Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

The Seventh Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman:
 William Ralph Holliman, 1924, Part 1
by Glenn N. Holliman, his nephew

                                               Above, Ralph Holliman in 2011.


At the Ulyss and Pearl Caine home at 2300 3^rd Avenue in Irondale, Alabama on July 3, 1924, William Ralph Holliman was born.  He was the last of seven children of the couple who had moved in 1918 to the working class Birmingham suburb from the small town of Fayette in west Alabama.  His oldest brother, Melton, had been born in 1908, making a spread of 16 years between the first and last child.

In essence, the Holliman children could be divided into an older and younger generation.  Melton -1908, Vena -1909, Euhal -1912 and Loudelle -1914 were all born in Fayette.  Bishop, 1919, Virginia, 1922 and Ralph 1924 entered life in Irondale. Because Vena and Loudelle married exceptional men in 1928 and 1935, the last three children experienced mentoring and were offered many opportunities the first four children did not receive.

When four years old, Ralph and Virginia, age six, in the wheel barrel, had their picture taken with Vena and Loudelle Holliman, their older sisters dressed in bib overalls, probably for the only times in their lives.

One of these brothers-in-law was Vena's husband, Robert Daly, Sr., a banker and second generation Irishman with a wry sense of humor, a generous nature and desire to travel and take family members with him.  The second was The Rev. Charles Ferrell, a Birmingham-Southern College and Yale Divinity School graduate who became a Methodist minister and quietly encouraged his younger in-laws to pursue higher education.  He married Loudelle in 1935.

Because the Dalys built a home next to the Ulyss and Pearl house in Irondale, Robert Daly became a very strong influence on the family, all for the good.  Ulyss, by nature a taciturn and quiet man, worked long hours for the Birmingham Electric Company, up early to build a fire to warm the house in the winter and back after dark, tired from his long commute and a 10 hour day, 5 ½ days a week of repairing street cars.  He did this from 1918 until retirement in 1949, although thanks to the New Deal he began to experience the 40 hour work week and time off in the middle 1930s.

Into this semi-void stepped Robert Daly who took the children places, gave them odd jobs to earn spending money, gently teased them and challenged them to think.  As Ralph exclaimed  in 2011, “Robert Daly was my father!”

Above, sometime in the early 1940s are left to right, Melton Holliman (1908 - 1958), Robert W. Daly, Sr. (1901 - 1959) and Ulyss S. Holliman (1884 - 1965).                                    

Next Part 2 of the biography of W. Ralph Holliman