How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 13

by Glenn N. Holliman

A Marriage Launched, Two Brothers meet, Letters and a New Assignment....

Immediately after the wedding of Virginia Holliman and Walter Cornelius, January 30, 1942, Virginia went to work at the Woodlawn, Alabama National Bank, managed by her brother-in-law, Robert W. Daly, Sr.  No longer a student at the East Lake campus of Howard College, she was now a married business woman.  Starting as a teller, no one then could know she would climb the corporate ladder to become in the 1980s the first female vice president of the 1st Alabama National Bank!  Below, right, Virginia and Walter in late 1943 after he joined the Army.


During the winter of 1942, Walter worked as a civilian for the War Department in Childersburg, Alabama.  That required a long commute from their tiny apartment on N. 21st Street to the boom town where DuPont was building a chemical plant.  A hamlet of 500 in 1940, Childersburg swelled as 14,000 construction workers descended on the village and constructed the largest explosives plant in the South.  By the end of the war, 9,000 persons made the 'burg' their home.  During the early 1940s so many workers drove from Birmingham to Childersburg over a narrow, dirt road that a special commuter train had to be established. Forth to the Mighty Conflict, Alabama and World War II by Allen Cronenberg, University of Alabama Press, 1995 and a letter by Virginia Holliman Cornelius 1942.

In late 1943, Walter would be in the U.S. Army and eventually would serve in Saipan in 1945/46.  For several years Virginia would follow him to training bases in the U.S., gaining more career experience and, as with hundreds of thousands of other G.I. wives, acquired a broader perspective of the world.

By early March, 1942 Virginia's brother, Bishop Holliman, was on the move from his sonar training base in Key West, Florida to the Navy base in New Orleans.  He traveled by train from Miami to Jacksonville, changed to a Pullman and alighted at Pensacola, Florida the next morning for a quick visit with his brother, Melton, and sister-in-law, Ida Hughes Holliman who lived in Mobile, Alabama.  Ida is wearing his sailor cap. - Diary of Bishop Holliman 1942

Melton noted in a letter to Bishop that the government was now taking older men with dependents and "That means me and I am ready to go.  Guess that means the Army, and I will be a buck private." - Letter by Melton P. Holliman, 1942

Melton (1908-1958) would enter the U.S. Army a year later as a private and, due to frequent transfers and health problems, barely advanced in rank.  Melton was 35 years old when he was drafted, only a few months after adopting a long-sought child, Patti Holliman (Hairston), in the late spring of 1943.  Ida and Melton had married in 1932, and remained childless until Patti joyfully entered their lives and the lives of the larger Holliman family. 

It was wrenching sacrifice for Melton to leave his young 9 month old new baby behind to enter the Armed Forces.  Befitting his civilian profession as a pharmaceutical salesman, he served as a medic in England and France, arriving in France six weeks after D-Day.

Bishop wrote home to Irondale, Alabama that he had been assigned to a subchaser, the PC (later SC) 531, a vessel that would later see service in the Pacific.  Subchasers were built of wood fairly quickly in small boatyards on both coasts and the Great Lakes and Gulf regions. Many of the boatyards were small, family-owned businesses, only a few of which exist today. The navy wasted no time letting out contracts to fifty such boat yards. By the time the war ended 438 wooden  subchasers had been launched and commissioned, and the PC 531 was one of these fragile, underpowered ships.  A diagram of one is below is taken from the Internet as is the SC 531 history. Note the sonar cabin amidships.

He would never serve on the ship.  The patrol craft was not ready for sea, and Bishop had acquired the idea of joining the Navy Air Corps. After arriving in New Orleans, he proceeded to put in for a transfer to that elite body of fliers.  He was told to go home, get a birth certificate, some recommendations and report back.  He was on his way shortly for his first leave home, leaving a Navy career in submarine patrol craft behind him. 

Back in Irondale, Alabama, Bishop's mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955), had written often with news about the weather, family, friends and always with advice and a 'benediction' as she was a saintly, terribly worried mother.

"I think you can almost hear the typewriter. Ralph (the youngest son, b. 1924, a champion debater at Shades Cahaba High School in Homewood) is typing the debate (on which) he sure is working hard day and nite.  I think they go to Tuscaloosa one week from tomorrow (a University of Alabama debate tournament).  Oh, yes the Dalys (Robert and Vena Holliman Daly who lived next door) got them selves a new stove today.  It sure is nice, cost about $160.00 - some stove! (There is a bit of envy here in Pearl's letter.  According to the 1940 Federal Census, her husband's (Ulyss Holliman) income as a mechanic for the Birmingham Electric Company was $1,600. Robert Daly made considerably more as a bank manager.)

I do hope you get transferred in some other work that you will be satisfied in, and I would keep trying, if I were you.  If you don't look out for yourself, no one will do it for you.  (Bishop took the advice, and applied for the Naval Air Corps.)

We are thanking (sic) of you and our prayers are for you.  Wherever you go the Lord goes with you, and will take care of you.  When our country gets back to God, we will win this war.  So do all you can for the Lord as that is all that counts.  With much love, and God bless and keep you.  Mother H."  Letter February 1942 by Pearl C. Holliman, Irondale, Alabama
 

Next posting, a first leave home to Irondale, Alabama to see family and friends....

Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

 

Or join your many cousins at MyFamily.com and view an expanded Holliman family tree and many files on the history of the family.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation.

 

 

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 12

by Glenn N. Holliman

A War Time Visit and a Wedding!

In the first winter of World War Two for the United States, the conflict went very badly for the U.S. and Allies.  In January 1942, the Japanese Navy rampaged in Southeast Asia with European colonies, one after another, falling before the onslaught of ships and soldiers.  The U.S. colony of the Philippines remained under siege, MacArthur and his troops being pushed into a corner of Bataan.  The Germans remained deep in Soviet territory, and the Nazi general, Rommel, continued to occupy a huge portion of North Africa thereby threatening British forces in Egypt and the all important Suez Canal. 

With German U-boats devastating the merchant tanker fleet off the U.S. East and Gulf coasts, it was critical for the U.S. Navy to build ships, man them and send them into battle against this menace.  One of the hundreds of thousands of young Americans being trained that dreary winter was Bishop Holliman of Irondale, Alabama.  By mid-January, he was learning the hows and wherefores of sonar operations, those sound waves emanating from surface ships that bounced off submarines and revealed their presence, allowing for the dropping of boat killing depth charges.  His duty station was Key West, Florida. 

In those anxious days, not knowing when they would see Bishop again, members of his family drove the hundreds of miles from Alabama to the tip of Florida to visit for a long weekend of January 30 - February 1, 1942.

Below, The Rev. Charles T. Ferrell, his mother-in-law Pearl Caine Holliman, Ralph Holliman, his sister Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, and Ulyss S. Holliman in an unusual pose.  Bishop Holliman must have taken this photograph along a beach at Key West, on an unusual blustery, chilly day in the sub-tropics.

In order to visit Bishop, his mother, father, one sister, a brother-in-law and a brother, missed the wedding of another family member, Virginia Holliman who on Janaury 30, 1942 married her high school boy friend, Walter Cornelius of Birmingham, Alabama. The wedding took place in the Irondale home of her sister, Vena Holliman Daly and brother-in-law, Robert W. Daly, Sr. 

The young couple below....Pearl Caine Holliman, Virginia's mother, had objections to the marriage, generally based on cultural differences between the two families.  Pearl and Ulyss had become conservative evangelical Christians in the 1930s, leaving the Irondale Methodist Church, which they believed to be too liberal. 

They joined the Gospel Tabernacle in Birmingham, a Christian and Missionary Alliance church pastored by a flamboyant radio evangelist, Glenn Tingley, who in 1934 pioneered in the deep South the proclamation of a fundamentalist gospel over the air waves.  Biblical literalists, Pearl and Ulyss did not believe in intoxicating beverages, card playing, movies on Sunday or dancing.  Walter's father ran a cross roads store in Shelby County, Alabama and his family was much more tolerant of such activities.

Born 1922 in Irondale, a working class suburb of Birmingham, Virginia had a successful high school experience at Shades Cahaba in Homewood, Alabama, probably one of the best secondary schools available in the state at the time.  She excelled in scholarship, led the debate team, was president of several clubs and editor of the yearbook.  After graduation in 1940, she started Howard College. 

Virginia caught a gleam of what a woman could achieve in a new age, and Walter, ambitious himself, represented a route to a larger life.

Her parents had been born in the 1880s, and poorly educated in rural schools in Fayette County, Alabama.  There was a generation and education gap between parents and child, and further gap growing between urban and rural cultures and religion.  And there was a war on, and young people married quickly before the Armed Forces separated them.

Below, Pearl Caine and Ulyss Holliman with their son, Bishop Holliman, in his U.S. Navy uniform at Key West.  Photographs indicate Pearl, b 1887, 55 years old when this picture was made, aged rapidly during the war.  Three of their sons and Walter Cornelius would be posted overseas. Ulyss was 58 when this picture was taken. In addition to her handbag, Pearl is holding coconuts.

 

 

From the 1942 Diary of Bishop Holliman, Sunday, February 1 - "Met the folks at 9 a.m. Went to church and ate dinner with the Reviers (a church family). Rode around in the afternoon.  I drove for the first time since I left home. Made pictures (see below).Went to church that night.  Charles preached good sermon.  (Charles Ferrell, a Methodist minister, must have been invited into the pulpit that evening.) I left the folks about 11 p.m.  Bid them good bye - sad parting."

 

Above, on the beach in their Sunday best, Ralph Holliman, b 1924, who was in his senior year of high school at Shades Cahaba.  A year later his Army draft number would come up, and he would marry his high school sweet heart, the second member of the family, but not the last, to marry during the war.  Left to right - Ralph, Charles Ferrell, Bishop Holliman and his father, Ulyss S. Holliman.

 



From the Diary of Bishop Holliman, 23 February, 1942 - "Received orders to leave - me to New Orleans.  Assigned to P.C. (patrol craft) boats."

 

Next off to New Orleans and a change of plans....

 

Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

 

Or join your many cousins at MyFamily.com and view an expanded Holliman family tree and many files on the history of the family.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation.

 Since early 2010, I have been publishing research and stories on the broad spectrum of Holliman (Holyman) family history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ . For stories on my more immediate family since the early 20th Century, I have been posting articles since early 2011 at http://ulyssholliman.blogspot.com/ .  GNH