My Grandmother's Wall Photographs, Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

We have been examining the pictures that hung in the living room corner of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman in Irondale, Alabama.  Below is another view of the wall at Christmas time 1945.

The picture is mislabeled 1944, but it is Christmas 1945.  The picture of Virginia Holliman Cornelius is in the left corner, and Ralph Holliman next in line to the right of the tree.  Blurred out by the flash bulb are Melton Holliman and Bishop Holliman.  The picture displayed of Melton (1908-1958) is probably the one below.  Melton's daughter, Pati Holliman Hairston, has kindly shared numerous pictures of her father with me. 

Melton served in France as a medic from July 1944 until high blood pressure sent him to the hospital and eventually home in December 1944.  He was discharged in the summer of 1945 after final service at an Army hospital in Jackson, Mississippi.  Unfortunately his health remained precarious with a first heart attack in 1955 and a fatal one in 1958 in Mobile, Alabama, much, much too young.  He had learned pharmacy from his Uncle Floyd Caine, and became a leading and admired pharmaceutical salesman and Baptist lay leader.

Christmas 1945 would have been special for the three cousins below.  Pati, Melton's daughter, is far left.  Mary Daly Herrin holds on to her new brother, Robert W. Daly, Jr.
One suspects most of those presents around their grandparents' Christmas Tree were for the grandchildren of which there were 11 by that winter.

Next the Sailor on the Wall...

My Grandmother's Wall of Photographs, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

The year was 1945, and here is another view of my grandmother's Christmas tree that first holiday after the end of World War II.  The three sons who went to war of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman of Irondale, Alabama  - Melton, Bishop and Ralph - were finally home. A son-in-law, Walter Cornelius, husband of daughter Virginia, still remained in Saipan, a B-29 base in the Pacific.  In the corner wall, several difficult-to-discern photographs are hanging.  In the last post, we examined the one in the upper left, Virginia Holliman Cornelius. 

Now let's look at the one in the upper center, an Army soldier, the youngest son, William Ralph Holliman, born 1924.

A blurred enlargement.  The original was lost in a basement flood years ago.
Ralph went off to the Army in March 1943 and would not return to see his family and new bride, Motie Chisom, for two long years. Ralph would be stationed in England and France with the Army Air Force from late 1943 until the summer of 1945.



 Below is a picture taken February 1942, when Ralph, age 18, visited his older brother, Bishop Holliman, age 22, already in the Navy at sonar sound school in Key West, Florida. The war was at its worst for the United States.  German U-Boats prowled the East Coast sinking freighters.  After the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines, an American colony at that time.  A U.S. and Philippine army was trapped and would be forced to surrender.  The days were dark for the American war effort that first winter of the USA involvement in World War II.

 

Next, the Photograph of Melton Holliman....

My Grandmother's Wall of Photographs, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Is there a grandchild among us who has not stood and stared at family pictures in a grandparent's home?  For a nine year old, the question must be always "Who are those old people?  Did my aunts and uncles really look like that when they were young?" 

Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955) had such a wall in her home at 2300 Third Avenue North in Irondale, Alabama.  As a youngster, I marveled at the pictures and wondered who were all those people, those relatives of mine?  Below are a few pictures and memories of my grandmother's wall of photographs.

 

Let me start with an indoor picture, rare for the time, taken of Grandmother Holliman's Christmas tree. It stood in a corner of the living room, a massive tree to my childish eyes. This picture was taken in 1945, the year before I was born but she seemed aways to have a tall tree with electric lights that 'bubbled'. Yes, it is blurry and not the sharpest picture, but let's study it closely.

On the far upper left corner, one sees a photograph of my Aunt Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011). This may have been her senior picture from Shades Cahaba High School. Today, one of her daughters, Susan Cornelius Wilson of Texas, has possession of it.  

Below, embedded in the lower left corner of Virginia's photograph, notice the World War II photograph of Virginia's husband, Walter Cornelius (1922-2006).  They married in February 1942, one of the three war time marriages in the Ulyss and Pearl Holliman family.  This copy of Virginia and Walter was taken in February 2012 in Trophy Club, Texas.

 

Below Susan Cornelius Williams, one of Walter and Virginia's two daughters, displays this picture seventy years after it first hung in her grandparent's home in Alabama.  These pictures were taken at Alice Holliman Murphy's home in Texas.  Alice is the daughter of Bishop Holliman (b 1919)  and Susan's first cousin.

Next posting, more pictures from Grandmother's wall....