A Remembrance of Mary Daly Herrin (1931-2024)

 Ever the Family Hostess for her Generation by Glenn N. Holliman

Mary Daly Herrin, vibrant, energetic with a smile and laughter, was a constant in my family’s life and in the lives of many cousins and her aunts and uncles.

At age five, I remember the night in 1951 when Mary said her wedding vows with Elliot Clayton Herrin, Jr. in Irondale, Alabama.

My family lived in nearby Trussville from 1950 until 1952, as my father taught at Shades Valley High School. Later he accepted a position with the Social Security Administration, first in Birmingham and in time offices in Tennessee, South Carolina, and in the early 1960s in Gadsden, Alabama.

Why do I remember that evening in 1951 so clearly? A song was playing on the radio —
“Goodnight Irene, Goodnight Irene, I will see you in my dreams.”  To this day it echoes in my mind, just as do the many times Mary and her family welcomed us — the out‑of‑state relatives — into their homes.

Mary (1931–2024) was the firstborn child of Robert W. Daly, Sr. (1901-1959) and his young bride, Vena Holliman (1909-1990), both of Irondale, Alabama. She grew up surrounded by family stories and generations who valued being together. Her father, a Woodlawn, Alabama banker, often took Mary and the family on fishing trips to Florida in the 1930s—memories that became part of family lore.

Clearwater, Florida in 1934, left to right Virginia Holliman Cornelius, Mary, Vena and Bishop Holliman, this writer's father.

     

This 1939 photograph is of Mary, her grandmother Pearl, Charles H. Ferrell and Carolyn Ferrell Tatum. Pearl was 51 years old. 

       Mary poses in 1943 with her grandfather Ulyss in Irondale.  The family chicken house is pictured in the background.

                                          Mary, Vena and Mary's brother, Robert W. Daly, Jr. (1943-2024)

 

 Mary's 1951 wedding photograph announcing her engagement to Elliot Clayton Herrin, Jr. a classmate at Howard College.  Mary and E.C.’s 1951 wedding marked the beginning of a life built around hospitality and family ties. They made their homes in Irondale, and over the years it became a gathering place for generations.

In 1953, Mary posed with her grandmother Pearl (1888-1955) on the left, her mother Vena and sitting holding Mary's first borne Elliot Clayton Herrin, III. (1953-2021) is Lula Hocutt Caine (1861-1957).  Known in the family as Grandma Caine, her father died at the Civil War Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1863. Mary and E.C. would welcome three more children into their family - Linda Herrin Bradley, Suzanne Herrin Wilder and David Herrin.  

Mary and E.C. Open their Home for a Summer Reunion in 1968

The summer of 1968 at Mary and E.C.'s home in Irondale, the former home of Robert and Vena Daly.  Mary is sitting next to E.C. who is holding David Herrin on his lap. The writer is standing on the 3rd row far left, just back from passing the Army physical. Six months later I would be in Vietnam.  Mary, Vena, Motie and Loudell all wrote to me while I was overseas, just as they had done for my father, Bishop, standing far right, third row, during World War II. Pictured are Ralph Holliman and Walter Cornelius, also WWII overseas veterans. E.C. served in the Navy during the Cold War.

1970, Mary and daughter Linda Herrin Bradley at a 1970 reunion in Irondale. In the 2000s, following in the footsteps of her parents Linda has opened her home on numerous occasions for reunions of the extended families.

The 1982 Reunion 

What Mary and E.C. did in 1982 and numerous other times, was to welcome the clan to their home in Irondale, Alabama.  Mary is sitting on the back left in a white blouse with a red blaze on her shoulder. E.C., standing in the back row far left, must be wondering what his water bill would be as sixty-three relatives came for lunch!  

A Historical Note:

Every one pictured in these group photographs was descended from or in a relationship with a descendant of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, both born in Fayette County, Alabama in the 1880s, one generation after the Civil War. Both had limited educations, Ulyss only finishing the sixth grade.  They entered life before electric lights, automobiles, airplanes and radios. Ulyss's father, John Thomas Holliman (1844-1930), fought in seven battles in the Confederate Army.  None in this direct paternal Holliman line, since the arrival in Jamestown, Virginia of Christopher Hollyman in 1650 (1618-1692), ever owned enslaved persons.  The ancestors of Ulyss migrated from Virginia to the Carolinas arriving in Alabama in 1836, occupying land recently occupied by the Choctaw nation before their removal to what is now Oklahoma.

The 1996 Reunion

We were older, children had grown up, new children were present and for some marriage partners were different. Sadly the angel Gabriel had blown his horn for several aunts and uncles. Mary is middle left, now with gray hair.  For some of us, the hairs on our heads were fewer. Mary was still there—her smile just as warm. She remained the steady center, holding us together.

 Mary and Bishop Holliman (1919-2018), her uncle but more like a brother in 2011, again at Mary and E.C.'s home in Irondale.  

Mary (1931-2024) and E.C. Herrin (1930-2015)

They generously opened their hearts and homes to the descendants of the Holliman, Daly and Herrin families for which their many relatives are grateful.

From Generation to Generation

The Passing of the Grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman by Glenn N. Holliman

It is said that funerals become a time for family reunions, and so it was recently with the passing of a gentle, vibrant soul, Jean Holliman, the fourth of six children of Euhal and Edna Westbrook Holliman.  Sadly, Jean's death was the most recent of the loss of four other grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman in the past few years.

                 Euhal, Edna and Jean, 1985

 Since 2023, we have lost cousins Terry Holliman, Nancy Carol Cornelius Morton,  Mary Daly Herrin and Robert W. Daly, Jr.

To refresh memories there were nineteen children born to the seven children of Ulyss (1884-1965) and Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) of Fayette County and later in life, Irondale, Alabama.  The seven children in chonological birth order are Melton (1908-1958), Vena (1909-1990), Euhal (1912-1989), Loudell (1914-1998), Bishop (1919-2018), Virginia (1922-2011) and Ralph (1924-2017).

Nineteen grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl were born between 1931 and 1956. Thirteen survive as of this writing.

Attending Jean's funeral in Trussville, Alabama were left to right Jean's brother Bill, his family Kathryn Holliman Woods, Kyle Finley (Joey's husband). Rossi Arnold (Bill's grand daughter), Joey Holliman (Rossi's mother), then Bill's wife Beverly Holliman and Bill's brother-in-law Wally Allen, husband of Tommie Holliman.

Also present left to right, this writer, Glenn N. Holliman, Wally Allen next to his daughter Holly, Tommie Holliman Allen, Brian Allen, Linda Herrin Bradley, David Herrin and Alice Holliman Murphy.  Other family members, Nancy Holliman Justice and her husband Bobby were present but out of camera range.  Nancy lives in Southaven MS about a 5 minute drive from her mother Ann, the third born child of Euhal and Edna.  Nancy's two sons Michael and Jeffery live in Dothan, Alabama.

The family of Euhal and Edna had lost Jerry Holliman in 2003 and his twin, Terry Holliman on December 28, 2023.  Bill Holliman emailed me the following on Terry's life.

"Terry passed on Dec 28, 2023 at his home in Green Valley AZ. He joined the Anchorage, Alaska Fire Department as a volunteer while serving in the Army. His duty station in the Army was in the Federal Building in downtown Anchorage. The fire station was across the street from the Federal Building. He retired from the fire department with the rank of assistant fire chief.  He had four children with Georgi Hercha, his first wife.  Terry Ann died at birth, and three who survive him, Bronwyn, Jodi and Jason. His second wife Deborah had a child, Samantha, from a previous marrieage that Terry adopted."  Picture right are Debbie and Terry in 2001.

Like Terry and Jerry, their brother Bill was attracted to Alaska, going to college there and working in the airline industry. He returned to Birmingham to the employment of another airline and over twenty-five years was stationed at five different airports. His next career move led to being a freight customs broker, and then a position with the Customs and Border Protection agency in Memphis, finally retiring for good in 2019.

 .

The picture left is of Jerry Holliman with his nephew Brian Allen in 2002.

Terry's twin brother Jerry had entered the Army at the same time as Terry, only he was sent to Germany.  When Jerry left the Army, he joined Terry in Anchorage.  As noted, Jerry died July 16, 2003 while employed as a supervisor with Alaska Airline."

This writer, who spent the first two weeks of his life at the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman home on 3rd Avenue in Irondale in 1946, remembered a time in the early 1960s when Jean joined me on a walk on the property pointing out where Grandmother Holliman had located her chicken house. There was Christmas 1960 when Bobby Daly and I played touch football with Jerry and Terry on the Daly lawn in Irondale.  Such memories of cousins, the aunts and uncles, form the fabric of a person's life.

In my next articles, will celebrate the lives of departed cousins Mary Daly Herrin, Robert W. Daly, Jr. and Nancy Carol Cornelius Morton.

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. 

Lost Pictures Found of the 1968 Reunion, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman


1968 - A Summer of Discontent 

For those of us old enough to remember 1968, it was a wretched year.  Two political assassinations, inter-cities burning due to unresolved racial strive, an angry presidential election season, a war bitterly dividing a nation and the resulting tragedy of hundreds of young Americans and Vietnamese dying weekly.

I was thin as a rail, newly married, just graduated from college and headed for graduate school in history.  Current events intervened and Uncle Sam called me (read drafted) for military duty.  That July 1968, my young wife, Lynn, and I traveled to Gadsden, Alabama  from our home in Tennessee where I boarded a bus, traveled to Montgomery's military receiving station and passed my physical.  In August, I stepped across a line swearing to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  Six months later I was in Vietnam.

Below, left to right, Motie, Ralph's wife, myself,
 Lynn and my sister, Becky, all of 18 in the background.



That July, 1968  E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin opened their home and spacious grounds for a Holliman family reunion.  Grandpa Uylss Holliman had died in 1965, and three years later a number of his children and their offspring gathered in Irondale, Alabama.  This was a happy respite for me, facing a difficult immediate future.  I remember the picnic as it was yesterday and not a half century ago.

Patti Holliman Hairston, Melton and Ida's daughter, was present with her first child, Holly.

Virginia Holliman Cornelius in the foreground.  In 1968, Virginia was an up and coming banker en route career-wise to become in her time the highest ranking female banking executive in Alabama history. My mother, Gerry, stands behind her and E.C. Herrin in background.

For some reason Charles and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell and Ralph Holliman posed with arms folded.  Ralph's daughter Kathy, holds his arm.  Something about Holliman formality.  It was a time with men dressed in white shirts and ties for a picnic.  That would change in a generation.

Vena Holliman Daly, the matriarch of the family at that time, below with her niece, Carol Cornelius.  Carol now lives with her husband Chuck Morton in retirement village for North Americans in Mexico.  

For some reason fate decried that of all the male cousins, I drew the straw to go to blighted war in South East Asia.  As a result of passing my physical (half in my group failed), I was soon at Fort Benning, Georgia.  The brief Alabama reunion in the rear view mirror, it was a time of testing and maturing. 

Funny, I still feel naive and still trying to develop a bit of wisdom, this being 50 plus years later.  I wonder if the many grandchildren of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman have similar thoughts as we climb remorselessly into our very senior years?

By late October 1968, basic training was over (above), and even thinner,  I was soon en route to advanced training at Ft. Dix, New Jersey and Ft. Hamilton, New York.  By February 1, 1969, I was with the 1st Infantry Division north of Saigon, along with another 500,000 young Americans in an ill-fated attempt to intervene in an Asian civil war.

Next posting, back to World War II, and how our Alabama family held up during the crushing year of 1944.

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.

Well Nigh Fifty Years On

by Glenn N. Holliman

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.

The Passing of a Generation, Part 1

The last child of Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman has Passed, and the Greatest Generation comes to an End

By Glenn N. Holliman

My father, Homer Bishop Holliman, left picture 2002, born December 17, 1919, breathed his last at 3:10 p.m. on Saturday, June 9, 2018.  He was surrounded at his Cookeville, Tennessee hospital bed by his three children – Becky, Alice and yours truly.  And my two children, Grace and Chris and Becky’s son, Bryan.  His last illness was only a few days and mercifully largely free of pain and discomfort.

My Dad lived through 40% of the history of the United States, his days largely spent in the 2oth Century America.  A prolific writer, he recorded stories of his family, his growing up in Alabama and his observations on the time and culture in which he moved and had his being.

His parents, Ulyss and Pearl, born respectively in 1884 and 1888 in rural Fayette County, Alabama, were descendants of 17^th century immigrants from the British Isles.  In 1836, my branch of the Hollimans migrated to west Alabama from the Carolina's.

Dad’s grandfather, John Thomas Holliman, 1844-1930, photo right 1900, fought in seven major battles for the Confederacy in the 1860s serving under Braxton Bragg, James Longstreet and Robert E. Lee.  He returned home in 1865, became a ‘dirt farmer’, had six sons, the last being Ulyss.  My father knew his grandfather and remembered him as a tall ancient man, thin with a long white beard.  John Thomas Holliman was almost illiterate and died a year before his wife, Martha Jane Walker.  My great grandmother’s father, Samuel Walker, experienced the three days at Gettysburg and the siege of Petersburg, including the tragedy at the Crater.

Ulyss married Pearl Elmer Caine, a neighboring girl, when she was 18 around 1906.  (Pictured below in 1945.) He is listed in the 1910 census as a farmer.  Soon the children began to appear – Melton in 1908, Vena in 1909, Euhal in 1912 and Loudelle in 1914.  Some time in those years, the family left the farm and moved to the village of Fayette.  There Ulyss found employment in the local lumber mill.

Their world was rapidly changing – oil lamps were giving way to electric lights and horses to motorized carriages.  And 50 or so miles away by railroad, a ‘magic’ city, powered by coal, limestone, iron ore and northern capital, was growing rapidly offering economic opportunity and a way for a father to better support his four children.  So in 1917, this Holliman family moved to a suburb of Birmingham – Irondale -  a railroad switching yard for a growing number of freight and passenger trains that tied an emerging southern economy to a more financially robust America.

Before long, three additional children came along – Bishop in 1919, Virginia in 1922 and Ralph in 1925.  Pearl was 37 and Ulyss 41, when their family was complete.  Ulyss, good with his hands, took employment as a carpenter with the Birmingham Electric Company, a corporation which ran the municipal street car line.  When my grandfather was born, there were no street cars in Birmingham and when he died in 1965, there were no street cars.  But in between these technological eras, he worked 32 years repairing the wooden cars and supporting a family of nine persons.

That move from the land, where countless ancestors had toiled, to a newly industrialized urban area changed everything for my father’s generation.  As President Franklin Roosevelt remarked in the 1930s, this generation had a rendezvous with destiny, and so it was to be.

Continued soon to Part 2….