This is the 12th and final installment of our glance through the 1954 Glomerata. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part 10 and part 11.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

These are a couple of quick shots with a lot of substance behind them, so let’s get to the good stuff.

This was a play or a skit and we have no idea what was going on here. There’s nothing written to support this one moment in their lives. Hopefully it bubbled to the surface for them from time-to-time, and they thought of it fondly.

Dig that fancy flash the guy is holding. And is this really hazing? You could get in a lot of trouble for that today, of course. But things were different, one supposes. Or maybe it was just in fun.

“Fun.”

I’m beginning to think the impression I’ve been given of the morally upright 1950s might not have been a complete … picture.

What do you suppose this guy was working on? Note the ink jar, too.

This feature has a “post every bike” policy, and now that extends to unicycles. This could come back to haunt us later.

That guy is riding at the gates at Toomer’s Corner. The brick column and the Class of 1917 sign are the clues. This it what it looks like today (in 2015).

You’ll note those globes have been replaced by eagles. Those are 19th century eagles They were brought to campus in the 1960s.

I find I’m over the dodging and burning they were doing in the darkroom to cut out these images. What was going on behind the uni-cyclist could have been interesting to us, too.

From the advertisements in the back … This is obviously a sporting goods store, one I’ve never heard of. A quick search tells me they existed at least until the 1960s. They had a great spot, right next to Toomer’s Drugs.

Businesses come and go. The one in Atlanta is gone, too. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the model’s choice of footwear for this photograph.

J&M is still going strong, though. I bought my first Auburn t-shirt in that store. Shopped there a lot over the years.

It does look a bit different today. The building is bigger, and they sell more apparel and souvenirs than books. The business keeps changing, but the Johnstons are still standing there.

Trey, a kind-hearted guy, still owns the place, and it’s still a family concern. Trey was a football walk-on. He grew up in town, and around that store, which his father opened the year before this book was published. It’s a part of everyone’s lives and has always been a part of his. It’s one of the last things downtown that feels old and familiar and I hope it goes on for forever. (Another bookstore I shopped in closed in 2022.) Trey’s lifetime devotion to the place and the people deserve that.

Hawkins is gone.

Has been gone for decades. Hawkins, over time, became Johnston & Malone. So this book is at the beginning of the crossover period. (J&M traces their roots, indirectly, back to the 19th century.) And Burton’s were the headwaters.

Robert Wilton Burton opened the first bookstore in Auburn. They offered “Something New Everyday” for 90 years.

Born in 1848 in Georgia, he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry at the end of the war. At the ripe old age of 17 he spent two days in the saddle before he was captured and spent the last three months of the war in captivity. Burton spent most of his adult years in Auburn, first as a teacher, and then a business man. In 1878 he opened his bookstore became the literary center for the town. Himself a poet, Burton was published in newspapers and magazines around the country, and had a successful series of children’s stories, too. He died in 1917, and his daughters took over the store, until it closed in 1968 when his last surviving daughter was 77.

Burton, his wife and his two daughters are all buried in Pine Hill, an old cemetery steeped in the area’s history, a place I enjoy as much as one can say they enjoy a cemetery, and, oddly, the last place I visited on the weepy, dreadful day we moved away.

And that’s the end of the 1954 Glomerata. These are the editors. And I bet those tires and candles made for a good joke.

I wonder how many people were in on it.

All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.

Venerable old Milwaukee County Stadium was opened in 1953. The Milwaukee Braves and the Green Bay Packers played there, as the MIlwaukee Brewers would later. The Sitting Bull Monument, on Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was built that same year. Plans for the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier in Philadelphia began in 1954.

The top television shows at the time were The Milton Berle Show, You Bet Your Life, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Dragnet and I Love Lucy.

Kitty Kallen was atop the charts. Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, the Crew-Cuts and Jo Stafford — my favorite of the era — all had huge hits.

People read a lot of Annemarie Selinko (Désirée), A.J. Cronin (Beyond This Place), Samuel Shellabarger (Lord Vanity) and Morton Thompson (Not as a Stranger) who all held the New York Times bestseller spot during the period. Yeah, I haven’t heard of any of those, either.

That was 1953 and 1954. Let’s see what else people were doing.

This is the 11th installment of our glance through the Glomerata. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, and part 10.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

This is one of those photos they use to fill space at the beginning of each new section. We’re heading into “Activities and Snap Shots” and I was not expecting this in a wholesome book about the 1950s. I’m not here to pass judgement, but this was probably someone’s grandmother several decades later.

The editors of this yearbook should have thought about that when they were in their 20s, is all.

We don’t spend a lot of time here on buildings, because buildings are only interesting in certain ways and certain times. And, usually, they’re unchanging. But this one is new. At least it was in 1954, when it opened that January. Sometime after that, all of these people posed for the moment.

It’s difficult to imagine Foy Hall — Foy Student Union in my day — as new. It was awkward when I started, a structure that would was a vestigial branch of modernism that didn’t fit in with the Georgia colonial architectural style that predominates. By the time I graduated it had changed. I practically lived there. The newspaper was housed there, and so was the radio station. It had that old, tired feeling a building can adopt when everyone knows it is on its last legs. The care isn’t as frequent. Resources and time are spent elsewhere. Offices move to sexier places. Everything feels a little careworn.

Which is a shame. The building, just the Student Union to the people in that photograph, would later be named after the beloved Dean James Foy, who was the dean of student affairs in 1954. In fact, this yearbook was dedicated to him. You read about him a few months ago.

Here’s Foy Hall today, or at least in 2016, and from almost the same angle.

A few years back the university built a brand new building that serves as the student union. Let’s have a quick look at what it was like way back when.

This photo was too small in the book, but it’s fascinating. The cutline tells us “Display boards keep students well informed on campus activities.”

It is probably not real, but I think I have a memory of someone telling me about these things. I don’t remember the actual boards, but I know where they were.

I also know right where this room was. It doesn’t look like that today, thank goodness. With windows above your eye line, and nothing to but that relentless brick wall, you really didn’t need whatever is going on in the background, too.

This is from Homecoming, a 16-7 win over Florida. And that’s Miss Homecoming, Joan Davidson. She graduated in 1955 and became an elementary school teacher in her hometown, married her college sweetheart and they had four sons. Her husband, George, died in 1971, and when Joan remarried she added three stepdaughters to her family.

She was president of the Junior League, a director at a nursing home, and a board member of Joan was a dedicated member of this community, having served as the President of the Junior League of Columbus, served on the boards of a nursing home, the local historic foundation and chamber of commerce. She passed away in 2020, celebrated by a family of seven children, 15 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

She’s standing there with George Uthlaut, who we met a while back. He was a senior studying chemical engineering, a real BMOC, and became successful in oil and gas exploration and production, first with Exxon for more than 30 years, and then with Enron Oil and Gas. He and his wife, Dot, volunteered in their local hospital for 35 years, visiting patients weekly. He’s still with us and they’re living happily in Texas.

This is a pretty basic formation, really. I could do that. I could do that today!

And by “that” I mean stand there and look pleasant and casual while a woman stood on my quad. I wonder what the cheer was. I wonder what it was like to have only seven cheerleaders. There are 21 today.

Also, they had puppets. It is unclear if these are props for this photo or something they used. Maybe pom-pom technology hadn’t really caught on by the 1950s. I must confess to some ignorance of cheerleader history.

That’s Jean Dudley on the left. She married her high school sweetheart. She died in 2020, survived by her husband of 63 years, a guy who was studying mechanical engineering in this yearbook. Together, they raised a family of three sons, eight grandchildren, and ten great grandchildren. Her husband, John, did two years at Auburn, and then transferred to Penn’s Wharton School of Business. He became a stockbroker and a financial adviser. He died in 2022.

The one on the right is Ann Wilson. She’s from Mobile, and after she graduated from Auburn she got a master’s degree from Alabama. She became a social worker, working at the county level, then worked in state pensions, served in FEMA for several years and went back to state-level work. She had five children, and she’s still with us.

The woman in the middle has the incredibly exotic name of Catherine Cole, and it’s a bit too difficult to dig her out of the interwebs.

Hey, look, it’s the Auburn Knights! They were formed in 1928, and they’re still going strong today. Over the years they’ve earned and maintained a terrific reputation. Now, as then, they toured all over the region, playing colleges and clubs.

On the drums is Jerry Micklic, from suburban Birmingham. When he put down the sticks he went home and ran a business for 60 years. He died in 2014, the father of three, grandfather of four.

Betty Jean Brown was the singer for the Knights. She was a freshman. She stayed in Auburn, where she taught elementary school, sold real estate, played piano for her church and sang in the choir for 60 years. She’s somewhere in this reunion choir.

She and her husband were married for 67 years before his death. They raised two sons and three grandchildren. They toured all over the country in their RV. It seemed a lovely little life. She passed away in 2021.

There’s no context included for this photo. It’s on a page highlighting skits. They must have been funny.

All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.

In 1953 and 1954 there were plenty of sports for fans to read about, listen to, and watch. The NFL was conquered by the Detroit Lions, who beat the Cleveland Browns at Briggs Stadium, in Detroit. If you had a TV, you might have tuned in to the DuMont Network to listen to Harry Wismer and the great Red Grange give you the game. It was the Lions second championship in a row.

The Yankees won the World Series in 1953, four games to two over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Also in baseball, the Braves were settling in to their new home in Milwaukee, having left Boston, as the first MLB franchise to relocate in 50 years. The Minneapolis Lakers remained the kings of the hardwood, winning the 1954 NBA Championship Series over the Syracuse Nationals (the future Philadelphia 76ers). It was the Lakers third consecutive championship, their fifth in seven years.

Rocky Marciano was the heavyweight boxing champion, having won the title in 1952. He held it until he retired in 1956, age 32, an undefeated champion. Tony Trabert and Maureen Connolly were the national champions in tennis.

The Detroit Red Wings were Stanley Cup champions. The 1954 NHL finals saw the Red Wings and Montreal Canadians meet in the finals for the second time in the 1950s. Defending champions Montreal blew a 3-1 series, and Detroit won their second Stanley Cup in four years and sixth overall.

In Europe, Fausto Coppi, on his way to becoming a legend, was the winner of the Giro d’Italia. The great Louison Bobet won the Tour de France.

There was a lot to see on campus, too.

So let’s look at some sports photos!

This is the 10th installment of our glance through the Glomerata. (Find ’em all — Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight and part nine.) All of them will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. I wouldn’t blame you. They’re quite handsome. The university hosts their collection here.

We remember, at considerable length, the 1953 football team last week. So we’ve met all three of these men, but I include this photo just because of these amazing Senior Bowl uniforms.

Ed Baker, left, became a highly successful high school and semi-pro football coach, and ran a school for two decades. Vince Dooley, center, became a Hall of Fame coach at Georgia, where he won six SEC championships and one national championship. All Bobby Duke did was letter for three years at Auburn, coached high school football, joined the Air Force, retired as the director of fraud investigations, then almost two more decades as a paper company executive. All of these men lived long, successful lives, raising families and probably never forgetting those incredible jerseys.

Here are two quick shots from the same football game. Auburn hosting Georgia. And you can’t see this view from the field anymore. That’s Samford Hall peering out from over the trees in the background. If you were standing on the sideline today where this photographer was, the background would be a wall of fans.

That’s Bobby “Goose” Freeman, #24, running with the ball. He’d play for three different clubs in the NFL, as a defensive back, then coached at Auburn for a decade, and raised a huge family.

Same game, this is Duke collecting a pass from Dooley.

Auburn won that game, 16-7. Auburn led the series 16-12-2 after this game. The series is just as close today (43-39-2, Auburn.)

The Glom says this game had the largest crowd ever in attendance, 25,500 people. The stadium capacity today is 88,043.

Here’s the head man, and the famous pose. Ralph “Shug” Jordan. This was his third year at the helm, and on the foundation of this team they were building a championship and a powerful program. He won his first of four SEC Coach of the Year award for the 1953 season. In 1957 he’d win a national championship. Pretty impressive considering the ’53 team made the school’s first major bowl. (They don’t count the 1937 Bacardi Bowl for some reason.) This team went 7-3-1, and in his long career, which ended in 1975, Jordan went finished with a record of 176–83–6 in football, including a Heisman Trophy winner in the great Pat Sullivan, and all of that overshadows his respectable basketball coaching career, where he amassed a 136–103 record.

One of the O.G. members of the good ol’ boy network, Jordan served on the university’s board of trustees, in retirement. He helped expand the seating capacity of the stadium with his name on it to seat 72,000. He died of leukemia in 1980. Six of his former football players were his pallbearers.

Posthumously inducted into the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame in 1982, he is remembered as a coach today, but he was also a father of three, and a World War II veteran. Ralph Jordan saw action in North Africa and Sicily before being wounded in the shoulder and arm in Normandy as a part of the D-Day invasion. After recovering from his wounds, he was shipped to the Pacific theater, serving at Okinawa.

Leah Rawls Atkins, who we met a few weeks ago, wrote a nice piece on Jordan, the man who coached her boyfriend, and then hired her husband, in 2016.

Auburn basketball was 16-8 in the 1953 season. Here, they’re playing Kentucky. It’s a fine photo, but it was a bad game. The Tigers lost 79-109 in Montgomery. And no matter where the games were played back then, they all had these cool compositions, those old flashbulbs making it look like they were playing in the dark.

At the time Auburn was a middling basketball team, but Kentucky was already a basketball blue blood, having collected three national championships since 1948.

Here’s the wrestling team. The guy on the far right of the back row is Swede Umbach. He coached high school sports in Oklahoma, joined the staff at Auburn and then, from 1946 until the early 1970s, he was the head man of the wrestling team, producing 25 Southeastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association championship teams and winning four SEC tournaments. He was 249-28-5 in dual meets, coaching 127 conference champions and four national champions and had Auburn hosting hosting the 1971 NCAA Wrestling Championship. He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.

In the 1953 season one of his wrestlers, Dan McNair, one of the great southern wrestlers (in a time when you didn’t have a lot of those) had a legendary run. He’d started wrestling in his junior year of high school and didn’t win a match. He was a “skinny 185-pounder” when he got to college, but grew into a 6’2″ 210-pound heavyweight who was undefeated his junior and senior year. He out-wrestled a defending heavyweight champ at the 1953 NCAA finals.

They canceled the wrestling program in the early 1980s.

Yes, the students dressed well up for football games. Yes, they still do.

Helen Langley, in the center, met her husband when she was in school. They were married for 68 years, until her death in 2021. For 35 years, she ran a 2-year-old Sunday school class.

Sylvia Couey is the woman on the right. Born in Colorado, raised in Connecticut, she graduated from high school in Alabama, studied art and English and then spent more than three decades working at the Huntsville Senior Center. She died in 2010.

Here’s the track and field team, and those simple, clean uniforms.

On the back row, left, is athletic director James Beard. The old coliseum is named after him. Honestly, one of the reasons that building is still standing is because his name is above the door, but the university is once again pondering it’s future. On the far right is the legendary coach Wilbur Hutsell. The track is named after him today. In 1921, he was hired as the first track & field coach and retired from the job in 1963. He amassed a 140-25 dual meet record and won three SEC team titles, coached four Olympians, was a trainer on the 1924 Olympic and an assistant track coach at the 1928 Olympic Games. He served as president of the National Track Coaches Association, the university’s athletic director twice, and is in the Helms Track & Field Hall of Fame, the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame.

And, finally, here’s the tennis team. If you’ll have noticed in most of the photos above, shots most assuredly submitted to the yearbook from the athletic department, most of these games seemed very serious. But the tennis team, in their t-shirt uniforms, they seem like a jolly lot.

All of these will wind up in the Glomerata section (eventually). You can see others, here. Or maybe you’d like to click through to see all the covers. The university hosts their collection here.