After 46 Years...a Trip Back in Time, Part 1

AFTER 46 YEARS….a Memoir of Youth and a War

by Glenn N. Holliman

August 1968, I was drafted into the U.S. Army at the reception station in Montgomery, Alabama.  Basic training was in Ft. Benning, Georgia, and later advanced training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey and Ft. Hamilton, New York.  The USA was in an uproar that year, two assassinations, a police riot at the Democratic Convention in Chicago and disturbances in most of American's central cities.

Reaction to the civil rights movement and increasing militant opposition to the Viet Nam War ate away at the social and legal fabric of the county.  Upon graduation from college, that spring, my draft board in Gadsden, Alabama called my number, and I was on my way to a war of which I did not approve...but I went. 

March 2015, 46 years later I went back to Viet Nam...here is the memoir, day by day of that trip. 

Day 1, March 5, 2015 

I am on board an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Tokyo.  Grace, my daughter and mother of two of my grandchildren, is with me.  We are en route to Hanoi, Viet Nam, traveling with my cousins, Karen and Jim Holliman.  Jim is a physician, going to speak to a medical conference in Ha Long. Karen and Jim reside in Pennsylvania as do I. Grace is from  Virginia.

 Grace with her daughters' traveling stuffed chicken en route over the Pacific.  The chicken proved to be a light hearted companion who added some whimsy to the trip of almost two weeks.

For me this is a return to my youth, a visit to a country where I served with the 1^st Infantry, 3^rd Brigade, in Lai Khe, 40 miles northwest of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.  From January 31, 1969 to January 30, 1970, as a 22 year old, I spent a year in an ill-gotten, tragic war.

 Now I am 68 years of age, heavy from a life time of good food, and listening carefully to Father Time number off my days.  Once I was a skinny fellow who left his young wife named Lynn and graduate school, drafted in August 1968, and a few months later joining another 548,000 American in a fruitless, unnecessary war. Now my career is over, my children have given me grandchildren; this is a trip of remembrance of recalling a stressful period of my life.   

Right, the barracks and drill sergeant and yours truly, the young private E-2 at Ft. Benning, Georgia, October 1968.  The barracks were World War II vintage at Sand Hill.  When I went back with my two children almost twenty years later, they were gone, replaced by red brick barracks.

I have not been back to Viet Nam and now it is time.   How will I feel seeing the Vietnamese, visiting their war museums, seeing my old base camp?   

 Sometimes I get emotional thinking of that time in my life, almost every day of that year 1969 embedded in my brain. Sometimes when I talk about it, I feel tears welling up.  An old man should not feel so attached to only such a small part of one’s life.  But I do, and I suspect millions of veterans share my feelings.

 Home for Christmas 1968 at the Nashville, Tennessee airport, met by my family and mother, now the late Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  Mother was only 45 years of age; I thought at the time she was ancient!

 

 Want to know about the late turbulent 1960s in America?  Nixonland by Rick Perlstein is an excellent, comprehensive review of the chaos and conflicting feelings and views of the day.  A good read, it will make one think today is all wine and roses in the USA.  

Next posting, more the war of my generation and my 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!).

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.

From a Scrapbook of Hollimans

by Glenn N. Holliman

Last night my wife, Barb, and I celebrated the 4th of July with my second cousin, Dr. Jim Holliman and his wife, Karen, at their home here in Central Pennsylvania.  Last year, Jim's father, Dr. Rhodes Burns Holliman (1928-2014), the son of Cecil Rhodes Holliman (1901-1986) of Alabama, passed away and left numerous boxes of family memorabilia. Cecil was a son of James Monroe Holliman (1878-1938), a member of the Republican Party leadership in Alabama and an attorney.   Right, Jim Holliman, an Afghanistan War veteran.

Before sharing corn on the cob and steak, Karen opened a box and pulled out some of Cecil's scrapbooks.  One such book contained newspaper clippings  saved over the decades.  Cecil was the first cousin of my father, H. Bishop Holliman, who is still going strong at age 95.  Dad has always praised Rhodes as one who went far in life, becoming a lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama, who specialized in real estate.  Cecil also pursed genealogy, and it is to him that we are indebted for collecting so much information on the stories of Alabama Hollimans and associated families.

Left, Karen Holliman

A quick glance of one of the books produced by Karen revealed clippings of my father, an aunt, an uncle and another first cousin of my father's, all from the 1930s!  So with the magic of electronic scanning, let's go back to that time just before World War II in Alabama where my branch of the Hollimans lived.

Left, H. Bishop Holliman

Our first clipping is of my father, all of 18 years of age, a graduate of Shades Cahaba High School and a student at Birmingham Southern College.  He was the first child of the parents of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman to tackle higher education.  Other siblings were to follow.

Evidently due to the influence of disaffected Confederate veteran, John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), my great grandfather, our Hollimans in Fayette County, Alabama joined the Republican Party.  Fayette County adjoins Winston County, Alabama, a region of the state where the majority of voters did not wish to secede in 1861 from the Federal Union, and later produced recruits for the Federal armies.  During Reconstruction and into later decades this part of North Alabama and my branch of the Hollimans cast their votes Republican, and not Democratic as did most other voters in the south during that era.

Like his father, Cecil Holliman was very active in the Alabama Republican Party as was his brother, Charles Holliman, and their uncle, Ulyss Holliman (my grandfather, who in 1938 was a candidate for the Alabama State Legislature).  Ulyss's son Bishop helped the cause and himself by a public speaking contest touting the virtues of a smaller Federal government.  The above clipping from the Birmingham News announces that young Holliman came in second at a Republican speaking contest in Knoxville, Tennessee, then and now a bastion of the Republican Party.  Dad said that $100 in prize money enabled him to afford a year of college!

Below, one will find another clipping from the Birmingham paper in 1938.  Read closely and you will read the names both Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011) and her younger brother, Ralph Holliman (who celebrated his 91st birthday this past week!), both did well in a city wide oratory contest.  Virginia's picture is even included in the article.  Both Virginia and Ralph would use their communication skills in their later respective careers of banking and business.

                

There was one other clipping on the same page in Cecil's scrapbook, an article on Marguerite Holliman, elected Miss Athens College (Alabama) and president of the student body, evidently around 1941.

She was the daughter of Thomas Leland Holliman, one of the six brothers of John and Martha Walker Holliman (1845-1931) of Fayette County, Alabama.  Known as Leland, he was born in 1880 and died in 1970.  Marguerite exchanged letters with her other first cousin, my father, Bishop, during and after World War II.  She was born in 1919 and died in 2000 in Georgia.

So Karen and Jim, thanks for opening a scrapbook to the past and sharing memories of family on a 4th of July, 2015.

Next Posting, more of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Family during World War II....
 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.