Perry Wayne Hollingsworth

01

Perry Wayne’s place in the family

Perry Wayne Hollingsworth was the son of Billy Joe Hollingsworth Sr. and Wanda Dale Perry and the father of Clayton Hollingsworth.

Through him, the older Hollingsworth photographs and the Perry Ranch stories became part of Clayton’s immediate family history. The paternal branches meet in one person whose life was much closer than the distant ancestors in the documents.

He was born on August 4, 1961, in Lamesa, Texas. Billy Joe Hollingsworth Sr.’s family and Wanda’s Perry family met in him, and his own first name kept his mother’s family name in everyday use. Long before that connection became a research project for his son, it was simply what he was called.

On Wanda’s side were Raymond Perry and Euna Mae Carden, whose family history followed farms, small towns, and working households across West Texas. On Billy Joe Hollingsworth Sr.’s side were Edgar Lee “Tex” Hollingsworth and Inez Farris. These are the grandparents and earlier generations behind the names in the family tree, rather than distant people added to it afterward.

For Clayton, the starting point is also the closest relationship: Perry was Dad. The photographs, documents, and remembered exchanges collected here belong to the life of a man he knew, alongside the older family history he is still learning to understand.

Sources: UNSUPERVISED* family register · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth obituary and memorial guestbook

02

A boy who wanted to look like Mr. Massey

Four childhood photographs now have a name attached to the boy: Perry. Clayton has identified him in the school portrait, fishing from a dock, holding a banana, and standing close to an older man with their foreheads touching.

The older man was Mr. Massey. Clayton says his father shaved his head to be like him. In the photograph, the boy’s head and the older man’s meet in a gesture that makes the family’s explanation immediately understandable. It is a small story from before Perry became Dad, preserved by his son alongside the picture.

Sources: Perry’s childhood photographs · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive

03

Lancaster and the first working years

Perry grew up in the Lancaster and Dallas area and attended Lancaster schools. His obituary remembered his joke about having a “Perry Hollingsworth degree.” It was a way of making his own experience the qualification, with a little humor attached.

His business history placed the beginning of his construction career in 1977, at Hollingsworth Roofing. That is his own account of the start, preserved in an executive summary he used to describe the work. Roofing and residential construction would remain central to his adult life.

An honorable-discharge certificate dated August 20, 1980, survives in the family archive. Perry had just turned nineteen. His Marine Corps service belongs to those early adult years, before the construction ventures and children who would occupy so much of his later life.

Sources: Perry Wayne Hollingsworth obituary and memorial guestbook · Perry Hollingsworth Executive Summary · Service and recreation certificates in the family archive

04

Making a business out of the next storm

Perry’s construction plans show how closely he associated opportunity with movement. A hurricane, a hailstorm, or severe wind could create a concentration of damaged roofs. His proposed response was to organize quickly: establish a relationship with a local contractor, arrange an office, secure suppliers, and bring sales and production people together.

The details went well beyond the sales pitch. His executive summary described subcontractors, training, project management, advertising, office administration, and places for traveling employees to stay. Truck lettering and yard signs would make a new operation visible; someone still had to arrange the materials and keep the work moving.

Those plans help explain the working world his family remembered. Construction involved crews and customers, persuasion and coordination, and the willingness to begin again in another market. The large idea depended on practical arrangements: an office, materials, reliable people, and somewhere for a traveling crew to sleep.

His interests extended beyond roofing, including participation in Southern Vanity magazine and later business planning in Arizona. Construction, however, remained the most continuous thread in the career material he left behind.

Sources: Perry Hollingsworth Executive Summary · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive

05

Gia, the children, and the family on film

Perry married Gia Daun Anderson in 1982. Their sons Clayton and Colby were born in 1983 and 1984. Clayton recalls that Perry and Gia divorced in 1995 and reconciled in 1996. Perry married Allison in spring 2000, a few months before their son Brock was born on June 7. Savie was born on January 16, 2003. Each child knew him through a different stretch of his life.

One family photograph brings Gia and Perry together in formal clothes, smiling at one another. The moment preserved in the film belongs alongside the photographs of their children and the years of family history that followed.

Clayton remembers his father’s encouragement and capacity for big plans. Their preserved correspondence also shows a relationship with affection and friction. Both belong to his account of being Perry’s son.

Sources: UNSUPERVISED* family register · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive · Gia & Perry family film · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth obituary and memorial guestbook · Clayton Hollingsworth’s family chronology

06

Shane, and a life outside work

The family collection includes an outdoor portrait of Perry in sunglasses and a photograph identified as Perry with his friend Shane. They offer a different view from a formal portrait: clothing, expressions, and an ordinary moment kept because someone took a picture.

Perry hunted, fished, scuba-dived, and traveled. A Tae Kwon Do certificate from March 1987 and a Skydive Miami training certificate from 1993 add two more activities to that picture. Work occupied a great deal of his time, but it was not the whole of his life.

Shane’s place in his life also survives in remembrance. After Perry died, Shane’s brother Danny Trull recalled Perry’s calls and visits after Shane’s death, and the grief he shared with their family. That is Danny’s account of his friend’s care, preserved in the public memorial guestbook.

Sources: Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive · Service and recreation certificates in the family archive · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth obituary and memorial guestbook

07

Photographs, journeys, and ordinary exchanges

The travel photographs identify Perry during a family visit to Paris and at Benihana in London. They are the sort of pictures that put a person back at a table, in a particular shirt, with a familiar look. The collection keeps the complete photographs rather than replacing every one with a cropped face.

Clayton’s family-caption document records another journey on December 26, 2011, when Perry traveled with Papa Bill toward Aunt Sue’s in Wichita Falls. Perry sent his son a photograph about humble beginnings. It was an exchange between a son and his father during a trip with the generation before them.

In March 2012, Clayton sent Perry a photograph after setting up chairs his father had given him. That small exchange belongs in the biography too. Family relationships continue through gifts, photographs, and messages about what someone is doing with an ordinary day.

Sources: Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive · The Life of Perry Hollingsworth

08

Waiting to become Poppy Perry

On March 12, 2012, Clayton told his father that he and Katie were expecting a daughter, and that her name would be Perry Kathryn Hollingsworth. The family-caption document preserves the news and a transcript of the message Perry left for Katie afterward.

He introduced himself as Poppa Perry, congratulated them, and welcomed the little girl whose name carried his own. In the family’s preserved transcript, the message ends, “Poppy says goodbye.”

Perry died later that month, aged fifty, before his granddaughter was born. The family was left with the anticipation in that message: he had already begun speaking as her grandfather, although they would never meet.

Perry Kate has her own life and her own story. The shared name gives her a connection to a grandfather she can know through the photographs, words, and memories the family keeps.

Sources: The Life of Perry Hollingsworth · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth family photographs and biographical archive · Perry Wayne Hollingsworth obituary and memorial guestbook

09

Fourteen in the landscape of memory

Perry Wayne died in 2012. Clayton’s published essay Fourteen, Apparently connects his memorial plot number with other appearances of fourteen in the family story.

The connection is Clayton’s reflection on memory. It gives a familiar number a particular emotional setting without asking it to explain or govern anyone’s life.

Clifton is part of that landscape. Perry’s memorial is at Clifton Cemetery, a place Clayton has returned to in his writing and family photographs. In Clifton, Rain or Shine, a photograph of Perry Kate at her grandfather’s headstone brings the two generations into the same remembered place.

The family films and photographs belong beside those written accounts. Together they preserve more than a name in a list: Perry with his parents behind him, his children around him, and a granddaughter carrying the family forward.

Sources: UNSUPERVISED* family register · Fourteen, Apparently · Clifton, Rain or Shine