Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

The Seventh Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman

William Ralph Holliman, 1924, Part VI
by Glenn N. Holliman


Success in Corporate America


There were three war time marriages in the Ulyss and Pearl Holliman family – Virginia and Walter Cornelius in January 1942, Ralph and Motie Chism in February 1943 and Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery in June 1945. 

Below, two new sister-in-laws, Motie and Gerry Holliman, Bishop’s wife, in Irondale, Alabama in front of the Holliman home at 2300 3^rd Avenue,  February 1945.

With the war over, Ralph took the G.I. Bill and returned to Birmingham-Southern College.  Motie and Ralph joined in the production of Baby Boomers when in 1947, their first child, Pamela Holliman was born. Katherine, a second daughter, entered the world in 1951.  With his family growing, Ralph took a job as a clerk with the local branch of the American Bakery Company in Birmingham.  It was a fateful choice as Ralph’s skills were appreciated, and he began a career of 37 years with the same company.

It is tempting to see something of Ralph’s career in William H. Whyte’s best selling book The Organizational Man, a 1950s treatise on corporate America and the men (yes, mainly men at that time although his sister, Virginia Holliman Cornelius, was a pioneering exception) who ran America’s businesses.  With each promotion and increase in responsibilities, heads of households had to move their families from branch office to branch plant and so forth. 

During their marriage Motie and Ralph moved 17 times, and Pam attended seven schools by the 7^th grade!  The cities tumbled by: New Orleans, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Atlanta, Dallas and finally Chicago which became their home for 22 years. In 1993, Motie and Ralph moved to their retirement home in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where Ralph lives to this day.

The U.S. economy was rapidly expanding, along with a population demanding televisions, appliances, air conditioning, bigger and newer automobiles and houses.  The consumer age was born, and the GDP of America kept going up, up and up.

Ralph Holliman in the company attire of his generation – white shirt and tie.  No computer on his desk in this early 1950s photograph.  Letters were done by dictation, generally to the female secretary. Direct dial telephones spread rapidly in the 1950s, and one no longer had to wait for an operator.  Hard to believe in the 21^st Century, but families and businesses often had to share a party-line, that is one could pick up the telephone and hear a conversation of others on the ‘line’.  And the phone would not be available until that person had finished their call!

Next - the 1950s....

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

The War Ends and a Career Begins....Ralph 
Holliman, Part V 
by his nephew, Glenn N. Holliman


We continue our story of William Ralph Holliman, b. 1924, the seventh child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman.


By September 1944, Ralph Holliman, an enlisted man in the U.S. Army Air Corp, was stationed in Creil, thirty miles north of Paris and headquarters of the 9th Air Force.  He made sergeant, a rank which allowed him to miss the draft for infantry during the Battle of Bulge in January 1945.  On V-E Day he joined thousands in Paris to celebrate the conclusion of the conflict in Europe.


Ralph mailed this Mother's Day message to his mother, Pearl Caine Holliman, who saw three of her four sons serve in Europe.

In August 1945, Ralph was about to leave on a troop ship in Marsaille, France for Asia via the Suez Canal, when the Atomic Bomb was dropped.  The ship never left for the Phillippines, but instead turned to the USA.  As with millions, the Holliman brothers  came home, along a new brother-in-law, Walter Cornelius, Virginia’s husband.


Ralph survived the war, fortunately missing combat and Nazi bombs at his air bases.  His administrative talents were honed in the Army as the letter below suggests.  These abilities would serve him well in his civilian career.  

Now home to resume education, career and family....

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

Ralph Holliman at War....Part IV
by Glenn N. Holliman
Below, Ralph Holliman right with an Army buddy, unidentified, at the Bournemouth, England air base.

The Army instructed Ralph in the Army Functional File System (his nephew, Glenn, learned the same system 25 years later) in Sacramento, California. By October 1943, he has in a wretchedly crowded troop ship, the Dorthea Dix,  sailing from Newark, New Jersey to the Firth of Clyde, Scotland.

Below, Christmas 1943 Ralph sent a V-Mail Christmas card to the his parents in Irondale, Alabama.  V Mail was a micro-photographed single sheet of paper that allowed a soldier to send home a note.  Vital shipping space was saved with the reduced paper size.  Ralph was not allowed to tell his family where he was stationed in the United Kingdom.  All mail was censored by the military.

For 11 months, he lived in England at Bournemouth and Oxford.  As a clerk for the 326 Ferry Squadron, 9^th Air Force, he filed flight plans.  On June 6, 1944, he noticed a sudden increase in air traffic; three months later he was in France, following his brother, Melton, an Army medic who had arrived at a French-based hospital receiving station in July 1944. On his destroyer, his other brother, Bishop had been passing through the Straits of Gibraltar on D-Day.  

Right, Melton Holliman, arrived in England in May of 1944, and by July was in France where he served until disabled in November of that year.  


One can only imagine the thoughts and prayers of their mother, Pearl Holliman, that year 1944. Except for son Euhal, who was excused from the draft due to age and being the father of four children, her sons were in the European Theater and she knew not where.

Next, the War ends and a career begins....