Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Euhal Arlington Holliman (1912 - 1989),
the Third Child of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman

The Ulyss and Pearl Holliman family moved to Irondale from Fayette, Alabama in 1917, and Ulyss settled in to his new job at the Birmingham Electric Company.  The above photograph is from 1924.  Left to right: Vena, Euhal holding Virginia, Bishop in front with the stick, and Melton holding the youngest, his brother Ralph Holliman. Vena is dressed formally (age 15) and both Euhal (age 10) and Melton (age 16) are wearing the style of the time, knickers.  (This style of boy's pants is frozen in time today as the uniform of baseball players.)  Note Euhal, Melton and Bishop (only 4) are all wearing caps or hats.

Melton was born in 1908, and before the Great Depression in 1927, he obtained a position in his Uncle Floyd Caine's drug store.  Euhal came of age right in the middle of the Depression, and jobs were scarce.  He went to work for a local grocery store, and spent his career in the food business.

He met a pretty young lady named Edna Westbrook (below) and in 1936 they married.  Six children were eventually born of this union which lasted 54 years!

Edna Westbrook Holliman (1916 - 1992),  a native of Cherokee County, Alabama, married Euhal July 9, 1936.  Edna is the daughter of Annie Josie Naugher Westbrook and Thomas Edward Westbrook.  Daughter Tommie Holliman Allen believes they met in East Lake, Alabama, when Edna's sister's boyfriend, later Tommie's uncle, introduced them. Edna was 18 when this picture was taken.

                                             This is young handsome Euhal, probably about 1935.

 A hard worker all his life, he was a leader in the Irondale Lion's Club,  his labor union and in retirement, the Irondale Auxiliary Police. Super market chains appeared in America after World War II, and wages were low and benefits few.  A leader in the labor union movement, Euhal helped organize and lead grocery workers to better compensation and working conditions during his career at chains Jitney Jungle, Piggly Wiggly, Kroger and Brunos as produce manager, before retiring in 1972.

     Euhal, center right, in the white coat  at a national union convention in California in 1956.

Like his three  brothers, he took his physical for the Army in World War II, but due to age and having four children to support, he was not called up.  The family lived in Gadsden, Alabama in the 1940s until the middle 1950s.  In 1956, they  moved to the Ulyss and Pearl Holliman home in Irondale, living there for the rest of Euhal and Edna's lives.


Next Posting, the Children of Euhal and Edna....


Note: The information and opinions expressed in these family biographies are those of the writer alone. Comments, corrections and additions are most welcome. The purpose of these articles is to capture a period and family in American history and to pass this legacy along to future generations who share the common bond of family .My thanks to Tommie Holliman Allen and Bishop Holliman for the pictures.

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Vena and Robert Daly, Sr. and their Influence on the Holliman Family

In the mid 1920s, Robert Daly, Sr. began working for American Traders Bank in Woodlawn, Alabama.  Later it became the American National Bank of Birmingham.  In addition to being manager of the Woodlawn branch, he would become as a vice president of the larger corporation.

Robert loved to travel and vacation in Florida.  Above are Vena and Robert in 1935.  Robert was incredibly generous with his time and company to the siblings of Vena.  He made himself a beloved figure to the three youngest Holliman children - Bishop, Virginia and Ralph - who often went with the Dalys to Panama City and Daytona Beach, Florida.  Both Vena and Robert were tremendous role models for their generation, and later for their many nieces, nephews and grandchildren.  After the death of Pearl Caine Holliman in 1955, the center of Holliman gatherings moved to Vena and Robert's 'white house' on the east side of Irondale.

Vena and Robert would have two children, Mary Daly Herrin, born 1932 and Robert Daly, Jr., born 1943. Above is Mary in 1936, age 4 with her father at a Florida beach.  They both seem formally dressed for a stroll in the sand!  Below in winter 1944, Mary and her young brother, Bob, attempt to enjoy a light snow.  In the background is the Daly house built in the early 1930s, adjacent to the Ulyss and Pearl family home at 2300 3rd Avenue, Irondale, Alabama.  

Sadly, Robert, Sr. suffered for years from congestive heart failure and died suddenly at his home in 1959.  In the 1960s, Vena served as a sorority house mother at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi.  In 1971, she remarried Phil Buckheit, a successful newspaper publisher from Spartanburg, South Carolina.  After he died in 1977, she returned to Birmingham, and lived in a condo on Red Mountain next to her sister, Virginia Holliman Cornelius. Vena died 1990.  One of her grand daughters, Iris Daly Williams, recently reminisced that visiting her grandmother in the 1980s was like visiting a queen.  Vena had a presence and gracefulness that her family admired and loved, as this nephew can attest.

Next the third child of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman....


Note: The information and opinions expressed in these family biographies are those of the writer alone. Comments, corrections and additions are most welcome. The purpose of these articles is to capture a period and family in American history and to pass this legacy along to future generations who share the common bond of family.  My thanks to Mary Daly Herrin for allowing the use of these materials.

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman


Vena Vivian Hollman Daly Buckheit (1909 - 1990),
the Second Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman

Above left to right are Vena, Loudelle, Euhal, Bishop and Melton Holliman in 1920.  The pony may have belonged to Mrs. T.C. Burgess who lived at the bottom of the hill below the Irondale, Alabama house.  She had two children, John Hugh and Sadie Mae.  Mr. Burgess owned the hardware store that Robert and George Daly purchased in 1944.

Vena was 8 in 1917, when Ulyss and Pearl Holliman moved their four children and themselves to the growing suburb of Irondale, Alabama.  The population of Birmingham and its environs were exploding.  Founded in the 1870s, Birmingham grew in forty years from 3,086 to 178,816!  Jobs were plentiful as the infrastructure of the steel industry and the city grew.  Ulyss Holliman, now age 32, with many mouths to feed, left Fayette County and work in the lumber yard, to become a carpenter with the Birmingham Electric Company.

As Birmingham grew horizontally, street car lines pushed to all corners and into the suburbs.  Ulyss helped keep the wooden carriages and benches in good repair.  Ironically, when Ulyss was born there were no street cars in Birmingham, and when he died in 1965, there were not street cars in Birmingham.

Vena, the oldest daughter helped her mother, Pearl, care for the growing brood, which expanded by three more children after Ulyss found secure employment, and the family settled into new housing in Irondale.

In December 1924, twenty-one year old Robert Daly, grandson of an Irish immigrant who came to Alabama to build railroads, watched Vena in a Christmas pageant in the Irondale Methodist Church.  Robert, smitten over the cute 15 year old, sent her the above note and by her 19th birthday in 1928, she became his bride!  Below is the newspaper clipping of the happy occasion.  Click on the pictures to make them larger.



More soon on the Daly family and how they impacted on the life of the three youngest children....


Note: The information and opinions expressed in these family biographies are those of the writer alone. Comments, corrections and additions are most welcome. The purpose of these articles is to capture a period and family in American history and to pass this legacy along to future generations who share the common bond of family.  My thanks to Mary Daly Herrin for making these materials available..

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Melton Pierson Holliman (1908 - 1958),
the First Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman


Below is pictured Melton in 1938, probably on the front steps of the home he and Ida Hughes Holliman, shared in Irondale, Alabama.  Melton in his teens began working in Uncle Floyd Caine's drug store and learned how to prepare medicines. He was the first child out of the nest so to speak, being born in Fayette, Alabama, and moving to Irondale when he was nine years of age.  In the 1920s, the requirements to be a pharmacist were more relaxed than in the 21st Century, and by 1940, Melton became a pharmaceutical salesman for Wyeth, eventually moving to Mobile, Alabama.

In 1932, he and Ida (1905 - 1995) were married, and in 1943 adopted a beautiful red headed daughter, Pati (Patsy to her father), who grew up with a vivacious personality.  Scarcely had they become a family of three before Melton was drafted into the U.S. in August 1943 at the height of World War II.  He trained in camps in Georgia and Texas, and for months moved from replacement station to replacement station (Pennsylvania, New York and England) before arriving in France in late July 1944.  There he served as a medic in a battalion that was trained to treat chemical warfare casualties.

Thankfully, there was no chemical warfare in Europe during this war, and so he served a medic in a medical receiving station in France.  In November 1944, age 36, he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and evacuated first to England, then back to the States, stopping at a hospital in Long Island, and finally at a facility in Jackson, Mississippi.  In March 1945, he was discharged, and returned to work as a pharmaceutical salesman.

                                                          Melton and Ida Holliman, 1935

His genial, kindly manner, honesty and knowledge of the trade made him immensely successful.  The family built a modern home in Mobile, and were active in the Baptist Church.  He served on the Mayor's Advisory Council for the local hospital and was a frequent lecturer to the medical community.  However, there were shadows over this happiness.  Ida suffered from ill health time to time, and in 1955 Melton, a sometime smoker, experienced a heart attack.  Treatment in that decade was complete rest.  After several months, Melton went back to work, but after a game of golf in 1958, he died suddenly of a massive heart attack.  Ida passed away in 1995, the rest of her long life a widow.

Their legacy lives on through the life of Pati, her three daughters and now grandchildren, whom she shares with her husband of decades, George Hairston. Pictured above in late November 2010, are left to right Holly Hairston, Pati's oldest daughter, Pati Holliman Hairston and Melton's brother, Bishop Holliman.  Holly owns a lovely cafe near Trussville, Alabama.

Note: The information and opinions expressed in these family biographies are those of the writer alone. Comments, corrections and additions are most welcome. The purpose of these articles is to capture a period and family in American history and to pass this legacy along to future generations who share the common bond of family.