Jeff, Richard and Don Holiman, Part 2

In my last blog, I focused on the fascinating life of my distant cousin, Richard Holiman (b.1946), a pioneer American businessman in an emerging China the 1980s. Richard's own father, Don (1916 -1985, born in Benton, Arkansas) led an even more iconic life of travel and achievement which is high lighted below.  My thanks to Richard and his son Jeff (b.1971) for sharing details on their ancestor. - Grace A. Holliman

“My father was prone to spontaneous wandering….” – Richard Holiman on his father, The Rev. Don Holiman

When he was a teenager, Don Holiman rode the rails as a more-than-less vagabond, but he was a vagabond on a mission. In 1932 the L.E. Waterman Company, one of the leading fountain pens manufacturers of the day, launched an autograph collecting competition. The Waterman Company supplied young people with a special book and gave them six months to collect as many autographs of famous people as possible. When the six months were up, the participants had to mail their book back to the company in hopes of winning one of the 333 prizes with the grand prize being $1,000. Don Holiman was in the top 33 and won ten dollars!  

The clipping below articulates his venture.

By age 27, Don was living in San Antonio, Texas and was concerned about the number of homeless and abandoned boys he saw sleeping in Travis Park. Don knew that the local police placed these boys in detention to give them shelter despite their having committed no crime. To help these young men, Don founded Boysville. Boysville started at a large home on Avenue A and eventually moved to a pastoral area where the residents could learn skills such as tending crops and raising animals.  The home continues to this day in Converse, Texas!

Above: a story on Don's home for boys in Texas.

Below: 1943, Don, wife Sibyl, with the legendary Father Flannigan at Boys' Town in Nebraska.

Don eventually parted with Boysville and hit the road again as a traveling salesman. “My father was prone to spontaneous wandering,” recalled Richard with a smile.“ He went from San Antonio to Oakland to Atlanta to Dallas and would send letters back to my mother. More often than not, those letters contained his poetry instead of money.”

Left: Sibyl, Richard and Don, ca 1958 

Don was also a hellfire and brimstone Baptist preacher who, for a time, had a church near a military airfield. One Sunday morning the military was practicing a raid at the same time Don was preaching. As the story goes, the moment Don slammed his hand down on the pulpit, a bomb went off. Richard laughed as he spoke and said, “A lot of people were saved that day!”

Below: Don Holiman behind the pulpit. 

Jeff was ten when his grandfather passed in 1981, but he still has vivid memories of Don. “He made me a slingshot and taught me about toys and games of his era. He also woke me up at three in the morning to go fishing. I remember thinking, ‘Who in the world goes fishing at three in the morning?’” 

Jeff recalled going down to the train tracks with his father and grandfather and putting pennies on the tracks. “It was like a treasure hunt,” Jeff said, “trying to find the pennies after they had been flattened by the train and shot off the track.”

Above, Don in later years looks on a picture of one of the original Boysville buildings in Texas.

As our interview wrapped up, Jeff added that his grandfather was a mesmerizing storyteller. “He was an adventurer.” Richard added, “My father would say, ‘Trust in the Lord and He will provide.'

After saying “goodbye” to Richard and Jeff, I felt gratitude and admiration - grateful that these two distant relatives were comfortable enough to share their stories with a stranger, and admiration of their connection to each other and their passion for not only researching the past but asking questions in an attempt to understand humanity.  - Grace A. Holliman

For information on Hollimans (various spellings) and their many associated families, visit www.bholliman.com, a virtual archive of over 3,500 folders on Hollyman genealogy, their history since 1347 and many maternal families.

Jeff, Richard and Don Holiman, Part 1

 Last spring Jeanette Holiman Stewart, my wife Barbara and I had the joy of visiting the multigenerational family of Richard Holiman in Florida.  It was really a genealogical fest as we compared notes on the Hollyman paternal line from England to Virginia in 1650 and the diaspora throughout America.  Along the generations, the name has been spelled several ways. The Holiman spelling largely emerged when the Warren Holliman family in the late 1830s moved from the Carolinas first to Alabama and then to Arkansas, dropping an ‘l’ along the way.

This blog also introduces a new genealogist of our shared lineages, my daughter Grace A. Holliman, pictured right, an English major from Virginia Tech gifted with story writing skills. As with me, she appreciates how our families have lived and moved through history.  In this article, she interviews our distant cousins. – Glenn N. Holliman

The Richard S. Holiman Family Story, Part 1 by Grace A. Holliman

“He wasn’t afraid to go off the beaten path….” – Jeff Holiman on his father, Richard Holiman

As I began my virtual interview with Jeff Holiman and his father, Richard, the first thing I noticed was the genuine connection between the two generations. Jeff (b.1971) and Richard (b. 1946), were at ease sitting next to each other at a table in Jeff’s home in Clearwater, Florida. As we began our introductions I had the pleasure of meeting Gina, Jeff’s wife, who has been an important contributor to Jeff’s Holiman family research. Jeff also credited his aunt, Lynda Holiman Jones, with sparking his interest in genealogy over twenty-five years ago.

Left to right, Richard S. Holiman, Kimberly D. and Jeff Holiman, children of Richard and Ryan B. and Jayden S. Holiman, children of Jeff.

“I was in college when my parents lived in Hong Kong,” Jeff, now a mortgage banker,  said. “While most people went home for spring break and Christmas, my sister and I flew to China. It was the late 1980’s and China was changing, opening to the western world by making and selling products that Americans wanted to buy."

Richard was part of this process. He began as a buyer for Eckerd Drugs and had a firsthand look at the role that factories played in small Chinese communities. “Entire villages were employed by these factories,” Richard said. “Children would come by after school in search of work. Often there were jobs they could do, like placing stickers on a package to keep it closed.” Richard reflected and continued, “These were poor people trying to make a living. All they wanted to do was work to get ahead and take care of the older generation.”

Gina (left) wife of Jeff with Jeanette Holiman Stewart, author of the Ancestry.com Hollyman Family site. They stand in front of a genealogical map produced by the Richard Holiman families. 

Jeff recalled a trip to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. “On one corner there was a solider with a machine gun and on another corner, a Kentucky Fried Chicken. The KFC had a long line wrapped around the building. Because we were Westerners, our guide took us to the front of the line where we were served quickly. It was uncomfortable. As we ate, I watched our guide consume every morsel of chicken off the bone. I compared his bare chicken bones to our pile of bones with bits of meat and gristle still on them that we were going to throw away.”

 Jeff remembered how Richard would take him down streets where guides didn’t take tourists. “Dad would take us to see everything. We would walk around the block and see men squatting in alleys playing Mahjonng or Go. He wasn’t afraid to go off the beaten path to show us what life was really like.” Jeff paused and added, “I have deep respect for the vast, rich history of the Asian culture and appreciation for the life my parents gave me in the U.S.”

Richard Holiman in the 1980s in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China

Richard, the well dressed western businessman in China at a factory four decades ago.

As this part of our conversation ended, Richard quietly added, “People in Asian cultures are amazing.”  With that, the three of us paused and I realized how profound Richard’s career had been for him and his family. As our conversation continued I began to understand where Richard, the youngest of three sons of a Baptist preacher, inherited his proclivity for exploration and learning and caring for others.  - Grace A. Holliman

Note: the story will be continued in the next blog.  To learn more about Hollyman and associated families, please go to the comprehensive archive of over 3,500 items at www.bholliman.com.  This site also contains information on the parental Hollyman lines (various spellings) as far back as the 1300s in England.