A Personal Remembrance of Nancy Carol Cornelius Morton (1945-2024) by Glenn N. Holliman

The Loss of a Cousin

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s in Alabama, we knew the elder daughter of Walter F. (1922 -2007) and Virgina Holliman Cornelius  (1922-2011) by her full name, Nancy Carol.  Later in adulthood, we knew her as only Carol, a gregarious, attractive lady, who at family reunions greeted relatives with a sunshine smile and was quick to ask how you and others were doing. I would describe her personality as 'sparkling', lighting up a room by her presence.

Carol grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, attended Shades Valley High School and later the University of Alabama.  Her first home was in nearby Shelby, where her grandparents ran a country store.

Right, Virginia and Walter in 1945.

In the 1950 census, her father is recorded as the manager of the store.  Ambitious, Walter, a World War II veteran, earned a law degree in 1953 and lawyering became his career.  Her mother, Virginia, my father's youngest sister, after giving birth in 1949 to a second daughter, Susan, became a teller in a bank, and made banking a career, breaking many class ceilings rising to a vice president of one of Alabama's major financial institutions.

Below, the Cornelius family in 1959

Carol, herself became a nurse and married Carl A. Blomstran in 1966. Settled in Texas,  the marriage brought forth a daughter Carla Ann and a son, Eric Walter Blomstran.  Tragically, Eric died in 2002 in an automobile wreck. In a second marriage, Carol gave birth to another son, Richard Bruce Kilian. He too died prematurely in 2014 on an airplane flight.

                                               Right, Carol and Chuck in the 1990s

It is said three is a charm, and so it was for Carol in 1993 when she became the wife of a Navy veteran, Charles (Chuck) E. Morton.  A deep-sea explorer for the Navy, a leg injury forced an early retirement from the service.  Chuck, a kindly, caring man of faith, became her caregiver in the 2010s when Carol developed the same illness that took her mother, Alzheimer's.  Chuck, having relocated to Mexico for supporting assistance, stood by her for years until she slipped away in October 2024.  

Before growing ill in the 2010s, Carol, Chuck and I visited, once in their home in San Antonio, again at my sister Becky's home in Tennessee and finally for the last time in 2014 when they stayed with my wife, Barb, and me in Pennsylvania.  During these visits, Carol shared her memories of growing up during the Civil Rights era in Birmingham, Alabama (where we both were born, she in 1945, me in 1946). Both our fathers were WWII veterans and both completed college and advance degrees thanks to the GI Bill.

In 2012, Carol and Bishop Holliman holding a photograph of Bishop's great grandmother, Mary (Polly) Holliman

Looking back, Carol told me of the difficult marriage of her parents, eventually resulting in a divorce. She described how insulated she had been of the history that was occurring in Birmingham during her teens. She like me had attended racially exclusive schools and churches as we both came of age in a deeply segregated society. We marveled at how America had changed for the better, a more open inclusive country.  She shared with me her growing faith which had supported her when she lost her two sons. Both in our 60s at the time of these conversations, I was touched and enriched by her memories and reflections on her life's journey.  

She is gone now, at peace after a long, lingering illness, escorted and blessed in her final days by a very caring husband. He now lives in Colorado with a relative. If ever there was a saint, his name is Chuck.  - GNH

 

How a World War changed an Alabama Family, Part 4

by Glenn N. Holliman

 1940...the Storm Grows....

At this time in his life two decades after the Great War, Bishop Holliman was, as were millions of other Americans, an isolationist, one who wanted no involvement in European conflicts.  This opinion was shared by many during the late 1930s and early 1940s. 

However, by summer 1940 Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark had fallen before the Nazi war machine.  These frightening events  moved more and more Americans to support rearmament and aid to England.  Great Britain stood alone against increasing fears of a world dominated by an aggressive government of Germany, a militant Japan and a Mediterranean bully, Benito Mussolini's Italy. Collectively, these were the Axis powers of World War II.  Below the two dictators who lost their lives in 1945 in the conflagration they initiated.

 

Ulyss and Pearl Holliman  of Irondale, Alabama were devout Christians, and had raised their family as Methodists.  Their second daughter, Loudelle, married a Methodist minister in 1935, Charles T. Ferrell, born in Mississippi, and educated at Birmingham-Southern College and Yale Divinity School.  Loudelle and Charles helped Bishop obtain a part time job as youth director with the North Alabama Methodist Conference in the late 1930s.  This work - several summer youth conferences and his own deep commitment to the Christian faith - are evident in Bishop's pacifistic and humane opinions captured in memoirs written in 1991:

"And so it was as the clouds of war loomed ever more ominous on the horizon that I was a student at Birmingham-Southern College, having entered in 1937.  During those years I was very active in youth activities in the Methodist Church, and a principle focus in those times was 'world peace'.  At all of our youth conferences, programs, and camps, ironically one of the courses would be labeled, with some variations, 'World Peace."- H. Bishop Holliman, 1991
  

 

 Above, Christmas 1940, young Charles Halford Ferrell tries out his new Greyhound wagon for his parents, The Rev. Charles and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell.  Loudelle and Charles would write faithfully to her siblings, while Charles pastored Methodist Churches in North Alabama during the war.

 

Bishop along with two brothers, Melton and Ralph and a brother-in-law, Walter Cornelius, were soon to be swept into the growing maelstrom.  War would come to this Alabama family.  Melton (1908-1958) is pictured below with his mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955) in the late 1930s in front of the Robert and Vena Daly, Sr. home in the 2300 3rd Avenue North of Irondale, Alabama.  Not a young man, Melton served in the U.S. Army in England, France and Mississippi during 1944 and 1945.  While overseas, his health broke. He died of a heart attack 13 years after the war at the age of only 49.

With the fall of World War I ally France in June 1940, the U.S. Congress passed a conscription act to begin the building of an American army which at that time was one of the smallest in the world.  Later that year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to pass the Lend-Lease bill that gave assistance to Great Britain, aid short of war. 

At the same time, relations between Japan and the U.S. continued to deteriorate.  Japan pursued its war in China, and cast covetous eyes on the Dutch, British and French colonies in southeast Asia.

No matter how isolated the U.S. was in the Western Hemisphere, the world had become a dangerous place.  Led by FDR, Congress began to appropriate massive funds for naval, air and army armament.  However, 'isolationism', remained strong - many Americans did not wish to see the United States once again involved in a European war.

"Remember, we were still living in the shadows of the First World War, and the death and destruction wrought by that conflict were being brought out into the open, and we were able to look back and view the catastrophic horror.  Also, we were learning how the profit motive entered into whether we should go to war, and we were taught that greedy munitions manufacturers profited from the deaths of countless millions.

In the late 1930s and early 40s, I struggled to stay in college and worked part time at the Methodist Youth headquarters at 516 N. 22nd Street in Birmingham.  I was making maybe 25 or 30 cents and hour to fold letters, run the mimeograph machine and do other such menial chores  The job had been designed to aid a ministerial student.  I had been given the job my second year in college by Charles Ferrell, my brother-in-law.

He was Conference Youth Director, so through his beneficence I was able to make a little spending money and stay in school.  My association with the ministers in and out of the office and my participation in conference youth programs strengthened my faith in the 'rightness' of peace and the evils of militarism and war." - H. Bishop Holliman, 1991.

Bishop Holliman, left, sometimes had his mind on items other than religion while attending Methodist youth conferences in Alabama and North Carolina in the early 1940s.  Note the cute blond on the far left.  Dad is in a coat and tie, and oh, those white shoes and pants.

 

Next the War moves closer to this Alabama family....

Have questions about Holliman family history and associated families? 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!).

Since early 2010, I have been publishing research and stories on the broad spectrum of Holliman (Holyman) family history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ . For stories on my more immediate family since the early 20th Century, I have been posting articles since early 2011 at http://ulyssholliman.blogspot.com/ .

Let's save the past for the future! If you have photographs, letters, memorabilia or research you wish to share, please contact me directly at glennhistory@gmail.com. Several of us have an on-going program of scanning and preserving Holyman and related family records. Thanks to the Internet, we are able to scan, upload to the web (with your permission) and return the materials to you.

Announcing also a "Seminar and Site" gathering October 18 and 19, 2013 in Fayette, Alabama for Hollimans and associated families whose ancestors are from that area. Space at the Rose House Inn is limited for the occasion due to a football weekend. For information, contact me at glennhistory@gmail.com. GNH