How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 27

by Glenn N. Holliman

A World War II Train Ride and Another in 1989....

In January 1943, while waiting assignment to a radio school in Maine, my father, H. Bishop Holliman, was granted seven days leave from his destroyer, the USS Barker DD-213, then tied up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

 In his 1988 hand written memoirs, he wrote of rushing to his Irondale, Alabama home by train.  Recently he expanded his story of that twenty hour train ride in which he shared a coach seat with a little girl from Brooklyn. He entitled the article 'The Girl from Brooklyn' which he sold for $25 to the Good Old Days magazine.  After decades of writing, this is his first payment ever for a published article.   You can find the expanded story in thus month's publication, the cover of which is pictured below. Not bad for a 95 year old!

 In case you can't find a copy at your newstand or on line, from his memoirs, we have this:

"One experience I recall.  In New York, a young girl and her mother were in the coach I was in.  The girl sat by me and her mother in front of us.  All the time I thought the girl was 14 or 15 (I was 23 at the time).  Just before getting to Birmingham, the girl went back to the ladies room and soon reappeared and was an 18 year old beauty.  She had passed for a child to save on fare.  She and I laughed about 'lost opportunities' and I wanted to bang my head against the side of the train."

Alas, my father also failed to obtain her phone number!  But that is my Dad....

After his leave was up, he was off to the Navy Station at Cosco Bay, Maine for five months, but that is another story.

The 1989 Excursion

My father has had always a love of trains and with the collapse of the passenger train after World war II, he had precious few times to indulge his passion.  However, in 1989 the opportunity came to travel on an excusion from Birmingham to Chattanooga.  Several of the children of his niece, Mary Daly Herrin, traveled with him. Here he sits with his great-nephew David Herrin, forty-five years after the train ride with the pretty girl from Brooklyn.

 

Clayton Herrin, brother of David, and son of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin, took pictures from the train that day as did Mary from the ground when the train rolled through Irondale headed north.  Here are a few phtographs of that April day in 1989.

Mary Herrin took the first picture as the train roaring through Irondale.  The second picture, Clayton took from the train window looking toward the Irondale Cafe and the VFW Hall.  The store fronts of Irondale have changed a bit in the past quarter century.

Below, Bishop and his great niece and nephew, Phyllis and Clayton Herrin in April 1989.
 

 The train drives north in these two dramatic pictures.

Next posting, more of World War II and perhaps some more pictures of the Alabama family after the War.

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!).

There is also a massive Ancestry.com Holyman and Associated Families Tree available for review.  For an invitation to this collection of over 20,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .

I also have a collection of associated family manuscripts and research collected by the late Walt Holliman, Cecil Holliman and Rhodes Holliman.  Happy to send these materials by email and to insure their research is available.  The surnames: Alexander, Baldwin, Barham, Bass, Beall, Blakeney,  Baker, Bond, Bostick, Brewer, Bryan, Bryant, Bullock, Calvert, Carter, Champion, Chew,Cofer, Cole, Crafford, Crockett, Curtis, Dale, Daniel, Davidson, Davies, De Mallpas, Douglas, Duckett, Edwards, Edgerton, Emerson, Fitzhugh, Fowlehurst, Fox, Gains, Garrison, Gonson, Graves, Gray, Guyton, Guins, Hall, Hamby, Hawkins,Hendrix, Hill, Hogg, Holliman, Holt, Howard, Jackson, Jones, Judkins, Love, Lucas, Maget, Mansfield, Manwaring, McBee, McComas, McCurdy, McNewsome, Nicholson, Norsworthy, Noyall, O'dell, Oliver, Pearce, Peerce, Pettigrew, Petway, Pitman, Plow, Plyler, Porten, Prather, Petite, Ridgely, Riggan, Roberts, Smith, Spencer, Sprigg, Standley, Stanyard, Swan, Strother, Thompson, Thornton, Thrope, Trelawney, Turpin, Underhill, Underwood, Wallace, Walters, Weedon, Whitherspoon, Whitten,Williams,Wilmot,Wilson, Whitaker and Yerby.  These are mainly Alabama families and their ancestors from the Carolinas and Virginia. Materials vary from one page to 200. - GNH at glennhistory@gmail.com.