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SALT LAKE CITY — A clock tower, flaming tire tracks and the power to change your own fate are all parts of the movie “Back to the Future.”
For Oliver and Terry Holler, that film means everything. They converted an old DeLorean car into the time machine from the movie and brought it to the Salt Lake Comic Con. Their plan is to raise money to fight Parkinson’s disease, but they also came with a message.
“We’ve had people say, 'You’ve made our dreams come true!' And that’s an awfully special feeling,” Terry Holler said.
As the song by Huey Lewis and the News goes, "the power of love is a curious thing." This husband and wife duo is on a journey through time. From their first date, they accelerated to 88 miles per hour. Some might call it destiny.
“The answer to what my favorite movie was was ‘Back to the Future,’ along with his, and we almost said it in stereo,” Terry Holler recalled.
Inspiration hit like a bolt of lightning.
“A lot of people have thought to themselves, if I won the lottery, or if I had a million dollars, I’d buy a DeLorean,” Oliver Holler said.
Instead of money, this couple's currency was time.
“I worked on it night and day,” Oliver said. “I drew and sketched what I saw on the television.”
They built their future almost entirely by hand.
“You can’t get a flux capacitor at Wal-Mart," Oliver joked.
Slowly but surely, the focal point of the movie came to life. But as with any movie, the "how" isn’t as important as the "why."
The Hollers' future became the present when Oliver received a heavy prediction: cancer.
“A doctor sat me down and said I had six months to live,” Oliver recalled.
The clock was ticking, and Oliver’s time was running out.
“You start making things move faster, and you make things work out,” Terry said.
A character from the movies he cherished is what fueled Oliver’s drive.
“Doc Brown had so many failures, until finally he creates time travel," Oliver said. "So maybe there’s a message there: to never give up.”
But that diagnosis is in the past; the distant past. It came nearly 15 years ago.
“I think building the car, having a focus, finding fulfillment in your life and doing something good, I think that did save his life,” Terry said.
The DeLorean: part time machine, part life preserver. The words of the doctors were wrong, and Oliver said the words of a different doctor — Doc Brown — couldn’t be more right.
“ 'The future isn’t written yet. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one,' ” he quoted.
Oliver is now completely cancer free. And where he and Terry are going, they won’t need roads. In a few weeks, they'll load the DeLorean on a boat and head west to Hawaii, which will be the 50th state they’ve visited.
So far, they’ve raised over $200,000 to help fight Parkinson’s disease, which affects Michael J. Fox, the star of the "Back to the Future" trilogy. You can learn more about their journey on their website, ToTheFuture.org.
Email: rboone@ksl.com
Contributing: Ashley Kewish
