Day One, March 5, 2015 continued....
We have left Chicago....headed west on my emotional return to Asia. My mind drifts back to the summer of 1968....the summer I joined the U.S. Army, the summer the family gathered in Alabama....and Vietnam loomed darkly in my mind.
Below, at the home of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin in Irondale, Alabama, many of the siblings and my cousins gathered. Three years had passed since Ulyss Holliman had died; ten since Pearl Caine Holliman (Grandmother Holliman) had died of a heart attack at age 67.
Left, Robert and Vena Holliman Daly had built their 'white house' in 1946 and there Mary and Bob Daly, their children finished growing up. A few months after the group photograph (see below), the house was sold and demolished. A business park now occupies this space along Highway US 70.
The photograph to the left was made in 1946 of Vena and Robert in front of their new home. Robert was manager of a bank in Woodlawn. The home has three large bedrooms, a huge kitchen, two baths, a long combination living and dinning room and a screened in porch over an underground garage. The 'lot' must have been at least two acres or so.
In the 1950s, their daughter, Mary and her husband, E.C. Herrin would build a second house on the property and begin raising four children: Clayton, Linda, Suzanne and David Herrin. Robert died early of heart disease in 1959. In the 1960s, Vena became a sorority mother at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi, and the Herrins with their large family moved to the 'white house', a home my immediate family and cousins visited often through the years.
The photograph to the left was made in 1946 of Vena and Robert in front of their new home. Robert was manager of a bank in Woodlawn. The home has three large bedrooms, a huge kitchen, two baths, a long combination living and dinning room and a screened in porch over an underground garage. The 'lot' must have been at least two acres or so.
In the 1950s, their daughter, Mary and her husband, E.C. Herrin would build a second house on the property and begin raising four children: Clayton, Linda, Suzanne and David Herrin. Robert died early of heart disease in 1959. In the 1960s, Vena became a sorority mother at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi, and the Herrins with their large family moved to the 'white house', a home my immediate family and cousins visited often through the years.
Our thanks to Susan Cornelius Williams for the color photograph of this reunion in July 1968.
Back row: Holly, George and Patti Holliman Hairston
Next row, left to right: Glenn and the girl cousins: Jean, Tommie, Alice, Linda, Becky, Kathy Holliman and Susan Cornelius
Next row, left to right: Euhal Holliman, Lynn Draper Holliman, Ralph and Motie Holliman, Vena Daly, Clayton Herrin, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, Charles Ferrell and Bishop Holliman
Next row, left to right: Walter Cornelius, Virginia Cornelius, E.C. Herrin with David on his lap, Mary Daly Herrin, Suzanne Herrin on her Uncle Bob Daly's lap, his wife, Carol behind him, Carol Cornelius in front and her husband, Carl and behind her Gerry Holliman, Bishop's wife.
Our flight drones over Canada into a long day light....a day which began 4 am in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, travel with my second cousins, Dr. Jim and Karen Holliman and daughter
(we spent the night at their house) to the airport, several inches of
snow. Several hours to Chicago; a 3 ½
hour layover and now a long day and night to Japan.
A few days later my daughter, Grace and her Dad, all of 68 years, no longer 22 as in the photo above, in Hanoi, Vietnam.
On the plane, Grace, chats with her seatmate, a 40 year old Chinese lady, who looks 25, unhappily
married to a Chinese husband in Florida, heading home to take a ‘break’. The world has changed in half a century. China was the proxy enemy in 1968, the reason America feared, wrongly we now know, the spread of Chinese communism through Asia. Unfortunately our national
leaders in the 1960s were not historians; they did not recognize the ancient
enmity between the two nations of China and Vietnam.
A few months after the family reunion photograph in Irondale, it was graduation from Basic Training, an ordeal experienced by millions since World War II. Below, October 1968, I shake hands with a fellow platoon mate. The M-14 rifles, helmets and gear are stacked and soon I am off from Ft. Benning, Columbus, Georgia to Fort Dix, New Jersey by train for advanced training.
I am to be an Army clerk thanks to my ability to type 44 words a minute!
Below, another place and time, Jim and Karen Holliman who kindly arranged the trip to Vietnam where Jim was to speak at a medical conference. This photograph taken 2014 at my home in Pennsylvania.
Right, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young", published 1992 and later a major movie on Vietnam. Sad, tragic reading of an American regiment almost wiped out in one of the first battles in 1965. From the book this quotation '...the first major battle of a conflict that would drag on for ten long years and come as near to destroying America as it did to destroying Vietnam'.
Next posting, more the war of my generation and my emotional trip back to Asia.
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!).
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. Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .
