A Visit Between Two Storms

by Glenn N. Holliman

On March 3, 2020 a vicious late-winter tornado touched down in Nashville, Tennessee, hop-scotched along I-40 east and destroyed homes in the suburbs of Cookeville, Tennessee.  There 18 persons died in just a few minutes of horror.

Fortunately my sister Becky Holliman Payne and her family who live in that Cumberland Plateau community escaped the violence and quickly joined hundreds of others in providing relief to those afflicted.  A long scheduled trip to visit cousins and our old home places in Alabama had been planned with my sister, Alice Holliman Murphy and me.  We  were to fly from our domiciles in Texas and Pennsylvania respectively to Nashville on March 5th and then drive south.

As the Nashville airport was open and professional first responders were busy at work, we decided to go ahead with our plans.  We met that afternoon of the 5th, and the three of us drove  to Florence, Alabama.

Little did we know that one storm was behind us and another, more dangerous, approaching!

The next morning, we spent much of the day with our first cousin, Bob Daly, son of Robert W. Sr. and Vena Holliman Daly at his home north of Florence.  His home is really a nature conservancy where for decades Bob has nurtured his 40 acres as a wildlife park.

Pictured are Alice, Becky and Bob.

A  Ph.D. in biology and botany from Auburn, Bob taught for decades at the University of North Alabama and also conducted hundreds of environmental studies for governmental and corporate agencies.  It is not an exaggeration to say that Bob is one of the most knowledgeable persons living concerning the flora, fauna and animal life of the Tennessee River Valley.

His home, which he shares with his wife, Joy, his high school sweetheart from Irondale, Alabama, reflects Bob's taste in outdoor life.  The home feels like a comfortable forest lodge with wooden paneling, chandeliers of antlers and walls festooned with scenes of wildlife and southern history.

Below the Daly 'lodge' in the woods of North Alabama.

Bob bands hummingbirds, captured in a special trap filled with sugar water on a back porch.  Generally he attracts up to 400 of these tiny birds each migration season!  The ladies are watching a video on his computer of dozens of these beautiful creatures feeding.

Outside on the grounds, two cousins, now seniors in life, reminisce on how we used to hunt arrow heads along Alabama river bottoms and scorpions under the scrub oak trees on the Daly farm in Irondale, oh say 60 years ago or so!

Below are photographs I have saved (and hundreds and hundreds more of family) from the various  albums.  Here is a quick trip down memory lane of Bob and family in the 1940s and 50s.  The initial picture is of Bob in the sailor's hat, one year old me and my mother, Geraldine Stansbery Holliman (1923-2015), on the front lawn at 2300 N. 3rd Avenue in Irondale, our grandparents house.

The one below is damaged, but shows Bob on the left,  Pam Holliman in the center, Ralph and Motie Holliman's first born.  Three year old me on the right. The year is 1949.   Again photographed at Ulyss and Pearl Caine Holliman's Irondale home.  Judging from the way Pam and I are dressed, this must have been a Sunday in the summer.

Below, Bob, Becky and Glenn at Daytona Beach, Florida in 1955. Grandmother Holliman had died in May 1955, and the Dalys and  Bishop Hollimans took Ulyss Holliman on vacation.  I remember a day of fishing with my grandfather, father and Bob. Below we are digging for sand fleas.

Finally, Bob with his father, Robert W. Daly, Sr. (1901-1959) and his mother, Vena (1909-1990).  The family loved to visit Florida and fish.  These experiences no doubt helped develop Bob's life long interest in biology.

After the better part of the day with Bob, and significantly increasing our knowledge of nature's mysteries,  my sisters and I bid goodbye to our very knowledgeable first cousin, and drove on to Gadsden, Alabama where we lived from 1960 to 1964.  More on our trip in the next blog. - GNH 

How a World War Changed an Alabama Family, Part 31

by Glenn N. Holliman

The War Continues to Disrupt the Lives of an Alabama Family....

In the summer of 1943, the Holliman family of Irondale, Alabama became fully engaged in World War II as three sons and a son-in-law were in military service.  Ralph, b 1924, left his young new wife, Motie, and did his basic training in Miami, Florida.  In mid-summer he was transferred by troop train to Camp Buckley, Colorado.  There he learned to be an Air Corp clerk, later to serve in France.

Right, decades later Ralph, Motie Chism Holliman (1925-2003) and Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011). Virginia's husband, Walter, went to the Army that spring of 1943 also.

Ralph's despondent mother, Pearl Caine Holliman (1888-1955) wrote her sailor son, Bishop Holliman, b 1919 - "They moved him (Ralph) to Denver. He came through Irondale and his train stayed in our town for over two hours and we did not know it. He could not call; I could hardly stand it."


From his new posting in the West, Ralph wrote July 2, 1943 to his brother-in-law Robert W. Daly, Sr. (1901-1959): "You meet any kind of person here, and I would not take anything for the friends I have made in the Army.  Most of the fellows are in the same boat. They all left their homes (believing) that something was to be done and the sooner that was over, the sooner we would get back to our homes. I think I was lucky to get into the Air Force and into clerical school.  The school is seven weeks."

Ralph had received a  letter from his brother, Euhal Holliman (1912-1989) in Gadsden, Alabama.  "It was signed from the five of us.  He said he had been working hard. I hope he doesn't have to go."  

Left, Euhal in 1982 fishing in Alaska.  He and wife, Edna Westbrook Holliman, had six children of whom, Terry and Jerry, the twins, would make their homes in Alaska.

In the summer of 1943, Euhal was 31 years old and supporting three children - Terry, Jerry and Anne Holliman Phillips. A fourth child, Jean, was born in 1944. Fortunately for his family's sake, Euhal, who perhaps had a physical injury, was never called.

Below, the summer of 1943, front row left to right - Charles H. Ferrell, Patti Holliman Hairston and John Ferrell.  Back row left to right - Carolyn Ferrell Tatum, Mary Daly Herrin and unknown.




Loudelle Holliman Ferrell (1914-1998), sister to her siblings and the wife of Dr. Charles Ferrell, Methodist minister in Jacksonville, Alabama, wrote to announce her Victory Garden already had produced beans and beets.  She also reported the apprehension by the police of an Army deserter, missing for four months, who had taken shelter under their church.  

My grandmother, Pearl, wrote of her great distress when her oldest son Melton, (1908-1958), age 35, was drafted into the Army.  He was ordered to report to Ft. McClellan,
Alabama for his physical in July 1943.  He passed the examination and at age 35, he prepared to leave his lucrative career as a pharmaceutical salesman, his young child and wife and do his duty.


 Right, Melton and Ida Hughes Holliman, 1942, when visiting Melton's brother, Bishop, who was stationed in New Orleans for training.

While his brothers were training for war, Bishop Holliman, a radio specialist in U-boat tracking, was about to engage in the first hostilities a member of the family would experience - the July 1943 Allied Invasion of Sicily, the first attack on Hitler's Europe.

That is the subject of our next posting. 


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 30,000 individuals, please write glennhistory@gmail.com.  

Blog sites are available not only at http://ulyssholliman.blogspot.com but also at 
http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com.  For archival materials and manuscripts of Holliman and associated families, visit www.bholliman.com.  If you would like to 
save your family materials and photographs at this site, please contact glennhistory@gmail.com. 

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 25

by Glenn N. Holliman


More Letters and News of the Home Front....


World War II finally ended the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Unemployment fell to record levels ending a decade of public assistance and public work programs.  By the fall of 1942, only 1.5 million out of a labor force of 54 million were unemployed, and many of these moving to other jobs or waiting to enter the armed services.  

The letters written by the Hollimans, an Irondale, Alabama family reflect the growing stresses and changes brought on by war time demands and the emerging role of women.  Men were being drafted, and more and more women took jobs men had held or went to work in war plants.  Older values and customs came under stress and anxieties and issues were often discussed in the home front letters. 

Stores remained opened later to deal with women shoppers, now workers, who could not visit stores during day time hours.  Pearl Caine Holliman (1887-1955), left, wrote to her son in the Navy, Bishop Holliman, that "The Dalys (her daughter, Vena, granddaughter Mary Daly Herrin  and son-in-law, Robert Daly, Sr.) and Ralph (Holliman, her youngest son) have gone shopping tonight.  You know the stores stay open till 9 o'clock (in Birmingham)."

Husband Ulyss S. Holliman (1884-1965), above, "has to work 6 days a week now and 9 hours per day.  He says they have more wrecked street cars than they have had since he has been with the B'ham  Electric Company."

One of the millions of women who went to work was Virginia Holliman Cornelius (1922-2011), Pearl's youngest daughter, a brilliant graduate of Shades-Cahaba High School, president of her 1940 class and yearbook editor.  She married Walter Cornelius (1922-2007) in late January 1942, and soon took a job in her brother-in-law's (Robert W. Daly, Sr.) Woodlawn, Alabama bank, taking the place of a drafted man. 

Robert Daly, Sr. at his death in 1959 was branch manager and assistant vice president of the First National Bank of Birmingham, later AmSouth.  Many years later, Robert's grandson, E. Clayton Herrin, would serve also as an assistant vice president and branch manager of the same bank and occupied the same office as that of his grandfather.

Below the new 1951 bank office of Robert's, which would in later decades be Clayton's!

Reflecting the scarcity of workers and ease of finding new employment, was a letter Pearl wrote in the fall of 1942. 

"Virginia has been offered a new job at the airport, more money.  She may take it.  Guess she will have to.  She won't be able to keep every thing going with what she makes at the bank."

Below an amazing picture from the 1940 Shades Cahaba yearbook.  Virginia sits in the center as yearbook editor and business manager, Walter Cornelius is on the left of her, a bit scrunched in this posed picture.  This photograph is almost a metaphor of their 30 years marriage, both career professionals. Virginia, the banker, was always a bit further ahead professionally than Walter, a lawyer.  She supported the family during his college and law school days, which perturbed more traditional members of the Holliman family.

 

Virginia wrote Bishop the following that same autumn.  "I had an offer to work at Eastern Air Lines for $100 a month.  But there would be some night work.  They gave me a $10 raise to stay at the bank with more the first of the year.  So I will stay here as transportation to and from the airport at night (would cost money so ) probably would make out as well."   

Virginia would stay in banking and after traveling with her husband to his training bases in 1944, returned to Irondale, re-entered banking and stayed with it until retirement in 1990.  She broke some glass ceilings along the way becoming the first woman senior vice president of AmSouth.

The oldest child, Melton Pearson Holliman (1908-1958), a pharmacy supply salesman, was anxious to get into the war, even though he was 34 years old and married.  Below are exerts from his fall 1942 letters reflecting his conflicting thoughts on the draft and entering the service.  (He would enter the U.S. Army, age 35, in August 1943.)

"I received a letter from my draft board yesterday wanting to know if my dependents or job had changed.  Guess I'll be in before long.  I'll be glad of it."

"I wrote my boss today that unless something happened I intended to enlist in the Navy November 15th.  I'll be glad when it is done as this uncertainty is bad on one's nerves."

"I suppose you have heard they are taking 18 and 19 year old boys now.  Say they don't want old men.  So...I suppose that means I won't get in until spring 1943.  I hope they don't consider me old."

As with his mother, Pearl, Melton was not pleased that his new brother-in-law stayed out of the Army and went to college while his wife, Virgina, worked.  One can detect differing attitudes of the role of wives and their husbands in Melton's scathing letter in October 1942. 

"I suppose you have heard about Virginia's husband going back to college and she is continuing work to pay his way through.  I have only utter contempt for anyone who would do this.  And the least I can say will be for the best."

The draft hung over all, especially for young 18 year old Ralph, who continued working in the fall of 1942, and calling on his girl friend, Motie Chism.   Another brother-in-law of Ralph's, The Rev. Charles Ferrell, pastor of the Jacksonville, Alabama Methodist Church penned these words to Bishop that stressful fall of 1942.

"Ralph spent the day with his girl friend.  From all accounts he has it pretty bad.  He doesn't believe it would do any good to go to school.  Of course, you can't tell him anything."  

Ralph's mother, Pearl, observed:  "Well, I guess Dad and I will soon be in this big old house by our selves.  It want be long before Ralph will be gone, and if he had started to school last fall it would not have helped him any for every one that was in his class that was in school, left last Saturday (for the service).  I know the Lord is able to take care of him just as He is taking care of you."

Below a 1984 picture of Motie, Ralph, Mary Daly Herrin and Bishop Holliman.

"Ralph goes to see his girl 3 or 4 times a week.  Ralph had Motie over here, first time I had seen her."  As noted in this space before, however young Ralph and Motie might have been, their 1943 marriage lasted sixty years until her death in 2003. 

Below, Charles and Loudelle Ferrell
 

Charles Ferrell's wife, Loudelle Holliman (1914-1998), by then the mother of three children, and a pastor's wife, did her bit to increase home food production.  She wrote: "We are getting eggs enough for our family now.  Day before yesterday we got 7; yesterday 5.  It surely is sweet music to hear those hens cackling.  I never would have thought I would ever enjoy such as that so much.  We also have 21 little ones that we are 'rearing' to eat." 

Housing was a premium during the War.  Widows such as Lula Hocutt Caine of Irondale, Pearl's mother (1861-1957) took in boarders and the behaviors of some renters left a lot to be desired.  Pearl reported in several letters: 

"Grandma is doing fine, except the renters have been on a spree.  Had a fight last nite, and broke out some of the windows."

"Mother is having a time with her roomers.  In fact they liked to killed each other this a.m., about 3 a.m. and called me.  Had to bring mother up here about 4:30 am.  They had him arrested last wed. nit, but he was out on bond.  They will have to go to court next week. Think we will get him out this time if he don't tear the house down.  I think the very devil has turned loose in him so that place will be to clean up and get new rents.  Mother said she wished Bishop was home to stay with her."

"I don't know what we will do with them.  Let them stay I guess.  Some of these times, they will kill one or both."   

Below Lula Hocutt Caine, born Fayette County, Alabama and whose father died in January 1863 as a result of the Battle of Stones River, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  In this 1950 picture, she was 89 years old. 

Grandma Caine, as she was known to the family, needed the renter income.  William Lee Caine, born in 1862 died in 1938, worked as a guard for the railroad and evidently left no pension, and that in an era before Social Security.  The 1940 Census reported she earned no income although her son, Floyd Caine, age 54 in 1942 lived with her, at least for a while. Often relatives had to help financially. 

Pearl Caine Holliman usually closed her letters to her sons with a benediction.  Below are her words of faith, with a closing on movie and radio star of the time - Bob Hope! 

"May the Lord bless and keep you.  Write as often as you can.  Good nite and God bless you.  love Mother H.  PS Bob Hope is own (on)."

  Next, the first year of the war ends with a surprise visit home....