From My Sister's Attic, Part 2

 by Glenn N. Holliman

Letters from the Past

Recently my sister Becky Holliman Payne forwarded a box of letters, pictures and memorabilia saved by our late mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  While I have a computer folder of letters from our Holliman grandmother, Pearl Elmer Caine Holliman (1887-1955), I found four not seen before.  Written between December 1944 and May 1945, they capture the feelings of a mother (Pearl) whose family has been in rapid transition since her third born son, Bishop (1919-2018), shipped off to the Navy in November 1941, a few weeks before Pearl Harbor.

There would be three war time marriages from her seven children - Virginia and Walter Cornelius (1942), Ralph and Motie Chism (1943) and Bishop and Gerry (1945).  

Between 1942 and 1945 additional grandchildren for Ulyss and Pearl joined the family, They were John Ferrell (1942), Patti Holliman (1942), Anne (1942) and Jean Holliman (1944), Robert W. Daly, Jr. (1943) and Carol Cornelius (1945). These offspring joined five earlier grandchildren, Mary Daly (1931), Charles H. Ferrell (1936), Carolyn Ferrell (1938) and Jerry and Terry Holliman (1940).  

Pearl did her best with letters to keep up with this expanding flock.  The one examined below and others in next posts welcomed my mother into the growing family.  The warmth, care and worries of a mother and grandmother come through to us again, more than 75 years after they were penned.

Ulyss S. (1884-1965) and Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955), Christmas 1946 at their home at 2300 3rd Avenue North, Irondale, Alabama.

 

Bishop and Melton Holliman, 1942.  Bishop Holliman,  a young seaman,  and Melton age 34, the year before he was drafted into the Army.

Page 1, December 3, 1944, Pearl Holliman to Geraldine Stanberry, fiancée of Bishop Holliman.

This letter contains additional information on my Uncle Melton Holliman's (1908-1958) sudden evacuation in November 1944 from a medical unit near Metz, France to England.  After finishing 17 weeks of training at Camp Barkeley, Texas in February 1944, it took until September 1944 before he reached his assignment with General George Patton's 3rd Army.  After only two months of duty as a medic, his health broke down. He left England and arrived at an Army hospital on Long Island, NY shortly after Christmas.  His wife Ida and daughter Patti joined him.  Later he transferred to light hospital duty in Jackson, Mississippi and returned to civilian life, a pharmaceutical salesman in the summer of 1945. 

Ralph Holliman (1924-2017) served as a clerk in the US Army Air Corp stationed first in England in late 1943 and later in France by the late summer of 1944 at a transport base near Paris.

Above Ralph and Motie (1925 - 2003)

Page 2 above contains information on Virginia (1922-2011), Loudelle Holliman Ferrell (1914-1998) and Robert W. Daly, Sr. (1903-1959).

 "Come one of these days all the boys will be home and we will be one big happy family again." 

- Pearl Caine Holliman, 1944

The Whistle Stop Cafe in Irondale and did you Know Bess Fortenberry?

 by Glenn N. Holliman

Return to Irondale, Alabama

This Christmas my wife, Barb, gave me Fannie Flagg's latest book, The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop which I read in only two sittings.  Ms. Flagg (original name was Patricia Neal but an actress from Tennessee already had that sobriquet) as a budding actress in the late 1960s adopted a southern girl's name, Fannie, and a friend suggested Flagg.  For my English friends reading this I am quite aware that in the Queen's English Ms. Flagg's first 'stage' name means something, well, impolite.

In real life the town of Whistle Stop (see her earlier book, Fried Green Tomatoes) is Irondale, Alabama, a suburb on the western edge of Birmingham. Ms. Flagg's great aunt, Bess Fortenberry, for forty some years ran the Fortenberry Cafe on 1st Avenue facing the multi-track rail road.  The  business section of Irondale until 1960 was one block of 1st Avenue.  Next door to the Fortenberry Cafe, my Uncle Robert Daly and his brother, George, purchased the hardware store in 1944 which operated until 1960.

Above, H. Bishop Holliman (1919-2018) in 2011 in front of the Irondale Cafe. My father wrote extensively on his boyhood in Irondale in the 1920s and 30s.  These writings can be found at the virtual archive of the family, www.bholliman.com. 

Several times in the 2010's when I took him back to Irondale, he would point out where the Fortenberry's lived on 2nd Avenue South.  Below is the way the house looks today.  In 1940 this imposing home was listed in value at $4,000 a sizeable sum before World War II.  

The 1940 census recorded that Bess Fortenberry, age 32, lived in the house with her brother, James H. Fortenberry and his wife and child. Brother Jim sold insurance and evidently did well in his profession.

 A lodger in the house was a 28 year old single female, Chris Griffin, born in Mississippi.  The census records Bess owned a cafe, worked 70 hours a week, 52 weeks a year!  The lodger, Chris, served as a waitress at the cafe, and earned $720 in 1939.  

If you follow the plot of Fried Green Tomatoes and again in The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop, one surmises that Fanny Flagg, Bess's niece, based her characters on the two women.  

Wonder Boy is a nostalgic read, southern in tone and written with a warm heart.  A fine Christmas gift for a husband who spent the first two weeks of his life in Irondale, and has visited often through out his long life.  Full disclosure, I am not the wonder boy in the book!