and
because her life keeps getting busier and more exciting.
She is a savant, meaning, among many things, that
she can hear a musical composition only once and
immediately sing it note for note, never forgetting it.
“Holly lives in a world that seems to get bigger almost
every day,” says her mother Katie Sears, who relocated
with Holly to St. Louis from Seattle in 2015; Katie is
married to Titus Sears, an Assistant Vice President
with Enterprise.
They are Holly’s peerless caretakers, cheerleaders,
chauffeurs, travel guides and innovative supporters.
Katie enrolled Holly at the St. Louis Children’s Choirs
their first week in St. Louis. Not long after, Holly enrolled in
the Gateway Center for Performing Arts, joined the Center of
Creative Arts, began taking tap dance and acting classes. She
also started auditioning for shows and performing in plays and
musical theatre productions.
Holly told the news editor of the Clayton High School Globe in
an interview, “I started to sing when I was three years old. I have
instant memory, which means that when I hear a song, it’s in
my brain forever. And perfect pitch, which means that I sing on
key.” Holly will graduate from Clayton High School in May 2023.
“Holly started playing the piano when she was six months old,
she could count to 100 when she was one, she could sing
the alphabet backward when she was one, and she could
do mental math when she was one,” Katie told writer Jeremy
Rutherford of The Athletic sports publication covering the
St. Louis Blues.
Why would a hockey reporter write about a five-foot two-inch
young blond lady who is blind and autistic?
At age 14, Holly was chosen from more than 700 people who
auditioned to sing the National Anthem solo for a St. Louis Blues
National Hockey League All-Star Skills Competition game. Her
movingly perfect rendition, reaching the high AH note as she
sang the words “land of the free-E-E” generated screams, hoots,
and whistles with thunderous, long-lasting applause for Holly in
the packed arena.
When told by her stepdad Titus Sears there that she could have
any snack she wanted as a reward, Holly, like any 15-year-old
might do, told him she wanted French fries. As Titus guided her
from the crowded arena through a gaggle of news photographers
and videographers toward the food court, Holly loudly and
proudly said, “This is a message to all the audience to spread
ability awareness for blindness and autism to the world!”
Busier & Busier
When KSDK-TV News Channel 5 sports director Frank
Cusumano produced a news feature about Holly, he won
a regional Emmy Award. As her name and achievements
appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wire service reports,
newspapers across the nation, and publications for people who
are blind, Holly’s star began to rise, yet none of the accolades
and attention slowed her down at all.
With Katie’s help, Holly simply kept going, appearing in
more and different types of productions. Since she began
performing in St. Louis, Holly has appeared in about 80
different productions, she says, at venues such as Shooting
Star Productions, the Variety Theatre, Spotlight Productions,
Stages Performing Arts Academy, and more. Katie admits,
“I keep track of everything with a very complicated color-coded
calendar so I can know what she can do when and where,
and how much she can do in different time periods.”
Were that not enough for Katie, she also has a Braille printer
to help transcribe scripts for plays and music that Holly can
“read” and memorize. As she told reporter Jeremy Rutherford,
“I have a Braille printer. I get a PDF of the scripts or the
music, and I have to optimize it then transfer all of it into
Word. But (when that happens) you lose at least 25 percent
of the characters, so then I have to go line by line and retype
everything that I’ve lost.
“Then I have to re-edit it in Word to make sure that all my
formatting copied over, then I convert that into Braille and go
through it line by line and make sure that all the characters
are right, then I print it. A typical script will take me 30 to 60
hours, and it takes about two to three hours to print.”
That’s the effort Katie puts in so that Holly can appear, for
example, in a short, one-act play. Holly who sleeps ten hours
nightly, does find time to enjoy her favorite things. “I like to
sing. I sing all day, every day. Like when I get up, I feel I could
sing 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I like to dance and
I like to act. I have a lot of friends I’ve met in school and in
musical theatre.
“I like Harry Potter and Marvel Cinematic Universe comic
characters. I like to play piano. I like Honeycrisp apples. And
I love the Braille Box program from Lighthouse for the Blind
in St. Louis.”
Holly also plays piano, ukulele and harmonica. Being a savant,
she plays them very well. Earlier this year Holly performed
weekly on piano at a restaurant in St. Charles, Missouri, until
her musical theatre obligations took precedence. In July, she
submitted her personal wish to the national Make-A-Wish
Foundation. What is Holly’s personal wish? “I wish to be
in a full-length Disney or DreamWorks movie as a cartoon
character who sings!”
For now, Holly, Katie and Titus are keeping up with her ever
growing list of auditions, performances and appearances.
On June 30 Holly played an assassin named Leon
Czolgosz speaking and singing in a Polish accent
for a musical production at Stages Performing Arts
Academy. On July 10 she sang the national anthem
for the Ol Reign soccer team in Seattle. Holly will
attend Webster University for a Bachelor of Music in
Performance with an Emphasis in Voice. With such a
busy schedule, Holly often uses Zoom calls for out-oftown
auditions and interviews, and the Source Connect
online service for long-distance recording sessions.
As she enters the New Year, how does Holly look at her
life? “A lot of people know me now,” she says. “And I
have a lot of friends. More people are knowing me and
more awareness is being spread for people with all
types of disabilities.”
“And we are getting a lot more options for theatrical and
other performances,” says Katie with a smile.