From my Sister's Attic, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

The First of a Number of Photographs from an Attic - 

Three Generations in 1952

First row, left to right, Glenn, Pam and Becky Holliman.  Second row, Motie, Ulyss, Pearl and Gerry Holliman.  Back row, Ralph holding Kathy.

Recently my two sisters, Rebecca L. Holliman Payne and Alice Holliman Murphy found the above photograph in one of my late father's scrapbooks.  Bishop and Ralph, two sons,  of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman posed with their parents, wives and children at Bishop and Gerry Stansbery Holliman's house in Trussville, Alabama. The time may have been early spring on a Sunday afternoon judging by the formality of the clothing.

Both Ralph and Bishop, my father, World War II veterans, took advantage of the G.I. Bill for college education and by 1952 were launched on careers in business and government.  Both would do well, and unlike so many in the 21st Century stayed with one company (Ralph - American Bakeries and Bishop - the Social Security Administration) their entire working careers. Both men moved their families many times as promotions and more responsibilities came.  

The families enjoyed the incredible economic post-war boom that pushed the American standard of living to record heights.

The four children pictured above all attended college and graduate school in the 1960s and 70s and developed careers in education, social services, publications and church.  The girls, unlike their mothers and their grandmother, worked outside of the home as did the majority of women in the latter part of the 20th Century.

Presaging his son's experiences, Ulyss moved his family for economic reasons during World War I from Fayette, Alabama to Birmingham.  Raised on a farm, Ulyss married Pearl in 1906, farmed and later worked in a lumber yard.  By 1914 with four children to feed (Melton, Vena, Euhal and Loudelle), Ulyss move his family to Irondale and found employment with the Birmingham Electric Company repairing street cars.  Three more children were born: Bishop 1919, Virignia 1922 and Ralph 1924.  Ulyss retired in 1949 and died in 1965. 

When Ulyss was born in 1884, there were no automobiles, telephones, electricity, radio, television or airplanes.  When he passed away men circled the earth in spacecraft and computers were crunching numbers.  Never in human history had there been so much technological change as during the life time of my grandfather.

More on Trussville, a suburb of Birmingham

The Bishop and Gerry Holliman house in Trussville, Alabama, built 1937, purchased by in 1950 was sold in 1952 when my father's new employment in the Social Security system resulted in a transfer to Johnson City, Tennessee.  The address is 207 Oak Street and the neighborhood is today a National Historical District. The house sold in 1952 for $8,000.

The City of Trussville web site records that 287 residential units were built between 1936 and 1938 as part of the New Deal federal programs to provide housing, employment and stimulate the economy still suffering from the Great Depression.  The 615 acre suburban development was constructed on land unsuitable for farming, the former 'Slag Heap Village' taking its unpleasant name from the metal waste from a former iron furnace.  

"The homes were sturdily built with indoor plumbing, running water, electricity and amenities rare at the time in much of Alabama" records the city web site.  Parks, paved streets and sidewalks were the norm.  "Trussville children in the 50s enjoyed an uncomplicated, small-town life. Children entertained themselves by walking up and down the street playing on the Mall, and swimming in the Cahaba.  Most of families has only one car or no vehicle, but a bus went daily into Birmingham in the morning and came back that afternoon."

Trussville incorporated in 1947, absorbing both the Cahaba Village (the development) and 'Old Trussville.  The next year, the government deeded all park property to the town. 

An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 43

by Glenn N. Holliman

World War II Ends for an Alabama Family

In July 1944, the American Army broke out of the hedgerows of Normandy, France and after heavy fighting by September pushed the Nazi war machine beyond Paris and almost to the German border.  Then the rains began, foul weather that engulfed my Uncle Melton Holliman’s medical unit near the Colmar Pocket close to the Rhine River. 

As I wrote in my last World War II article, Melton, age 36, sleeping rough with an evacuation unit, became ill, high blood pressure, and was shipped back to England.  His condition was so serious he returned to the States, his time in Europe over.  By the summer of 1945, he was discharged and returned to his career as a pharmaceutical salesman in Mobile, Alabama.

My father, Bishop Holliman, left Boston in August 1944 escorting what must have been the slowest convoy in the North Atlantic, a 35 day crossing.  His destroyer, the Barker, a World War I ship of 900 tons, delivered a flotilla of tankers and oil barges into Falmount, England.  There the ship pushed off into the English Channel and almost engaged in gunfire with three English destroyers who the captain had mistaken for German E-Boats.  No harm done except some lost sleep.

After a few days patrolling off Cherbourne, France the ship escorted empty transports back to Falmouth and then to Belfast, Ireland.  There my father rented a bicycle and pedaled into the Irish county side.  Back on convoy duty, his ship sailed to the Azores.  There for two days he went ashore, played some baseball and swan in clear blue seas.  Another three weeks of escort duty brought my father back to Boston.

While my father plowed the ocean that summer and autumn, my Uncle Ralph Holliman crossed the Channel from his English posting, along with his air corp transport unit.  He had the best duty of all three brothers, stationed not far from Paris for the rest of the European War. A clerk, he made rank of sergeant, and even obtained an 8 day leave to England.

Left, Ralph at a desk, not in France, but years later at work.  He climbed the corporate ladder quickly moving his family eleven times in twelve years.

Below, Ralph wrote from France describing V-E Day in Paris!

With the surrenders of Germany and Japan in spring and summer of 1945, Ralph came home the summer of 1945 to his young wife, Motie and entered Birmingham-Southern College on the G.I. bill.  When their first child, Pamala, came along, he left school and went to work for American Bakeries, venturing into a long and lucrative career with that national company.


Left, Motie, Ralph's young wife and my mother, Gerry Stansberry Holliman, meeting for the first time in February 1945 in Irondale.  They were two of the three war brides of World War II, the other being Virginia Holliman Cornelius.

Back to my father – He had reconnected with Miss Geraldine Stansberry of Philadelphia in June 1944.  The stars must have been in alignment.  They had met in September 1942 and while sparks flew for my future mother, not so with my father.  She wrote him often; he seldom replied evidently not ready to settle down.  The summer of 1944 was different.  He fell in love, deeply and by October 1944 when docked for a month in Boston, invited her up and they spent time together. 

February 1945, Bishop finally received leave to go home to Irondale, Alabama (after sailing to the Caribbean and serving as a target for US submarines firing practice torpedoes). Gerry came down from Knoxville, Tennessee (her new home where she lived with her sister as her mother had died the year before). She stayed for a week with the Robert Daly’s, their home adjacent to the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, my grandparents at 2300 N. 3^rd Street.  Melton, now stationed at Foster Army Hospital, Jackson, Mississippi and on light duty, took leave also and the two brothers had a reunion. 

Left, my parents in February 1945.



Right in February 1945 in Irondale, left to right, Robert Daly, Bishop Holliman in uniform and his father, Ulyss Holliman.

The visit was a success, and four months later (after another cruise to Ireland and back), my parents married June 26, 1945 in Philadelphia where his ship was docked.  The Germans had surrendered on May 8^th, and on August 15^th, the Japanese did also.  By early September my father, along with thousands of others, received his discharge.  He had served 3 years and 10 months, most of the time as a radioman listening for German U-Boats.    His most dangerous service had been at the 1943 invasion of Sicily when his ship was bombed by the Luftwaffe.

Right a summer day in 1945 in Irondale, Alabama before my father, Bishop Holliman, far right was discharged from the Navy.  Left to right, Vena Daly, Patti Holliman, Virginia Holliman Cornelius, Bob Daly, Gerry Holliman and her new husband, Bishop.

Christmas 1945, a brother-in-law (below) was still overseas, my Aunt Virginia Holliman’s high school beau and since 1942 husband, Walter Cornelius. He shipped to the Central Pacific in 1945, and spent months on the island of Saipan.  He would not get home until 1946.  Virginia (right) had given birth to their first daughter, Carol, in 1944.

It would be the Christmas of 1946 before all were home to enjoy a grand family reunion.  World War II was over, the veterans found jobs and the Baby Boomer generation soon followed!

My father all his life remained modest about his long service in the Navy.  Yet he and my uncles, indeed the whole family sacrificed as did millions of others that first half of the 1940s.  

Happily the Holliman family of Irondale, Alabama suffered no deaths or physical wounds.  But the world, their world, would never be the same.  

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

The Seventh Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman

William Ralph Holliman, 1924, Part VI
by Glenn N. Holliman


Success in Corporate America


There were three war time marriages in the Ulyss and Pearl Holliman family – Virginia and Walter Cornelius in January 1942, Ralph and Motie Chism in February 1943 and Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery in June 1945. 

Below, two new sister-in-laws, Motie and Gerry Holliman, Bishop’s wife, in Irondale, Alabama in front of the Holliman home at 2300 3^rd Avenue,  February 1945.

With the war over, Ralph took the G.I. Bill and returned to Birmingham-Southern College.  Motie and Ralph joined in the production of Baby Boomers when in 1947, their first child, Pamela Holliman was born. Katherine, a second daughter, entered the world in 1951.  With his family growing, Ralph took a job as a clerk with the local branch of the American Bakery Company in Birmingham.  It was a fateful choice as Ralph’s skills were appreciated, and he began a career of 37 years with the same company.

It is tempting to see something of Ralph’s career in William H. Whyte’s best selling book The Organizational Man, a 1950s treatise on corporate America and the men (yes, mainly men at that time although his sister, Virginia Holliman Cornelius, was a pioneering exception) who ran America’s businesses.  With each promotion and increase in responsibilities, heads of households had to move their families from branch office to branch plant and so forth. 

During their marriage Motie and Ralph moved 17 times, and Pam attended seven schools by the 7^th grade!  The cities tumbled by: New Orleans, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Atlanta, Dallas and finally Chicago which became their home for 22 years. In 1993, Motie and Ralph moved to their retirement home in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where Ralph lives to this day.

The U.S. economy was rapidly expanding, along with a population demanding televisions, appliances, air conditioning, bigger and newer automobiles and houses.  The consumer age was born, and the GDP of America kept going up, up and up.

Ralph Holliman in the company attire of his generation – white shirt and tie.  No computer on his desk in this early 1950s photograph.  Letters were done by dictation, generally to the female secretary. Direct dial telephones spread rapidly in the 1950s, and one no longer had to wait for an operator.  Hard to believe in the 21^st Century, but families and businesses often had to share a party-line, that is one could pick up the telephone and hear a conversation of others on the ‘line’.  And the phone would not be available until that person had finished their call!

Next - the 1950s....

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Homer Bishop Holliman, 1919

the Fifth Child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman

As the war came to a close, Bishop Holliman wed the girl, Geraldine Stansbery, whom he had met while on liberty in Philadelphia in 1942.  They kept in touch, and on June 26, 1945,  married in Philadelphia.  When Japan surrendered, Bishop was discharged and in September 1945, he returned to Birmingham-Southern College.  As with millions of others, he used the G.I. Bill to pay for his education and support the family.  Government subsidized housing in Elyton Village near 'Southern' provided shelter as Gerry and Bishop established their family. Bishop in 1947 started teaching at David Lipscomb Junior High. Later he taught history at the new Shades Valley High School, and in summers earned a M.Ed. from the University of Alabama.

Above, Bishop had a new wife and an old car, a 1937 Chevrolet in 1946.  Thirteen million soldiers came home, restarted their lives and caught up on family life.  Millions of babies were soon born, and the 'Boomer' generation was created.  Over a ten year period, Bishop and Gerry became the parents of three children - Glenn (1946), Becky (1950) and Alice (1956).  

Below, Lula Hocutt Caine was 88 years old when this photograph was made in 1949.  Bishop was 29, and the three year old in the bottom of the picture, was his hyper-active son, Glenn Holliman, born 1946.  Grandma Caine, as she was known, was born in 1861 and lost her own father, Manassetts Hocutt, to the Battle of Stones River in 1863.  Imagine, she lived through the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II and the Korean War before passing away in 1957!

And as did millions of young American families, the Hollimans moved to the suburbs - Trussville, Alabama a few miles north of Irondale in 1950.  Below, Bishop's family in 1951 - a two-bedroom, one bath home now on the Historical Register in Trussville.  The house cost approximately $7,000, or about 7 times the price of a new Plymouth or Ford. 

 In 1951, Bishop Holliman made approximately $1,500 for teaching school.  Over Christmas that year, he worked at the post office and bought the family a Motorola 17 inch, black and white television, for almost $200, a significant portion of his annual income!

The dog in the photo was named Sport, but he came down with mange, and in those days, the skin disease could not be cured.  I remember the police came to the house, took the dog to the back yard behind the garage and shot him.  Mother kept me inside.

Note: The information and opinions expressed in these family biographies are those of the writer alone. Comments, corrections and additions are most welcome. The purpose of these articles is to capture a period and family in American history and to pass this legacy along to future generations who share the common bond of family.

Plan now to attend the Holliman and Associated Families Genealogical Round Table at the Fayette County, Alabama Civic Center, 10 am to 3 pm, Saturday, October 15, 2011. For information and reservations for lunch, contact Glenda Norris at gnorris@bcbsal.org or Glenn Holliman at Glennhistory@gmail.com.  Sessions to include Tracing the Holymans from England to Alabama, Holliman Farm Sites in Fayette County and sharing of information on Associated Families.  All invited, including the Holliman social at the Rose House Inn, Fayette, 5:30 pm to 9 pm, Friday, October 14th.