Birthday # 96!!

by Glenn N. Holliman

Homer Bishop Holliman has another birthday!

Below age 96, he takes his daily walk and enjoys a cup of cappuccino ever afternoon.
  He has lived as long as his maternal grandmother, Lula Hocutt Caine (1861-1957), a native of Fayette County, Alabama who moved to Irondale, Alabama during World War I.  Her three daughters and their families followed, finding employment in the Magic City of Birmingham, a steel and coal metropolis, which sprang out of a cotton field in the early 1870s.

Bishop, my father, was born December 17, 1919, the year of the over-reaching Versailles Treaty was signed and an angry young German veteran, Adolph Hitler, joined the Nazi Party.  At age 22, Bishop was in the U.S. Navy preparing to brave the U-Boat submarines of a revived Germany under the leadership a tyrannical dictator.  Two of his brothers, Melton and Ralph, followed him into that conflict.

The Irondale of the 1920s and 30s, a working class suburb, a long street car ride from the center of Birmingham, was Bishop's childhood.  At age 9, his mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) let him stay home to hear Herbert Hoover take the oath of office, broadcast through the family's brand new radio.  A brother-in-law, Robert W. Daly, Sr., eventually a prominent banker, gave Bishop's siblings and the boy rides in his open top roadster.  The roads in the late 1920s and early 30s were still red clay or sand around Irondale.  The family had a chicken house, electricity, a cow and eventually in 1936, indoor plumbing.

Below 1932 in Robert's roadster - Ralph, Virginia and Bishop

The house at 2300 3rd Avenue North looked over the switching yards of numerous rail lines.  The romance of the railroad infected Bishop, who for the rest of his life rode the train whenever possible.

After almost four years in World War II, he returned to Alabama with a bride from Philadelphia.  The couple had three children.  

The G.I. Bill allowed Bishop to finish college at Birmingham-Southern, a prelude to five years of teaching.  In 1952, he returned again to earn his living from Uncle Sam, this time an employee of the Social Security Administration, the old age retirement and disability program that his Republican father, Ulyss Holliman (1884-1965), had railed against as an infamous part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Bishop would retire as manager of the office in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Right, Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery, 1945 at Bishop's home in Irondale, Alabama.



Bishop thrived in Cookeville, becoming a prominent member of the community.  Over the years he was president of the Rotary, United Way, the library board, the Red Cross and the local railroad depot museum and always active in the local United Methodist Church.  The three children all attended Tennessee Tech, the local university and all met spouses there.  Today there are eight grandchildren and sixteen great grandchildren!

Below right, the family in 1966 in Tennessee - Becky, Glenn, Gerry, Alice and Bishop.            



Bishop has outlived his first two wives, good persons both, Geraldine Stansbery and Anne McLaughlin.  In 2000 he married Ellen Cox, a church friend from Gadsden, Alabama.  They make their home in Avilla, Indiana, a friendly community surrounded by Ellen's nieces and nephews.  Dad says it reminds him of Irondale, the home of his youth. 

 Above October 2015, the daily walk with Ellen and the ever faithful Bee Bee.

We can't pick our parents; Mother Nature does that for us.  My two sisters and I won life's lottery being the off spring of Geraldine Stansbery and Bishop Holliman.  Happy Birthday once again to one of the finest men in the world. - GNH