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....