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.

Birthday # 96!!

by Glenn N. Holliman

Homer Bishop Holliman has another birthday!

Below age 96, he takes his daily walk and enjoys a cup of cappuccino ever afternoon.
  He has lived as long as his maternal grandmother, Lula Hocutt Caine (1861-1957), a native of Fayette County, Alabama who moved to Irondale, Alabama during World War I.  Her three daughters and their families followed, finding employment in the Magic City of Birmingham, a steel and coal metropolis, which sprang out of a cotton field in the early 1870s.

Bishop, my father, was born December 17, 1919, the year of the over-reaching Versailles Treaty was signed and an angry young German veteran, Adolph Hitler, joined the Nazi Party.  At age 22, Bishop was in the U.S. Navy preparing to brave the U-Boat submarines of a revived Germany under the leadership a tyrannical dictator.  Two of his brothers, Melton and Ralph, followed him into that conflict.

The Irondale of the 1920s and 30s, a working class suburb, a long street car ride from the center of Birmingham, was Bishop's childhood.  At age 9, his mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) let him stay home to hear Herbert Hoover take the oath of office, broadcast through the family's brand new radio.  A brother-in-law, Robert W. Daly, Sr., eventually a prominent banker, gave Bishop's siblings and the boy rides in his open top roadster.  The roads in the late 1920s and early 30s were still red clay or sand around Irondale.  The family had a chicken house, electricity, a cow and eventually in 1936, indoor plumbing.

Below 1932 in Robert's roadster - Ralph, Virginia and Bishop

The house at 2300 3rd Avenue North looked over the switching yards of numerous rail lines.  The romance of the railroad infected Bishop, who for the rest of his life rode the train whenever possible.

After almost four years in World War II, he returned to Alabama with a bride from Philadelphia.  The couple had three children.  

The G.I. Bill allowed Bishop to finish college at Birmingham-Southern, a prelude to five years of teaching.  In 1952, he returned again to earn his living from Uncle Sam, this time an employee of the Social Security Administration, the old age retirement and disability program that his Republican father, Ulyss Holliman (1884-1965), had railed against as an infamous part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Bishop would retire as manager of the office in Cookeville, Tennessee.

Right, Bishop and Geraldine Stansbery, 1945 at Bishop's home in Irondale, Alabama.



Bishop thrived in Cookeville, becoming a prominent member of the community.  Over the years he was president of the Rotary, United Way, the library board, the Red Cross and the local railroad depot museum and always active in the local United Methodist Church.  The three children all attended Tennessee Tech, the local university and all met spouses there.  Today there are eight grandchildren and sixteen great grandchildren!

Below right, the family in 1966 in Tennessee - Becky, Glenn, Gerry, Alice and Bishop.            



Bishop has outlived his first two wives, good persons both, Geraldine Stansbery and Anne McLaughlin.  In 2000 he married Ellen Cox, a church friend from Gadsden, Alabama.  They make their home in Avilla, Indiana, a friendly community surrounded by Ellen's nieces and nephews.  Dad says it reminds him of Irondale, the home of his youth. 

 Above October 2015, the daily walk with Ellen and the ever faithful Bee Bee.

We can't pick our parents; Mother Nature does that for us.  My two sisters and I won life's lottery being the off spring of Geraldine Stansbery and Bishop Holliman.  Happy Birthday once again to one of the finest men in the world. - GNH

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 23

by Glenn N. Holliman

 The Allies Respond....

 Between May and September 1942, 14 German U-Boats prowled Gulf of Mexico waters sinking 58 ships of over 300,000 tons. - Alabama, The History of a Deep South State, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, 2004.  In the South Pacific the battles of the Solomon Islands continued with a fearful toil of the U.S. Navy.

Below, the USS Enterprise, the last U.S. carrier afloat in the eastern Solomons, takes punishment, but does not sink in the fall of 1942.
 
But the tide of war was changing....

"Between the 4th and 22nd November, 1942, the face of the war changed its entire expression.  On the 4th, (General Bernard) Montgomery won the battle of El Alamein.  On the 8th, American and British forces landed in French North Africa.  On the 22nd, the Russians closed the pincers behind the German 6th Army in Stalingrad." - Volume II of the Dairies & Letters of Harold Nicolson, Atheum, New York, 1967.

For Bishop Holliman, radio seaman from Irondale, Alabama, the war was heating up.  After 40 mm machine gun practice in Rhode Island, his destroyer, the USS Butler, began sea trials, sailing out of Philadelphia and into the North Atlantic of the New England coast.  It was October and November, and the sea was rough.  And so was the shakedown cruise.  

Below, the Butler, all of 1,000 tons in size, sailing from her commissioning port of Philadelphia in 1942.

Below, a letter to Bishop's sister, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, and his brother-in-law, Charles.  Recently, the Rev. Charles Ferrell had taken an appointment at the United Methodist Church in Jacksonville, Alabama as the senior pastor.   Bishop describes the fatigue and intensive training necessary to prepare the crew and ship for war duty, but does not forget niece and nephews.  

Notice his reference to the second front, the Allied invasion under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower of North Africa. Also, the sinking of a U-boat by another destroyer on post with the Butler.

"If you see a sub, don't report it.  Maybe it will sink us."

Below, the Charles Ferrell's and 'a new nephew', John Melton Ferrell, named after his uncle, Melton Pearson Ferrell (1908-1958).  Left to right, Charles Halford, Charles, Carolyn, John and Loudelle.  Loudelle and Charles wrote often to her brothers, Bishop, Ralph and Melton Holliman, during the war.

 Next post, more stories and photographs of an Alabama family at war....

Have questions about Holliman family history? 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!).
For additional information on Hollimans, check out http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ . 

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 13

by Glenn N. Holliman

A Marriage Launched, Two Brothers meet, Letters and a New Assignment....

Immediately after the wedding of Virginia Holliman and Walter Cornelius, January 30, 1942, Virginia went to work at the Woodlawn, Alabama National Bank, managed by her brother-in-law, Robert W. Daly, Sr.  No longer a student at the East Lake campus of Howard College, she was now a married business woman.  Starting as a teller, no one then could know she would climb the corporate ladder to become in the 1980s the first female vice president of the 1st Alabama National Bank!  Below, right, Virginia and Walter in late 1943 after he joined the Army.


During the winter of 1942, Walter worked as a civilian for the War Department in Childersburg, Alabama.  That required a long commute from their tiny apartment on N. 21st Street to the boom town where DuPont was building a chemical plant.  A hamlet of 500 in 1940, Childersburg swelled as 14,000 construction workers descended on the village and constructed the largest explosives plant in the South.  By the end of the war, 9,000 persons made the 'burg' their home.  During the early 1940s so many workers drove from Birmingham to Childersburg over a narrow, dirt road that a special commuter train had to be established. Forth to the Mighty Conflict, Alabama and World War II by Allen Cronenberg, University of Alabama Press, 1995 and a letter by Virginia Holliman Cornelius 1942.

In late 1943, Walter would be in the U.S. Army and eventually would serve in Saipan in 1945/46.  For several years Virginia would follow him to training bases in the U.S., gaining more career experience and, as with hundreds of thousands of other G.I. wives, acquired a broader perspective of the world.

By early March, 1942 Virginia's brother, Bishop Holliman, was on the move from his sonar training base in Key West, Florida to the Navy base in New Orleans.  He traveled by train from Miami to Jacksonville, changed to a Pullman and alighted at Pensacola, Florida the next morning for a quick visit with his brother, Melton, and sister-in-law, Ida Hughes Holliman who lived in Mobile, Alabama.  Ida is wearing his sailor cap. - Diary of Bishop Holliman 1942

Melton noted in a letter to Bishop that the government was now taking older men with dependents and "That means me and I am ready to go.  Guess that means the Army, and I will be a buck private." - Letter by Melton P. Holliman, 1942

Melton (1908-1958) would enter the U.S. Army a year later as a private and, due to frequent transfers and health problems, barely advanced in rank.  Melton was 35 years old when he was drafted, only a few months after adopting a long-sought child, Patti Holliman (Hairston), in the late spring of 1943.  Ida and Melton had married in 1932, and remained childless until Patti joyfully entered their lives and the lives of the larger Holliman family. 

It was wrenching sacrifice for Melton to leave his young 9 month old new baby behind to enter the Armed Forces.  Befitting his civilian profession as a pharmaceutical salesman, he served as a medic in England and France, arriving in France six weeks after D-Day.

Bishop wrote home to Irondale, Alabama that he had been assigned to a subchaser, the PC (later SC) 531, a vessel that would later see service in the Pacific.  Subchasers were built of wood fairly quickly in small boatyards on both coasts and the Great Lakes and Gulf regions. Many of the boatyards were small, family-owned businesses, only a few of which exist today. The navy wasted no time letting out contracts to fifty such boat yards. By the time the war ended 438 wooden  subchasers had been launched and commissioned, and the PC 531 was one of these fragile, underpowered ships.  A diagram of one is below is taken from the Internet as is the SC 531 history. Note the sonar cabin amidships.

He would never serve on the ship.  The patrol craft was not ready for sea, and Bishop had acquired the idea of joining the Navy Air Corps. After arriving in New Orleans, he proceeded to put in for a transfer to that elite body of fliers.  He was told to go home, get a birth certificate, some recommendations and report back.  He was on his way shortly for his first leave home, leaving a Navy career in submarine patrol craft behind him. 

Back in Irondale, Alabama, Bishop's mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955), had written often with news about the weather, family, friends and always with advice and a 'benediction' as she was a saintly, terribly worried mother.

"I think you can almost hear the typewriter. Ralph (the youngest son, b. 1924, a champion debater at Shades Cahaba High School in Homewood) is typing the debate (on which) he sure is working hard day and nite.  I think they go to Tuscaloosa one week from tomorrow (a University of Alabama debate tournament).  Oh, yes the Dalys (Robert and Vena Holliman Daly who lived next door) got them selves a new stove today.  It sure is nice, cost about $160.00 - some stove! (There is a bit of envy here in Pearl's letter.  According to the 1940 Federal Census, her husband's (Ulyss Holliman) income as a mechanic for the Birmingham Electric Company was $1,600. Robert Daly made considerably more as a bank manager.)

I do hope you get transferred in some other work that you will be satisfied in, and I would keep trying, if I were you.  If you don't look out for yourself, no one will do it for you.  (Bishop took the advice, and applied for the Naval Air Corps.)

We are thanking (sic) of you and our prayers are for you.  Wherever you go the Lord goes with you, and will take care of you.  When our country gets back to God, we will win this war.  So do all you can for the Lord as that is all that counts.  With much love, and God bless and keep you.  Mother H."  Letter February 1942 by Pearl C. Holliman, Irondale, Alabama
 

Next posting, a first leave home to Irondale, Alabama to see family and friends....

Have questions about Holliman family history? 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!).

 

Or join your many cousins at MyFamily.com and view an expanded Holliman family tree and many files on the history of the family.  Just write to glennhistory@gmail.com for an invitation.

 

 

How a World War changed an Alabama Family, Part 5

by Glenn N. Holliman

Summer 1941

22 June 1941, full of hubris and more than mildly insane, Adolph Hitler launched his war machine east against the Soviet Union.  Earlier that spring, his Wehrmacht had swallowed the Balkans, Greece and Crete and joined the Italians in North Africa.  German foreign minister Von Ribbentrop wrapped Nazi arms around Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Finland.  Britain, supported by her dominions Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, stood on the continental fringes of Europe facing foes Italy and Germany. 

German Panzer IIIs invaded Russian in what most of the world thought would be an easy conquest.  It was not to be.
n Panzer III tanks close to a border battle near Brest-Litovsk on June 22

Mad with ambition, a loathing of communism, racial and religious hatred and swollen with excessive confidence in his armies, Hitler hurled over 3 million men against another sadist dictator, Joseph Stalin, the communist autocrat of the largest geographical nation on the planet.  The battle of two titans commenced, and the world held its breath.

In the United States the World War would soon reach out and engulf an Alabama family....
 
The year before, 1940, Walter Cornelius, second row, far left in coat and tie, graduated from Shades Cahaba High School in Homewood, Alabama.  His future brother-in-law, Ralph Holliman, Class of 1942, sat near him in the middle of this group picture in the white and black shirt with the collar.  In early February 1942, Walter married Virginia Holliman, also Class of 1940.  Both Walter and Ralph would serve in the U.S. Army during the war - Walter in Saipan and Ralph in France.

From the memoirs of Bishop Holliman of Irondale, Alabama - "In the summer of 1941, I went back to Lake Junaluska, attended the Methodist Youth Conference at Montevallo College (and was elected president and interesting to note, my opponent was Howell Heflin, later U.S. Senator from Alabama) and worked intermittently at Hill's Grocery in Irondale, Alabama.  I am afraid I did not dwell a great deal on the prospects of the U. S. entering the war even that terrible summer in Europe."

Below Bishop Holliman 'concentrating' on his religious duties at  the Methodist Conference Center of Lake Junaluska, North Carolina in 1941.

In August 1941, a letter from his draft board sent Bishop scurrying back from a vacation in Florida with the Daly and Ferrell families. Checking in, Bishop was told he would be called in the fall.  Not anxious to join the U.S. Army, Bishop enlisted in the U.S. Navy, ready to go at a later date.

In the meantime, a girl friend, Gloria Zackey, who was a secretary  for Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company on 1st Avenue in Birmingham, recommended him for a temporary job, filing in chronological order cancelled checks.  "I was paid 75 cents an hour and thought a $26 a week pay check was pretty good."

Above, ten year old Mary Daly (Herrin) in a bathing cap suits typical of the period holds hands at Daytona Beach, Florida, August 1941 with her cousins Carolyn (Tatum) and Charles Halford Ferrell. The war would soon bring such vacations to a screening halt for most Americans.  Vena Holliman Daly and Loudelle Holliman Ferrell were Bishop, Virginia, Euhal and Ralph Holliman's sisters.

That same August, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rendezvoused in Newfoundland by ship with Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill of the United Kingdom.  Their military leaders met, and from the meetings at sea, was issued the Atlantic Charter, a just vision of a post-war world, declared boldly before the U.S. was formally in the war. Below, Roosevelt, Churchill and their staffs on the deck of the HMS Prince of Wales.

And again that summer of 1941, generally not noticed by many Americans, the State Department, utterly disgusted with Japan's continued war and invasion of China, initiated an embargo of the selling of U. S. petroleum to Japan.  For the militaristic government of Japan without oil, the clock began to tick rapidly toward a decision either to seize supplies in the Dutch East Indies or acquiesce to U.S. demands to cease their four year invasion of China. 

The government of new Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, a Japanese army general, refused to consider a withdrawal from China, and began plans to confront the U.S. militarily. Japan would decide to secure by violence the resources needed to maintain their military and civilian economy.  Time was running out in the Pacific, while most U.S. eyes were focused on the North Atlantic and Europe.  Below the Prime Minister of Japan who authorized the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"For ten years, Japan had been front page news, but I was not cognizant of how big a threat she was and I know that in the summer of 1941, I did not view that country as an enemy we would soon fight.  I guess all our attention was on Europe and I simply did not foresee future conflict with the 'Rising Sun'.  In later years I wondered how I could have been so uninformed - or ignorant - about what was happening in the Pacific." - Bishop Holliman

Next Posting, a Holliman joins the Navy....

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/ .

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