Christmas Past - The WWII Generation at Christmas

 by Glenn N. Holliman

Christmas 2020, a Reflection on 70 Years Past

I have posted the below photographs in previous years, but as this Christmas season is a very different one for many of us, I feel moved to share for the younger folks reading this what a Christmas past was like for my generation.  Extended families will be separated due to the Covid-19 virus, an unexpected and deadly visitor to the Year 2020. 

So as my late father often did, I step back in time and through old photographs rekindle  warm feelings when families could gather and celebrate the rituals that sustain us as human beings.

Below is one of the last pictures of the complete family of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman of 2300 Avenue North in Irondale, Alabama in December 1950. To my knowledge, never again would so many relations gather for a photograph with the grandparents present.

World War II had been over for five years but that winter America was in a new conflict known as the Korean War. We were living under the shadow of the new atomic bomb and experiencing a Cold War with the Soviet Union, a former ally, now an adversary. Four the men in picture, Melton, Bishop, Ralph and Walter, were veterans of WWII.  Uncle Sam did not call any of them back to service in Korea.  However, one of those pictured below, moi, did do service in a later war in the late 1960s.  Jerry and Terry Holliman were in the U.S. Army prior to the Viet Nam War.

Back row left to right: Euhal and Edna Holliman, Vena Holliman Daly, Mary Daly Herrin, Robert Daly, Charles Ferrell, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, Ralph and in front wife, Motie Holliman, Melton and Ida Holliman, Gerry and Bishop Holliman, and in between them Walter Cornelius.  Middle row: Charles H. Ferrell, Susan Cornelius Williams in her mother, Virginia Holliman Cornelius' lap, Ulyss and Pearl Holliman holding Becky Holliman Payne, Carolyn Ferrell holding Pam Holliman, Patti Holliman, and John Ferrell. Front row: Bob Daly, Jerry and Terry Holliman, Anne and Jean Holliman, Nancy Carol Cornelius Morton and Glenn N. Holliman.  Yet to be born were Kathy Holliman, Tommie Holliman Allen and Bill Holliman and Alice Holliman Murphy.

Gathered above are the seven children of Ulyss and Pearl all with their spouses and their own children.  In this picture, there are 15 first cousins, which by 1956 would grow to 19 cousins.  

Remarkably eighteen cousins are still living, but we sadly lost Jerry Holliman in 2003 to heart disease.  Jerry is kneeling on the floor next to his identical twin, Terry.  I could never tell them apart.  Now all of the cousins are age 64 and older, most of us in our 70s, and several in their 80s.  Three of us are dressed as cowboys, the fad of the day for youngsters, most of us trying to look like Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rogers. Bob Daly on the front row, far right, seemed to have come armed with a toy rifle!  

With the passing of my father, H. Bishop Holliman in 2018, the seven siblings and their partners now are gone.  My grandparents, Pearl and Ulyss died in 1955 and 1965.

I believe the hand written identification of the seven children and grandparents is that of cousin Charles Ferrell. This generation dressed formally for important family gathers.  The men are in suits and ties and the ladies dressed elegantly .  Note the large Christmas tree on the left.  As a child I was amazed by the then very modern electric lights, some that bubbled some type of oil.  Electric Christmas tree lights only appeared in the 1910s.

These Christmas gatherings at the Holliman household, I remember as very festive occasions when we children would play together and feverishly open our presents.  There were so many that the packages under the tree spilled over into the living room.  

Three new generations have appeared since this family gathered in what had been the childhood home of the seven siblings.  Seventy years on, these aunts, uncles and cousins still live in my memories of yesteryear Christmas's.  I suspect I am not the only cousin who cherishes the time past. - GNH

PS - Cousin Dr. Bob Daly, who has been experiencing health problems, would enjoy hearing from his cousins.  He asked me to pass along his email address which is humbander1943@yahoo.com.  Bob is Alabama's premier biologist on the plant life and birds of the Southeast United States.  Each summer over 400 hummingbirds are attracted to his feeder!

A Visit Between Two Storms, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

In this article, the story of the trip my two sisters, Becky and Alice, and I took to Alabama visiting cousins and old home places continues.  This excursion occurred the week before the explosion of the Covid 19 virus upon the American nation.  If we had waited another week, we would have had to cancel the visit.

On March 9, 2020 we rendezvoused with many cousins at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Irondale, the town where the seven children of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, came of age.  The seven children, now all passed away, are in order of birth Melton, Vena, Euhal, Loudell, Bishop, Virginia and Ralph.

While we cousins indulged in good southern comfort food and not yet knowing to practice social distancing, I snapped this picture of those who still live in the Birmingham area and who could make the lunch.

  Moving clockwise beginning from the left is Clayton Herrin, son of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin, and grandson of Robert W. and Vena Holliman Daly.  Next is Alice Holliman Murphy, daughter of Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery Holliman.  Behind Alice are Charles and Nancy Ferrell.  Charles is the son of Charles and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell.  John Daly, son of Bob and Carol Daly and grandson of Robert W. and Vena Daly, peeks around Nancy, Charles' wife.  In the red jacket is David Herrin, Clayton's brother.

At the far end in black is my sister, Becky Holliman Payne and seated next to her is Mary Daly Herrin, mother of Clayton and David, and daughter of Robert W. and Vena Daly.  The gentleman is green is Wally Allen, husband of Tommie Holliman Allen.  The last two ladies are Jean Holliman and Tommie Holliman Allen, daughters of Euhal and Edna Holliman.

One of the pleasant ironies of this extended lunch was knowing we were sitting in the part of the restaurant that had been the hardware store owned by Robert W. and George Daly which operated from 1944 to 1960.

The Whistle Stop, formally the Irondale Cafe had been run in the 1930s by Bess Fortenberry.  The Holliman children were forbidden to eat there as the cafe sold beer!  It was Bess's niece, Fanny Flag, who inspired by the cafe and setting, wrote Fried Green Tomatoes which became a famous movie.  

Under later ownership, the cafe expanded into the Daly Hardware building and changed its name to the Whistle Stop and yes, serves fried green tomatoes as an entree.

Below from Mary Daly Herrin's scrapbook are some mementos from the business her father and uncle ran.

After catching up on family comings and goings, and discussing some hint of the coming pandemic (Charles was touching elbows rather than shaking hands, a foreshadowing of the coming turbulence), my sisters and I bade our cherished relatives goodbye, warmly remembering our father, aunts and uncles and many earlier times together.  

More on our visit in the next blog. - GNH

A Post WWII Christmas for an Alabama Family

by Glenn N. Holliman

Christmas 1946 - All Together Again

It was the first Christmas when all the sons who had gone to war - Melton, Bishop and Ralph - and a son-in-law, Walter Cornelius, could be together with the extended family.  This Birmingham/Irondale, Alabama nuclear family was reunited after the travail of war.  All the persons pictured above still lived near the childhood home of the seven siblings - Melton, Vena, Euhal, Loudelle, Bishop, Virginia and Ralph.  Euhal and family lived in Gadsden and Melton's branch in Mobile.  In a few years this would change.

And in a few years there would be many more children, the 'Baby Boomers'!

This is a photograph I have starred at many times in my now long life.  The names placed under the photograph are all correct except the name 'Susan' in Virginia's lap.  That is Carol Cornelius born 1944.  Her sister Susan would come along in 1949.  As Charles and Loudelle Ferrell are referred to as Dad and Mother, perhaps cousin Charles H. Ferrell labeled us.

While examining this picture and rearranging others a few weeks ago (I have hundreds of photographs of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman's descendants and happy to forward them to those requesting), I was amazed to discover a second photograph taken evidently right before or right after each other.  See if you spot the differences.  It took me a few minutes to do so.

Some eyes are open or now closed.  Grandpa Ulyss is closer to Pearl.  Patti is now on the front row, partially blocking Carolyn.  The bottom photograph is not as sharp; perhaps that is why a second was taken.

Mary, holding her brother Bob, is the oldest cousin and the remaining person who may remember the details of the pictures.  The rest of us were too young, and all the adults have passed away.

There are 12 grandchildren in this picture.  By 1956, there would be 19 grandchildren, but alas Grandmother Pearl had died in May 1955 and with that the Christmas reunions ceased to be.  Both Bishop and Ralph families had moved out of state for employment opportunities.

Who took the pictures?  I believe it was Virginia's good friend, Verlice Nichols, pictured below.  This picture was taken with the Robert and Vena Holliman Daly home in the background.  Many of the Holliman pictures were taken at this location adjacent to the Ulyss and Pearl home.  Why?  One the location of the sun, persons looking south and two, did the Daly family own the camera? 

After my father Bishop died in 2018, my sister Becky and I connected with Verlice, then in her late 90s living in an Arizona retirement home.  She telephoned us several times, and we talked of her memories of Irondale and growing up in the 1930s.  Sadly earlier this year we received a call that she had died suddenly.  Another chapter closed.

As I have reviewed hundreds of pictures the past month, I noticed that my grandfather often stared off into space when posing for pictures.  Notice in the two pictures above he does not look into the camera.

Above is the first known picture of Ulyss taken ca 1900.  The copy under the picture is by Rhodes B. Holliman (1928-2014), grandson of John Thomas Holliman (1844-1830), my generation's great grandfather.   From the beginning, Ulyss avoided a direct gaze at the camera.  Interesting.

Thanks for reading and hope this is helpful to those of new generations who wonder from whence they have come.

Lost Pictures Found of 1968 Reunion, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Lost and Now Found

Last summer I published on this site, photographs I had taken with a simple Kodak Instamatic camera of the Holliman/Daly/Ferrell/Herrin/Cornelius gathering in Irondale, Alabama, July 1968.  At that writing, I thought all the pictures of that day had been recovered, but fortunately I was wrong. 

Since then, my sister, Becky Holliman Payne of Cookeville, Tennessee, has found approximately 400 slides in memorabilia boxes of our Mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick (1923-2015).  Our sister, Alice Holliman Murphy of Trophy Club, Texas scanned them and gave me electronic copies.  My Mother also had an Instamatic camera, a simple marvel of that time when one popped in a cartridge, and the film advanced after each picture.

So here are some of the ‘lost’ pictures she and my father took from 1967 to 1976. Step back then in time and find yourself or your parents and grandparents much younger, and several of us, much thinner and with other spouses.  This was over a half century ago, a summer of much disconnect in America with an unpopular war, two political assassinations and a Southern family adjusting to the Civil Rights revolution of that time.

Left to right, Alice Holliman Murphy, age 12, Mary Daly Herrin, b. 1931, the first grandchild of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, Linda Herrin Bradley, now living in Orange Beach, Alabama, and my mother, Gerry Stansbery Holliman Feick.    

Below, Alice and Linda embrace David and Suzanne Herrin, Linda’s younger siblings. 

Above left to right, are Charles and Loudelle Ferrell.  Charles (1907-1999) was a United Methodist Church minister, a graduate of Birmingham-Southern and Yale Divinity School. Loudelle (1914-1998) was the third child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman to marry.  They had three children, Charles, Carolyn and John.

In the background are Jean Holliman and Tommie Holliman Allen, two of the six children of Euhal, far right gesturing with his hands, and Edna Westbrook Holliman (1916-1992), not pictured here.  In 1968, Euhal (1912-1989) and his family were living at 2300 3^rd Avenue North in Irondale in the home of his late parents, Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl (1888-1955).

Finally, in a white dress in the foreground is Kathy Holliman listening to her Uncle Euhal as is her father, Ralph Holliman (1924-2017).  Ralph was a corporate executive for American Bakeries in Chicago, eventually retiring to Gulf Shores, Alabama with his wife, Motie (1924-2003), not pictured here.

Below left to right is George Hairston, Patti Holliman’s husband.  Patti (in sun glasses) is the daughter of Melton (1908-1958) and Ida Holliman (1905-1995).  Next is Susan Cornelius Williams and her sister, Carol Cornelius Morton with her husband, Carl Blomstran.  Susan and Carol are the daughters of Walter (1922-2005) and Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011), the sixth child of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman.

Look soon for another posting and more photographs of this 1968 family gathering at the home of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin in Irondale, Alabama.

An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 41

The Run Up to the Invasion of Europe

By Glenn N. Holliman

April 15, 1944, my father, Bishop Holliman (1919-2018) received a ten-day leave in Boston after another tiring convoy trip to and from the European Theater. He took the occasion to train to his home in Irondale, Alabama. 

Crowded, the trip took the better part of two days to make the journey.  It took another two days back before his leave expired on April 25^th, hence only six days home.

Left in 1940, 20 year old Bishop Holliman, right and his friend, a Methodist minister, Paul Nelson Propst.  Bishop would name his son, Glenn Nelson Holliman, after Paul with whom he maintained contact for the rest of Paul's life, one of the few pre-war friendships Bishop was able to maintain after the service.

The length of Bishop's military obligation, 3 years and 10 months, had weakened most of Bishop's many Methodist Church relationships.  Charles Ferrell helped Bishop gain employment as a youth assistant for the North Alabama Methodist Conference, a job that enabled my father to pay much of his way through three years of Birmingham-Southern College from 1937-1941.  

'Big Mama' was the family name given lovingly to The Rev. Charles Ferrell's mother. My Uncle Charles was assigned to the Ensley Highlands Methodist Church in the fall of 1944 after a pastorate in Huntsville, Alabama.  Left to right are Charles H. Ferrell, his mother Loudelle, her daughter Carolyn and Mrs. Ferrell in black.

He had hoped to see his sister, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell (1914-1998), who lived in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband, Charles, a Methodist minister and their children – Hal, Carolyn and the latest addition, two-year-old John Melton.  Time and distance did not permit a visit.  His brother-in-law Robert Daly, Sr. observed in his letters that gasoline rationing now limited most civilians to three gallons a week.

Bishop, who had been at sea for much of the past eight months, was fatigued.  Generally, on his destroyer, the USS Barker, he was on radio duty for four hours on and four hours off around the clock.  He wrote Loudelle that he probably would not try to return home again between sea duty unless he had longer leave time, that the emotional experience of saying good bye to his parents and loved ones, and the coming and going was wearing on him. 

The truth is Bishop’s world had enlarged beyond his childhood home and experiences.  Forty years later he wrote by late 1943, he finally felt at home in the Navy, had learned his job and had some buddies on the USS Barker.  After 2 ½ years in the military, his world had grown larger – numerous trips to the Mediterranean and others up and down the Eastern Seaboard.  He had met persons from all over the United States, persons of different cultures and faiths (or no religious traditions).  For my father and millions of other, the war expanded personal horizons.

 

Right, Bishop Holliman and his brother Euhal at the Vena Daly home in Irondale, Alabama in 1967. Note the hats worn by men in that era!

His return north-bound train did stop in Attala (Gadsden, Alabama) and his brother Euhal (1912-1989) and his family, wife Edna, and children Jerry, Terry and Anne, turned out in their Sunday best to greet Bishop for the few minutes as passengers got off and on.  My father wrote how touched he was by their short visit.  Euhal, the father of three children and with a fourth on the way (Jean born 1944), was called up for his physical but not conscripted that spring of 1944, probably due to his family responsibilities and his health.  He had suffered debilitating rheumatic fever as a baby.

 

Below at the home of Bishop Holliman in 1954, Johnson City, Tennessee.  Far left and far right, twins born 1940, Jerry and Terry Holliman, Euhal's sons and middle, left and right, Glenn N. Holliman, b 1946 and Rebecca Holliman Payne, b 1950, all preparing for a game of baseball in the front yard.  Jerry and Terry had traveled with their grandparents from Alabama to visit.  Bishop was a field representative for the Social Security Administration, and made numerous relocations in the 1950s and early 1960s.  We lived in Johnson City from 1952 to 1957.

His brothers Melton and Ralph (stationed in England), both worried Euhal might be drafted and hoped he would not be due to the above noted reasons.  Although 17 years of age separated Melton (b 1908), the oldest son of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, and Ralph (b 1925), the youngest son, the four brothers were close emotionally.

Their sister Virginia’s husband during that spring, Walter Cornelius in the Army Air Corp was training in Mississippi and Tennessee.  The Holliman family as with millions of others were now dealing with a long war, one that did not yet suggest an end in sight. 

Unknown to the American public, hundreds of thousands of these soldiers, sailors and airmen were about to enter major battles in Southeast Asia (Burma), the Pacific (the invasion of Saipan and the Philippines and for the Holliman sons, France (D-Day and the sweep across France).  Before the summer and fall of 1944 would pass, tens of thousands of American homes would be receiving dreaded telegrams from the War Department announcing the deaths of their sons.

Melton (1908-1958) who wrote daily from England to his wife, Ida (1905-1995), remarked in early April 1944:

“Of course Honey, you know how much I miss you and Patsy, b 1942.  I am glad you have her with you; she is so sweet.  We are fighting for the loved ones at home.  That is the reason we are here. So that she and you can live peacefully, and she can grow up unafraid.”

Above in 1942, Melton and Ida Hughes Holliman.  Melton wrote daily while in the Army to Ida and their young daughter, Patti (whom Melton called Patsy). 

By late May, Melton was complaining that he had moved ten times since arriving in England, that the mail had slowed and that he was stationed at a port (evidently on the English Channel, a jumping off post for the Invasion). Finally, on June 2, 1944 he had received a temporary assignment in his military occupation, a pharmacist.

From finishing his training in January 1944, Melton had been traveling and waiting, moving and waiting, perhaps not realizing that hundreds of thousands of other men also were moving into position for the June 6^th Invasion of Europe.  Historians have noted that the U.S. military in England was like a ‘coiled spring’, tightly wound and ready to be unleashed on a Nazi occupied continent.  Melton, Ralph and Bishop were all part of the great enterprise that was about to free western Europe from tyranny. 

Left, Bishop's son, Glenn, b. 1946 passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, October 2018, 75 years after his father made the same journey to the Battle of Sicily, and 74 years after Bishop sailed through on June 5/6, 1944.

The night of June 5, 1944 my father’s destroyer approached the Straits of Gibraltar moving from east to west, once again on convoy duty.  

That day, the U.S. Army liberated Rome.  

The next morning, Bishop Holliman would hear over the ether waves the alert for all U.S. ships that the great invasion of France was on.  He and millions of others hoped against hope that the end of the war was drawing neigh. We know the brutal conflict would continue for another 11 months in Europe and Japan would not surrender until August 1945.

And Melton would be a casualty before the year of 1944 was out.

The Passing of a Generation, Part 3

The Formal Obituary of Homer Bishop Holliman, 1919-2018

Homer Bishop Holliman, 98, passed away June 9, 2018, after a short illness in Cookeville, Tennessee.  Bishop Holliman was born in Irondale, Alabama, December 17, 1919, to Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman. 

He was preceded in death by his three wives, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, mother of his three children; Anne McLaughlin Holliman and Ellen Parks Cox Holliman.  Also, he was preceded in death by his brothers and sisters, Melton, Vena, Euhal, Loudelle, Virginia and Ralph.

Right in 1965, Euhal, Vena, Bishop, Loudelle and Ralph.  Below with his father, Ulyss (1884-1965).

He was a graduate of Shades Cahaba High School, Birmingham-Southern College, B.A., and the University of Alabama, M.Ed. 

He served from 1941-1945 in the U.S. Navy on destroyers in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean as a radioman listening for Nazi U-Boats. He was at the 1943 Invasion of Sicily in 1943 and escorted transports in the English Channel after the D-Day Invasion. In 2015 he was a member of a World War II Honor Flight to Washington, D.C.

After the war, he taught school for six years in Homewood, Alabama.

His career with the Social Security Administration began in 1952 in Birmingham, Alabama.  He worked in Johnson City, Tennessee; Columbia, South Carolina; Florence, South Carolina; Gadsden, Alabama and Cookeville, Tennessee where he served as manager of the SSA District office from 1964 to 1983.  He received two commissioners’ awards for Outstanding Service from Elliott Richardson, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and from Robert Ball, Commissioner of the Social Security Administration. 

Mr. Holliman was a lifelong member of the United Methodist Church and was active in church and civic affairs in Cookeville including president of Rotary Club, the United Way, the Red Cross, and the Regional Library Board and was a longtime member of the Friendship Sunday School Class of FUMC. He was a Paul Harris Fellow of the Cookeville Rotary Club.  He helped in preservation of the railroad depot and its conversion into a railroad museum.  For many years he wrote a column entitled “Aunt Polly” for the Cookeville Dispatch. Upon his retirement from the SSA, he was a columnist for the Cookeville Herald-Citizen and was a regular contributor to the HighBaller, a publication of the Depot Museum.

Survivors: Mr. Holliman is survived by three children, Glenn N. Holliman (Barbara) of Newport, PA; Rebecca Holliman Payne (Paul) of Cookeville, Tennessee and Alice Holliman Murphy (Bill) of Trophy Club, Texas.  He is also survived by eight grandchildren: Grace Holliman, Bryan Payne, Erin Murphy Hensley, Chris Holliman, Jonathan Murphy, Allison Payne Mahan, Patrick Murphy and Sean Murphy and eighteen great-grandchildren; Will, Holly, Drew, Camille, Juliana, Heidi, Macy, Josalyn, Zachary, Katie Grace, Abel, Raimey, Derek, John, Jake, Killian, Ashton and Mia.

Christmas, 2017 in Cookeville, Tennessee, Bishop seated is surrounded by his children, many grandchildren and great grandchildren, the last group photograph made.  He is wearing his World War II cap.  This picture was made at the Cookeville Train Depot which he helped finance.

In addition, Lori Griggs and Logan McClain, caregivers for Mr. Holliman in his last months are recognized for their dedication and many kindnesses, as well as the staff at Heritage Point.

Many of the writings of H. Bishop Holliman, his memories of Irondale, Alabama in the 1930s, his war memoirs and reflections on life can be found at www.bholliman.com, a virtual archives of Holliman and associated family manuscripts and papers.  - Glenn N. Holliman

The Passing of a Generation, Part 2

Further Reflections on the Passing of My Father, 
H. Bishop Holliman, 1919-2018
by Glenn N. Holliman

In 1919, when my father first saw daylight, the victorious allies of World War I forced a revengeful Treaty of Versailles on a defeated Germany.  That same year an angry and disgruntled 28 year-old German army veteran of that War to End All Wars joined the fledgling National Socialist party in Munich.  Adolph Hitler’s acquisition of power in 1933 would eventually turn my Father’s life upside down, as it did hundreds of millions of others around the world. 

The 1920 Federal Census reported that for the first time a majority of Americans no longer lived on a farm but made their lives and daily bread in a town or city.  As with millions of others, the trajectory of the Holliman family in the early 1900s was in the direction of urban life. 

Part of farm life continued into Alabama urban areas.  Here ca 1921, Bishop plays in the family chicken yard.  He is still in ‘baby clothes’.  The family raised chickens for decades and for a time in the late 1930s had a milk cow. 

As normal for many Americans of the time, Bishop’s parents, Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, had only sixth and eighth grade educations from a rural county school.  However, thanks to the move to Irondale, Alabama during World War I, the educations attained by their children would make an incredible difference in their lives and those of the grandchildren, i.e. yours truly.

May 1921 Ulyss Holliman contracted for $2,000 a six room, 28ft by 42ft unpainted house to be constructed at 2300 3^rd Avenue North on a large hill lot in the E.N. Montgomery sub-division.  The plot overlooked the busy railroad yard and tracks that dominated the central corridor of Irondale. 

Above, left to right, six of the seven children of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman - Vena, Euhal, Loudelle, Melton holding Virginia and Bishop in front, ca 1923 before Ralph was born in 1925.  Both Melton and Euhal in knickers and caps.  Vena in her Sunday best. My father is wearing a hat held down by Euhal, and carries a stick and wears white short pants.

It was the existence of the railroad that had led the Hollimans to Irondale.  Pearl’s father, William Lee Caine, from Fayette County took a job as a watchman for the railroad and moved his wife Lula Hocutt Caine and daughter Vista to this new community, only a few decades old.  A short time later, perhaps 1917, Pearl’s family followed as did her other sister, Maude Caine Cook and her family.

The all-wooden house was wired for that new marvel of that generation – electricity – but alas not running water or an indoor bathroom.  Such would be added in 1936.  Until then the family heated water in a huge cast iron pot every Saturday night and took a bath as my father said  ‘whether we needed it or not’.  As Irondale had suffered a devastating tornado in the early 1900s, my grandfather built a simple earth shelter into the side of the hill.  Fortunately, it was never needed, and it eventually collapsed.

Below the house at 2300 3rd Avenue North, Irondale, Alabama in 2013.

My grandfather caught the bus, later the street car, for the short ride to Birmingham to work six days a week, from the family home in Irondale, Alabama.  Later thanks to the Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Ulyss’s work week was reduced to forty hours.  My branch of the Holliman families were Republicans, unusual for the times in the Deep South.  

Ironically, although opposed to most of the domestic programs of the 1930s Democratic administration, few persons benefited more from Federal programs than did my grandfather and father – for example, Social Security, labor unions, paid vacations, public works and college work programs.

As the fifth child of seven, my father grew up surrounded by siblings in a religious home.  His parents raised the children in a conservative Methodist tradition, prohibited dancing, card playing, alcoholic beverages and insisted on weekly attendance at church, often twice on Sunday. 

Below the family ca 1924 in a highly productive garden.  Cousin James Cook has joined the photograph, probably taken by Ulyss Holliman.  

The family did purchase a radio in 1929.  Bishop remembered his Mother allowed him to stay home from school to listen to the inaugural speech of President Herbert Hoover that year.  

The Hoover years were cursed with the Great Depression, the central reality of my father’s adolescence in the 1930s.  In 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany and by 1941, Dad was in the U.S. Navy and once again the United States was in a World War.

For several years I have been writing the history of this Alabama family before and during World War II.  The stories of Bishop, his parents, siblings, in-laws and the children to come are articulated at this blog site.  If I live long enough and my mind stays clear, I hope to carry on these stories into the post war years. The formal obituary of my father is contained in the next article on the Passing of this Generation. - GNH

An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 39

Melton Pearson Holliman’s Difficult War

by Glenn N. Holliman

My Uncle Melton died early in 1958, age only 49, prematurely taken by heart disease.  He was a pharmaceutical salesman in 1943, having learned his craft while working in his Uncle Floyd Caine’s drug store in the late 1920s.  Melton was the first born of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman’s seven children, and the first to pass away. 

Another three decades would elapse before another child of my grandparents would leave this world, this being my Uncle Euhal Holliman in 1989. According to his daughter Tommie Holliman Allen, Euhal also had heart issues, complicated by rheumatic fever contracted when a child.  This chronic condition, plus being the father of four children, kept Euhal from being drafted during World War II.

The draft by 1943 was reaching deeper and deeper into the available pool of able-bodied American males.  That August, Melton, age 35, was inducted into the Army at Ft. McClellan, Georgia and within a month was shipped to Camp Barkeley, Texas for basic and advanced training.  From September to February 1944, except for a six-day furlough in January 1944, he slogged through first the dust and then the mud of this hastily established military facility on the Texas plains. 

Left, Melton in uniform; note the medical corp insignia on his collar.  This picture suggests a physical resemblance to World War II swing band leader, Glenn Miller.

Melton’s letters home, which I have used to construct this narrative, are poignant, expressing the homesickness of almost every G.I. caught up in the maelstrom of World War II.  My uncle had additional reasons to pen moving words back to Alabama.  

He and his wife of eleven years, Ida Hughes Holliman, had adopted in April 1943, a curly haired, red-headed bundle of joy, an infant daughter, Patti (whom Melton called Patsy).  Melton was to miss the critical, unrecoverable months of Patti beginning to walk, talk and capture the hearts of the entire Holliman clan.

“Christmas Morning, December 25, 1943

My Dearest Precious Ones,

There is a lot I could write this morning, but it would make me bluer and I know you’d be blue when you read it….so I won’t do it.  Deep down in your heart you probably know how I feel.

I spent all of yesterday in the hut.  Did not even go to the PX after I called you.  It rained most of the day and the mud was awful.  We will have our Christmas dinner at 1 pm.  Will have turkey and all the trimmings.  The mess hall is gaily decorated in ‘Xmas’ tree and everything. 

Last night after we went to bed the choir from our chapel came through the company streets singing Christmas songs.  There were about 50 soldiers in the choir…the singing was beautiful.  Before we retired, all of us in the hut sang songs.  I was a half way leader of the singing.

Above, Melton, back row, second from right, and his fellow troops.  Note the tar paper huts, constructed in 1940.  The camp once held 50,000 trainees before closing in April 1945 near the end of the war.  No doubt these are the fellow homesick soldiers who joined in the singing on Christmas eve.

I heard this morning that we were to finish up here entirely January 15^th.  I am still classified a pharmacist. 

I hope you enjoy your Christmas party at Moma’s.  I sure wish I could be there with you.  I am not on KP today.  The Jewish boys were put on; I think that was fair enough.  They don’t observe Christmas.  

Baby, my prayer is that next Christmas we can be together…so I hope you had a Merry Xmas and I love you very, very much.  Melton”

Left, Patti Holliman (Hairston) and her first cousin, John Melton Ferrell, third child of Charles and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, 1943.

Sadly, Melton would not be home for Christmas in 1944. In late autumn, he was evacuated from his medical unit in France and  hospitalized in England for high blood pressure and other unspecified ailments  December 1944.  He later was shipped home and reunited with his wife and child in the winter 1945.  Apparently, this serious episode was the first manifestation of a heart condition that would later take his life prematurely.

Below, the training schedule for part of December 1943 at Camp Barkeley, near Abilene, Texas.

 

Living in the barracks required a strict regimen of tidiness and hygiene as the demerit list indicates!

Next posting more on an Alabama family engulfed in World War II and how their lives were forever changed.....