An Alabama Family in World War II, Part 38

by Glenn N, Holliman

Letters of my Grandmother, Fall 1943

In August 1943, Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman, ages 59 and 55, of Irondale, Alabama saw their oldest son, Melton P. Holliman, b 1908, inducted in the U.S. Army. Two young sons, Bishop, b. 1919, U. S. Navy, and Ralph, b. 1925, U.S. Army, had been called to the colors earlier.  Now the fourth and last son, Euhal, b. 1914, and father of three pre-school children, had received notice.  

Son-in-law, Walter Cornelius was in training, but there are fewer letters to trace his war as he was state-side until 1945. His wife, Virginia, b 1922, was able to travel with him to several of his postings.

Left, Walter and Virginia, in California, a young couple a long way from Alabama.

Pearl wrote from September to November 1943 numerous letters.  Exerts are below.

“Well, I guess Euhal will have to go in a few months.  It looks like all the men will go up to (age) #38.  We are doing our part as best we can and looking forward to you boys all coming home soon.  May the Lord bless and keep you. Love, Mother H.

We had a bond rally in Irondale last nite and us women are to go from house to house to sell bonds.”

Above, forty years after the war, 1985, beginning with Vena on the far left, Loudelle, Bishop, Ralph, Virginia, Ida and Euhal, closest to the camera.

My father, Bishop, had just returned from the Mediterranean where his destroyer provided vital shell fire at the invasion beach in Gela, Sicily and experienced a Luftwaffe attack at Palermo.  The USS Butler returned to Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Bishop was sent for refresher code training at Cisco Bay, Maine before transfer to the USS Barker later that month.  June 1943 until June 1945, he would spend approximately 75% of his time at sea escorting convoys.

A great deal of my grandmother’s letters had to do with sharing changing address of her sons in training and assignments.  That month of September 1943, she wrote Bishop:

“Ida (Melton’s wife) just called; she had just got a wire.  Melton is in Abilene, Texas at Camp Barkley.  He came through Irondale and Birmingham last Friday.  Too bad all of you have to come so close to home and can’t stop.  Be sure and write to him.  He will be lonely.”

Right, Melton in autumn, 1943, training as a medic in the Army.

Bishop, Ralph and Melton, all three, at one time during the war traveled by train through Irondale within sight of their grandmother Lula Caine’s house.

"Bishop called Saturday night, and Motie (Ralph’s wife) got a telegram from Ralph, both in New York (Bishop and Ralph).  Wouldn’t it be grand if they could have run into each other…Jr. Caine (a nephew of Pearl’s) came home last week.  He really is a good-looking man now, weight 174 pd.  He had not been home in over two years.

Ira and Patsy (Melton’s 1-year old daughter) came out last week.  Patsy is some smart girl.  Virginia, Mary and Vena say the new boy (Bob Daly, b. 10/1943) looks like me.  

I tell them it does not.  You know you can’t tell who they look like when so young.”

Right, 1952, Ulyss, Pearl and Bishop

Pearl wrote in October about Ralph who had been stationed in Reno, Nevada:

“We finally heard from Ralph.  He is somewhere in England. Motie got a cable from him.  I sure was glad to hear from him….They have just announced London was bombed last night and a dance hall bombed with lots of soldiers and girls killed. Ralph wrote he had not been to London yet so he must be close by. So he needs our prayers.

I hope he will never go near a dance hall.  If bombs don’t fall. They are loaded with sin bombs.”

My grandmother’s language is disjointed, but she believed dancing was sinful.  Her education ended in the 8^th grade in a rural Fayette County, Alabama school.  Raised Methodist. she and Ulyss joined the evangelical Christian Alliance Gospel Tabernacle in Birmingham in the mid-1930s.  Their adult children remained Methodist or Baptist, and a mild rift occurred between the generations.

Left, Ulyss Holliman, second from the right, in a Birmingham News photograph, ca 1950, an elder in the Gospel Tabernacle Church.

Next posting, letters from Bishop at sea, Ralph in England and Melton in Texas.

My Grandmother's Wall Photographs, Part 7

by Glenn N. Holliman

This posting continues to examine the wall collage of my grandmother, Pearl Caine Holliman of Irondale, Alabama.  She and her husband, Ulyss S. Holliman, had seven children and nineteen grandchildren.  The collage today is held by the first of the cousins born, Mary Daly Herrin.  Previous sections of the collage can be seen in earlier posts.

The numbered pictures may be seen in the next photograph below.

23. Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955) with Robert W. Daly, Jr. (b 1943) at her feet accepts the first door to door delivery of U.S. Mail at her home at 2300 N. 3^rd Street in Irondale, Alabama. Due to her efforts, the post was delivered to Irondale homes, and one no longer had to cross the dangerous and busy railroad tracks to get to the post office. This picture ran in the Woodlawn, Alabama newspaper in 1944. My grandmother was 57 at the time.

24. Dressed in their Sunday best, Ralph and his brother, Bishop, pose by the Daly house, probably around 1937. I suspect Ralph did not enjoy that suit too long. A growth spurt would soon send him towering over all his siblings to 6’4” or more.

25. Bishop holding a football in the 1920s

26. Virginia Holliman Cornelius and a wagon in the 1920s.

The following are obscured in the numbered copy, but can be seen more clearly in the next post and of course in the clear photo above.

27. Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011) clutches her doll. Virginia was the sixth child

born to Pearl and Ulyss, and the only daughter born in Irondale. Vena and Loudelle  were both natives of Fayette, Alabama, 45 miles to the west near the Mississippi

border.

28. Anne Holliman Phillips was the first daughter born to Euhal and Edna 

Westbrook Holliman.  This is a beautiful photograph and can be appreciated in the top picture.

29. This photograph of the entire Ulyss and Pearl family must have been made around

1930. Left to right, Ulyss, Ralph, Pearl, Virginia (eye obscured in picture), Melton in

back, Bishop, Vena, Euhal and Loudelle on right.  Ulyss moved his family to Irondale from Fayette, Alabama during World War I. 

He worked until retirement in 1949 for the Birmingham Electric Company, which ran the street cars in the 'Magic City'.  His job was to repair the wooden frames and seats of the trolleys.  Four years after he retired, the last street car rolled through Birmingham, all replaced by buses.  Below, the full collage.
 

More next post....

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 desablai@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

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

Let's save the past for the future! If you have photographs, letters, memorabilia or research you wish to share, please contact me directly at glennhistory@gmail.com. Several of us have an on-going program of scanning and preserving Holyman and related family records. Don't just let your aunt or uncle's genealogical work languish unread and deteriorating in an attic.Write us please and tell us of your items.Thanks to the Internet, we are able to scan, upload to the web (with your permission) and return the materials to you. - GNH

My Grandmother's Wall Photographs, Part 3

by Glenn N. Holliman

We have been examining the pictures that hung in the living room corner of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman in Irondale, Alabama.  Below is another view of the wall at Christmas time 1945.

The picture is mislabeled 1944, but it is Christmas 1945.  The picture of Virginia Holliman Cornelius is in the left corner, and Ralph Holliman next in line to the right of the tree.  Blurred out by the flash bulb are Melton Holliman and Bishop Holliman.  The picture displayed of Melton (1908-1958) is probably the one below.  Melton's daughter, Pati Holliman Hairston, has kindly shared numerous pictures of her father with me. 

Melton served in France as a medic from July 1944 until high blood pressure sent him to the hospital and eventually home in December 1944.  He was discharged in the summer of 1945 after final service at an Army hospital in Jackson, Mississippi.  Unfortunately his health remained precarious with a first heart attack in 1955 and a fatal one in 1958 in Mobile, Alabama, much, much too young.  He had learned pharmacy from his Uncle Floyd Caine, and became a leading and admired pharmaceutical salesman and Baptist lay leader.

Christmas 1945 would have been special for the three cousins below.  Pati, Melton's daughter, is far left.  Mary Daly Herrin holds on to her new brother, Robert W. Daly, Jr.
One suspects most of those presents around their grandparents' Christmas Tree were for the grandchildren of which there were 11 by that winter.

Next the Sailor on the Wall...

Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman and their Descendants

by Glenn N. Holliman

Vena and Robert Daly, Sr. and their Influence on the Holliman Family

In the mid 1920s, Robert Daly, Sr. began working for American Traders Bank in Woodlawn, Alabama.  Later it became the American National Bank of Birmingham.  In addition to being manager of the Woodlawn branch, he would become as a vice president of the larger corporation.

Robert loved to travel and vacation in Florida.  Above are Vena and Robert in 1935.  Robert was incredibly generous with his time and company to the siblings of Vena.  He made himself a beloved figure to the three youngest Holliman children - Bishop, Virginia and Ralph - who often went with the Dalys to Panama City and Daytona Beach, Florida.  Both Vena and Robert were tremendous role models for their generation, and later for their many nieces, nephews and grandchildren.  After the death of Pearl Caine Holliman in 1955, the center of Holliman gatherings moved to Vena and Robert's 'white house' on the east side of Irondale.

Vena and Robert would have two children, Mary Daly Herrin, born 1932 and Robert Daly, Jr., born 1943. Above is Mary in 1936, age 4 with her father at a Florida beach.  They both seem formally dressed for a stroll in the sand!  Below in winter 1944, Mary and her young brother, Bob, attempt to enjoy a light snow.  In the background is the Daly house built in the early 1930s, adjacent to the Ulyss and Pearl family home at 2300 3rd Avenue, Irondale, Alabama.  

Sadly, Robert, Sr. suffered for years from congestive heart failure and died suddenly at his home in 1959.  In the 1960s, Vena served as a sorority house mother at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi.  In 1971, she remarried Phil Buckheit, a successful newspaper publisher from Spartanburg, South Carolina.  After he died in 1977, she returned to Birmingham, and lived in a condo on Red Mountain next to her sister, Virginia Holliman Cornelius. Vena died 1990.  One of her grand daughters, Iris Daly Williams, recently reminisced that visiting her grandmother in the 1980s was like visiting a queen.  Vena had a presence and gracefulness that her family admired and loved, as this nephew can attest.

Next the third child of Ulyss and Pearl Holliman....


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.  My thanks to Mary Daly Herrin for allowing the use of these materials.