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.  

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.

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.

After 46 Years...a Trip Back in Time, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

Day One, March 5, 2015 continued....

We have left Chicago....headed west on my emotional return to Asia.  My mind drifts back to the summer of 1968....the summer I joined the U.S. Army, the summer the family gathered in Alabama....and Vietnam loomed darkly in my mind.

Below, at the home of E.C. and Mary Daly Herrin in Irondale, Alabama, many of the siblings and my cousins gathered. Three years had passed since Ulyss Holliman had died; ten since Pearl Caine Holliman (Grandmother Holliman) had died of a heart attack at age 67.

Left, Robert and Vena Holliman Daly had built their 'white house' in 1946 and there Mary and Bob Daly, their children finished growing up.  A few months after the group photograph (see below), the house was sold and demolished.  A business park now occupies this space along Highway US 70.

The photograph to the left was made in 1946 of Vena and Robert in front of their new home.  Robert was manager of a bank in Woodlawn.  The home has three large bedrooms, a huge kitchen, two baths, a long combination living and dinning room and a screened in porch over an underground garage.  The 'lot' must have been at least two acres or so.

In the 1950s, their daughter, Mary and her husband, E.C. Herrin would build a second house on the property and begin raising four children: Clayton, Linda, Suzanne and David Herrin.  Robert died early of heart disease in 1959.  In the 1960s, Vena became a sorority mother at the Universities of Alabama and Mississippi, and the Herrins with their large family moved to the 'white house', a home my immediate family and cousins visited often through the years.

Our thanks to Susan Cornelius Williams for the color photograph of this reunion in July 1968.

Back row: Holly, George and Patti Holliman Hairston

Next row, left to right: Glenn and the girl cousins: Jean, Tommie, Alice, Linda, Becky, Kathy Holliman and Susan Cornelius

Next row, left to right: Euhal Holliman, Lynn Draper Holliman, Ralph and Motie Holliman, Vena Daly, Clayton Herrin, Loudelle Holliman Ferrell, Charles Ferrell and Bishop Holliman

Next row, left to right: Walter Cornelius, Virginia Cornelius, E.C. Herrin with David on his lap, Mary Daly Herrin, Suzanne Herrin on her Uncle Bob Daly's lap, his wife, Carol behind him, Carol Cornelius in front and her husband, Carl and behind her Gerry Holliman, Bishop's wife.

Our flight drones over Canada into a long day light....a day which began 4 am in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, travel with my second cousins, Dr. Jim and Karen Holliman and daughter (we spent the night at their house) to the airport, several inches of snow.  Several hours to Chicago; a 3 ½ hour layover and now a long day and night to Japan.

A few days later my daughter, Grace and her Dad, all of 68 years, no longer 22 as in the photo above, in Hanoi, Vietnam.

On the plane, Grace,  chats with her seatmate, a 40 year old Chinese lady, who looks 25, unhappily married to a Chinese husband in Florida, heading home to take a ‘break’.  The world has changed in half a century.  China was the proxy enemy in 1968, the reason America feared, wrongly we now know, the spread of Chinese communism through Asia. Unfortunately our national leaders in the 1960s were not historians; they did not recognize the ancient enmity between the two nations of China and Vietnam.

A few months after the family reunion photograph in Irondale, it was graduation from Basic Training, an ordeal experienced by millions since World War II.  Below, October 1968, I shake hands with a fellow platoon mate.  The M-14 rifles, helmets and gear are stacked and soon I am off from Ft. Benning, Columbus, Georgia to Fort Dix, New Jersey by train for advanced training.  

I am to be an Army clerk thanks to my ability to type 44 words a minute!

Below, another place and time, Jim and Karen Holliman who kindly arranged the trip to Vietnam where Jim was to speak at a medical conference.  This photograph taken 2014 at my home in Pennsylvania.

 Forty five years since I left Asia….we shall see….

Right, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young", published 1992 and later a major movie on Vietnam.  Sad, tragic reading of an American regiment almost wiped out in one of the first battles in 1965. From the book this quotation '...the first major battle of a conflict that would drag on for ten long years and come as near to destroying America as it did to destroying Vietnam'.

Next posting, more the war of my generation and my emotional trip back to Asia.

 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!).

There is also a massive Ancestry.com Holyman and Associated Families Tree available for review.  For an invitation to this collection of over 20,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .

I also have a collection of associated family manuscripts and research collected by the late Walt Holliman, Cecil Holliman and Rhodes Holliman.  Happy to send these materials by email and to insure their research is available.  The surnames: Alexander, Baldwin, Barham, Bass, Beall, Blakeney,  Baker, Bond, Bostick, Brewer, Bryan, Bryant, Bullock, Calvert, Carter, Champion, Chew,Cofer, Cole, Crafford, Crockett, Curtis, Dale, Daniel, Davidson, Davies, De Mallpas, Douglas, Duckett, Edwards, Edgerton, Emerson, Fitzhugh, Fowlehurst, Fox, Gains, Garrison, Gonson, Graves, Gray, Guyton, Guins, Hall, Hamby, Hawkins,Hendrix, Hill, Hogg, Holliman, Holt, Howard, Jackson, Jones, Judkins, Love, Lucas, Maget, Mansfield, Manwaring, McBee, McComas, McCurdy, McNewsome, Nicholson, Norsworthy, Noyall, O'dell, Oliver, Pearce, Peerce, Pettigrew, Petway, Pitman, Plow, Plyler, Porten, Prather, Petite, Ridgely, Riggan, Roberts, Smith, Spencer, Sprigg, Standley, Stanyard, Swan, Strother, Thompson, Thornton, Thrope, Trelawney, Turpin, Underhill, Underwood, Wallace, Walters, Weedon, Whitherspoon, Whitten,Williams,Wilmot,Wilson, Whitaker and Yerby.  These are mainly Alabama families and their ancestors from the Carolinas and Virginia. Materials vary from one page to 200. - GNH at glennhistory@gmail.com. 

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 29

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Allies Punch Back, and more Hollimans join the Fight

By the winter of 1943, the Axis tide  crested and began a slow retreat to eventual defeat.  The Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal in the South Pacific, a German army surrendered in Stalingrad (left photograph) and after a setback at Kasserine, the U.S. and British armies continued their punishment of  two German and Italian armies in North Africa.

In the States, more and more young men were called to the colors to man the tanks, airplanes and ships emerging from assembly lines.  Two of these serviceman that late winter and early spring were from the Holliman family of Irondale, Alabama  - W. Ralph Holliman (b 1924) and his brother-in-law, Walter Cornelius (1922-2006), husband of Virginia Holliman (1922-2011). 

Right, ca 1927, Irondale, Alabama, Pearl C. Holliman holds her youngest of four sons on her lap, Ralph.  To her left are Virginia, the later wife of Walter Cornelius, and Bishop Holliman, far left.  By the spring of 1943,  Ralph and Walter joined Bishop in the Armed Forces.  Pearl was thirty-nine years old when this picture was made. This photograph is courtesy of Susan Cornelius Williams, Virginia's younger daughter.

Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) wrote in January 1943 from 2300 3rd Street, North, Irondale to my father, Bishop Holliman, at his Navy radio training base in Casco Bay, Maine:



 "Well, I guess Dad and I will soon be in this big old house by ourselves.  It won't be long before Ralph (the youngest son) will be gone.  Every one that was in his class left last Saturday.  I know the Lord is able to take care of him, just like He has with you...."

In this letter and several others, my grandmother admonished my father to answer the letters of a girl in Philadelphia whom he had met and dated in the fall of 1942.  

 "I think you have treated  her rather bad, for I think they was nice to you and you should have showed your appreciation more than he have.  I do not know what to do, the girl thinks you have gone so please write her something.  You may go back there sometime, and what will she think about me?"

Left, the girl who finally caught Bishop Holliman!

That girl was my future mother, Geraldine S. Stansbery, an East Tennessee transplant living with her family in Philadelphia.  Short story is my father eventually did write 'Gerry' and in June 1945, their war romance blossomed into marriage.  By 1956, the couple had three children, and eventually eight grandchildren!

Below, the engagement photograph of Walter and Virginia Holliman Cornelius.  Walter would serve in the U.S. Army Air Corp during World War II and be stationed in Saipan in the Pacific.  Photo courtesy of Susan Cornelius Williams

 

Another marriage in the family....Later that winter, Pearl wrote that her youngest son, Ralph, would be leaving for Ft. McClellan, Alabama on March 26, 1943.  Born in 1924, and at age 19, he and his high school sweetheart, Motie Chism (1925-2003), tied the knot, a few weeks before Ralph shipped out.  That war time marriage lasted until Motie's death in 2003.  

Below in the 1980s, Gerry, Ralph and Motie Holliman.

Ralph wrote the week before his Army induction in March 1943 to his brother, Bishop: 

"I have been expecting it before now.  It will be pretty hard leaving everybody (his bride of two weeks), but I'm no better than anybody else.  I'm willing to go, and I am going to do the best that I can.  Motie and Mama are taking it pretty good so far but I dread the next few days.  If you don't mind, drop them an encouraging note."

A few weeks later, now in the Army, Ralph wrote again with a bit of dry humor that the family knows and loves:   

"When I left home, I left everyone crying.  They'll get over it thought.  I think I kissed everyone goodbye except the dog.  He might have been in the bunch too!"

In addition to a war time marriage that spring, Pearl's oldest daughter, Vena Holliman Daly (1909-1990), was expecting her second child.  Her husband, Robert W. Daly (1901-1959), wrote to Bishop: 

"Vena is about two months pregnant and under the care of Dr.  Nufield, the baby specialist.  She has been pretty sick at times, but he believes he can stop this. We could not hardly think of Mary not having an older brother or sister later in life when we were old or gone." 

Vena Holliman Daly (1909-1990) taken around 1926, a school girl who favored her mother.

The baby born in October 1943 was Robert W. Daly, Jr., now a retired biology professor from the University of North Alabama and father of three children, John, Suzanne and Iris, and numerous grandchildren.   

Below, Bob Daly, ca 1946 in Irondale. Photo courtesy of Susan Cornelius Williams.  Also decades later in November 2013 at the home of this blog writer, Bob, wearing more clothes on a cold autumn evening in Pennsylvania, pays a visit, while yours truly pets a black cat. 

Next Posting, more of the Ulyss and Pearl Caine Family during World War II....
 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!).

There is also a massive Ancestry.com Holyman and Associated Families Tree available for review.  For an invitation to this collection of over 20,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

Also one will find additional Holliman history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ .

I also have a collection of associated family manuscripts and research collected by the late Walt Holliman, Cecil Holliman and Rhodes Holliman.  Happy to send these materials by email and to insure their research is available.  The surnames: Alexander, Baldwin, Barham, Bass, Beall, Blakeney,  Baker, Bond, Bostick, Brewer, Bryan, Bryant, Bullock, Calvert, Carter, Champion, Chew,Cofer, Cole, Crafford, Crockett, Curtis, Dale, Daniel, Davidson, Davies, De Mallpas, Douglas, Duckett, Edwards, Edgerton, Emerson, Fitzhugh, Fowlehurst, Fox, Gains, Garrison, Gonson, Graves, Gray, Guyton, Guins, Hall, Hamby, Hawkins,Hendrix, Hill, Hogg, Holliman, Holt, Howard, Jackson, Jones, Judkins, Love, Lucas, Maget, Mansfield, Manwaring, McBee, McComas, McCurdy, McNewsome, Nicholson, Norsworthy, Noyall, O'dell, Oliver, Pearce, Peerce, Pettigrew, Petway, Pitman, Plow, Plyler, Porten, Prather, Petite, Ridgely, Riggan, Roberts, Smith, Spencer, Sprigg, Standley, Stanyard, Swan, Strother, Thompson, Thornton, Thrope, Trelawney, Turpin, Underhill, Underwood, Wallace, Walters, Weedon, Whitherspoon, Whitten,Williams,Wilmot,Wilson, Whitaker and Yerby.  These are mainly Alabama families and their ancestors from the Carolinas and Virginia. Materials vary from one page to 200. - GNH at glennhistory@gmail.com.