A half century has passed, fifty turns around the sun and now all seven children of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman are gone. This family, founded by a 1907 union of a 23 year old young man and a 19 year old girl, both of a rural Alabama county, both the children of farmers, led to 18 grandchildren who scattered across Alabama and America. And so many great grandchildren that this writer cannot catalog them all.
The picture below was taken at a July 1968 family reunion on the front steps of the Irondale, Alabama 'White House' constructed in 1946 by Robert W. and Vena Holliman Daly. Vena had long been anxious for a larger home than the one her family occupied for many years in the 2300 3rd Avenue North block, on the hill overlooking the railroad yards of Irondale, Alabama.
Left to right, first row: Virginia Holliman Cornelius, Robert W. Daly, Jr. holding his niece, Suzanne Herrin Wilder, on his lap, Carol Cornelius Morton and her husband, Carl Blomstran.
Second row: Walter Cornelius, E.C. Herrin holding the youngest person attending, his son David, Mary Daly Herrin, Carol Daly (Bob's wife) and Gerry Holliman (wife of Bishop Holliman).
Third row: Euhal Holliman and Motie Holliman (wife of Ralph Holliman).
Fourth row: Glenn Holliman, his wife, Lynn, Ralph Holliman, Vena Holliman Daly, Clayton Herrin, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell and her husband, Charles, and Bishop Holliman.
Fifth row: Jean Holliman, Tommie Holliman Allen, Alice Holliman Murphy, Linda Herrin Bradley, Becky Holliman Payne, Kathy Holliman, Susan Cornelius Williams.
Back Row: George Hairston holding daughter Holly; Patti Holliman Hairston.
The location chosen for the new house was inside the Irondale city limits adjacent to U.S. Highway 78, the 4-lane road from Birmingham to Atlanta. Within a generation land beside this busy highway became so valuable that developers acquired the house and lot in the late 1960s, removed the house and stately oak trees and put up a business office complex. Today the United Methodist Church borders part of the old property line.
After the untimely death of Robert W. Daly, Sr. in 1959, Vena eventually accepted a position as matron of an University of Alabama sorority (later also at the University of Mississippi). Vena's daughter Mary and son-in-law and E.C. Herrin, and their growing family of four children moved into the home.
The year 1968 was a benchmark in American history and my personal story. The Vietnam War was dividing the nation as over 500,000 US troops were trying to subdue a communist nationalist movement, a civil war, in Southeast Asia. An average of 500 American men were dying a week as a result of an aggressive North Vietnamese Tet Offensive attack. The presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson floundered and collapsed as a result of the stalemate and cost in blood and treasure.
At home the Civil Rights movement climaxed with African-Americans gaining long deferred rights to vote and utilize public accommodations such as restaurants and hotels. The cultural upheaval stressed the social fabric of the nation, especially the Deep South. Dr. Martin Luther King, the non-violent, but confrontational leader, was assassinated by a white man that April and as a result many inner cities in the country were torched by black angry mobs.
A Democratic candidate to replace Johnson in the presidency, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a brother of the assassinated president John F. Kennedy, was himself murdered by a Palestinian immigrant in Los Angeles in June. It seemed the nation was tearing itself apart with violence, both home and abroad.
A 21-year old Glenn N. Holliman, son of Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman, graduated from Tennessee Tech that June, along with his young wife, Lynn. Within a week, a draft notice arrived from my Gadsden, Alabama board calling me to take a physical in Montgomery to ascertain if I was fit to join Uncle Sam's Army.
So, off to Alabama I went in July. As my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Motie and their daughter Kathy, residents of Atlanta, were visiting Birmingham, my parents and sisters, Becky and Alice, headed south from Tennessee to join a family gathering that Mary Daly Herrin arranged in Irondale.
I have found only one other photograph of the July 1968 event and that is a table groaning with fried chicken, potato salad and ice tea. Vena is identifiable in picture in a black dress and white ribbon. Holly Hairston (Melton Holliman's grand daughter) in the foreground is facing toward the table and Loudelle is partially visible on the left.
I don't remember much about this reunion because of my personal emotional trauma. By August, I was at Ft. Benning, Georgia and, after short stops at Ft. Dix, New Jersey and Ft. Hamilton, New York, by January 31, 1969, arrived in Vietnam. My new home for a year was the 1st Infantry Division, forty some odd miles north of Saigon.
1968, a year in which it can be said America had a nervous breakdown, families such as this one still gathered and celebrated their loving relationships and common heritage. At Christmas that year, three American astronauts in Apollo 8 circled the moon providing a smoothing balm to a horrendous twelve months. And that was the year McDonalds introduced the iconic Big Mac hamburger (hmm, a plus or minus for the American waistline?).
Eventually the Vietnam War ended, African-Americans began playing football for Auburn and Alabama, air-conditioning proved ubiquitous in the South and families still gathered for festivals and funerals. Six of the seven children of Ulyss and Pearl rendezvoused in Irondale that July 1968 and forthcoming decades. (Melton, the first born, had died in 1958.)
Now I am age 71 (gasp). This summer of 2018, Bishop, my father died at age 98, and the children of that 1907 marriage are no more with us. But of course the seven still are....with us.
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