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history / photo / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Sep 11

Busy week

Even my deadlines have deadlines. And those deadlines aren’t very patient. So things will be brief. Very brief.

Class today, based on the same lecture I taught to another section last week. The laughs weren’t there this time. And some of the jokes were even better! It happens. Small group dynamics are interesting things. Maybe they’ll find the next class more to their liking.

Saw this on the morning drive:

Some octagons get all the luck. Some just get to see all the sites. Good thing it picked up the truck. Those many flat sides to an octagon make rolling around a difficult proposition.

Geometry puns! Free of charge!

Updated a page I wrote in July. Last winter I did a piece on Dean Hallmark, Texas boy turned Auburn man turned World War II hero and prisoner of war. I’ve been corresponding with his fourth-cousin, the family historian. Last month he and I had the chance to meet in person. Today he sent me an email containing the update. Interesting echoes from the 1930s.

That’s enough for now. Back to newspapering.

Auburn / history / iPhone / Monday / photo / Samford — Comments Off
12
Sep 11

It was either the quilt or Microsoft Word

Oh the things you can get done on a Monday!

Set some hours. Wrote a lot of emails. Volunteered myself onto a panel. Worked on my car. Read and tinkered with two papers. Watched some television. Washed my car. Vacuumed the floor mats.

The floor mats, people.

Sure, when you throw it down into one fast list it doesn’t seem like much, but there’s some heft to that list.

At least three of those things involved Microsoft Word, after all.

And since you’re not interested in any of those things in the slightest, have some pictures. I found this quilt hanging at the city library yesterday:

The quilt was sponsored by American Field Service of Auburn, which now has a different name, I believe, but is a youth organization. Each panel is a little bit of the local history — and judging by the content, somewhere from the mid-late 1970s — so this safely fits into the realm of folk art. Here’s Old Main:

Old Main, built in 1859, was the first building on Auburn’s campus. Classes were held there. It served as a hospital during the Civil War (when the university was closed). It was destroyed by fire in 1887 and replaced by the iconic Samford Hall.

Here’s the lathe, which has now remarkably been mentioned here twice in the span of eight days:

Built in Selma, Ala. during the early part of the Civil War it was intended to make military supplies for the Confederates. They tried to move it to Georgia to keep it from being captured, and it was ultimately buried in Irondale, near modern Birmingham. It later was moved to Columbus, Ga. and worked through the end of the war boring cannons. After the war it was used in the coal iron industry. In the 1950s it was presented to Auburn. Also, the legend goes, if you stand in front of it under a full moon and say some random thing or another it will move three times and make all your dreams come true. Or something.

People don’t talk about it much anymore, I guess most everyone who can relate to it are all gone now, but the rail depot was a vital part of the community. It even figures into the football lore. The depot still stands. It was a realty office for three decades after the trains stopped rumbling through. Now it is empty and is considered a state sight in peril.

Reading that link you’ll learn it was the third one in town, designed by a student in 1904. The last passenger ticket was sold in 1970. Here it is today.

history / journalism / memories / photo / weekend — Comments Off
11
Sep 11

September 11, 2001-2011

Condensed and reprinted, for the final time I think, from notes I wrote in 2003.

It was my first week working in a new newsroom Little Rock. The top local story of the day was the Little Rock Zoo regaining its accreditation. The anchors there could not pronounce “accreditation” correctly, but that was the big story for the day.

A phone call from our traffic reporter, just landed from his morning flight, started like this “You might want to tell the (people on air) to turn on a TV, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center and they are talking about the zoo.”

I made my way into the studio to announce that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.

As they got up to speed the second plane hit the opposite tower. Bryant Gumbel was interviewing an eye witness. A camera was pointed up into the sky. The eye witness broadcast the second plane crashing. It could no longer be an accident.

My producer later told me that I was so surprised, watching it happen in real time, that I just announced it out loud. He could hear me two rooms away.

I called for New York on one phone, dialing the NYC area codes and pushing random numbers hoping for a connection. Because so much communications equipment was tied into the Towers, seemingly the whole borough was down. I wanted to say “Stick your head outside and tell me what you see.”

In my other ear I was on a phone call with the Pentagon. They aren’t confirming it was a terrorist attack, but they are looking into it, a spokesman says. Moments later I tried to reach my Pentagon source again, but there was no answer. We find out a moment later that a plane has crashed there.

I learned about a year later that the office of the guy I was talking to was located not very far from the impact site at the Pentagon.

We started calling local officials to try and make a local angle on the story, it’s what you do on a huge story far removed from your location. There was a bomb threat called in to a prominent Little Rock building. An announcement was made that planes nationwide are being pulled out of the sky. They all land at the first airport that has an appropriate runway. This is unprecedented in the nation’s history of flight. (And a remarkable feat of logistics, looking back.)

I dashed across town to the airport. I’m to talk to people getting off planes. I get to ask these people “What have you heard? What did they tell you on the plane? How does it feel to know that, but for the grace of God, ‘there go I’?”

As I arrive at the airport, the first building collapsed on itself. ABC’s Peter Jennings, now being simulcast on radio, very somberly says, “Oh my God.”

The airport was packed. I’ve lived here for less than a week and have already been in the airport five times. Now there’s confusion. Tears. Cell phones and scrambling for rental cars and hotels. I talked to dozens of people. They all had stories.

Some were travelling across country, heading to the northeast. One flight was told they were having mechanical difficulties and had to land. It wasn’t until they could called their loved ones that they knew. One man wasn’t sure he could find Arkansas on a map. A Sikh was there alone. In his eyes, he knew. He seemed to already understand what had happened on a level the rest of us would come to grasp in the coming days. He was afraid. I still wonder about him.

We did great work for the next 10 hours, about 15 in total for the day. I was proud to be a part of that product. I finally made it home in time to watch the Congressional leadership and the still-stirring end to their press conference.

Auburn / football / history / photo / weekend — 1 Comment
4
Sep 11

A funny thing happened on the way to Harvey Updyke’s trial

Let’s be honest. This hasn’t been about the individual who allegedly poisoned the historic oaks at Toomer’s Corner since he discovered a talk radio host would put him on the air. This hasn’t been about the oaks themselves since the day he first appeared in court.

This is about Auburn’s people.

Auburn University has gone to great lengths and expense to save the oaks. The campus experts have consulted with some of their best peers in the country. The community grieved a bit, accepted the support and condolences of friends near and far and is moving on in a wait-and-see environment.

The university decided in mid-summer that they would allow for Toomer’s Corner to be rolled again this fall. The cleanup was the concern, they said, and the firm that does the cleaning would no longer use a pressure wash system, but would clean the trees by hand.

And so football is here. There’s new signage everywhere. Many things in town and on campus are unchanged, as they often are. Many things in town and on campus are new, as they often are. The Tigers won their home opener; fans rolled Toomer’s Corner.

But it all feels different now.

Opinions varied when the roll on announcement was made. Some were ready to continue the tradition. Others counseled restrain. More than a few groups volunteered to help with the cleaning. It was time, they said to themselves, to demonstrate a new kind of contribution to a place they appreciate. After the season’s first game, some of them followed through and helped with the cleanup. Volunteers came and went, working alongside the professional cleaning company for a brief time. It rained and the mushy paper turned even more fragile.

But the health of the trees and the soaked cellulose are the only things around Toomer’s Corner that are fragile. The spirit is strong.

What makes history?

I thought a lot about that while we helped clean up the celebration today. We decided, for our part, that we’d clean a little farther down College Street.

That tree above grows near Langdon Hall and, while it is a bit younger than the Toomer’s Oaks, it has a history of its own. Inside Langdon Hall they debated secession. Near this spot is where students of another generation heard President Roosevelt ask for a declaration of war over a loudspeaker after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. Near here is the lathe that commemorates Auburn’s role in the Civil War as a hospital and who’s young men served. Recovered from Selma and presented to Auburn in 1952, it has been the site of endless ghost tales these last 60 years. Near this spot many young couples have been engaged, another was recently married and, during my time in school, I asked a nice girl out on a date and she agreed. That’s a lot of history, too.

None of those things belong to a tree, but to the people of Auburn.

^{The greatest generation would help clean up after a Toomer’s Corner celebration.}

They’re calling it Unrolling Toomer’s. It is going to grow slowly, but there’s enthusiasm there. It requires garbage bags, a few yard tools, gloves and work, hard work.

As all good traditions, it has started informally, organically and by word of mouth. Unrolling Toomer’s is late Sunday mornings, or after church lets out, and you simply clean until you’ve had your share. Some picked a little, others cleaned up pounds of the stuff.

No one ran anyone off, and the cleaning company doesn’t mind the help. Unrolling Toomer’s started small, but there will be a few more volunteers on College Street next week. There will be more the time after that. One day there might be great crowds, hopefully including you, and perhaps big cheers. This should be as much of a celebration as rolling the corner.

After all, this is about the people. These particular good-natured people think it is great to be an Auburn Tiger.

family / history / photo / Thursday — 1 Comment
25
Aug 11

Family pictures

Had the chance for a quick family trip and, amidst the visiting, I got a few old pictures.

This is my mother’s father. He died just after I was born, and so I know him through stories and pictures. Hard to imagine your grandfather ever looked like this, isn’t it?

Here is his father, W.K., on the far left:

Now I have a picture (or a scan of a picture) of my great-grandfather as a child. The man next to W.K. is his father, W.J. , my great-great-grandfather.

W.J. was born in 1860 and died in 1948. He might have had memories of the Civil War, definitely Reconstruction and probably read all about World War II in his local paper. Based on W.K.’s birthday, you can put that photograph as circa 1910.

The above dates are from Tidwell’s The Frank and Jesse James Saga. The book changes the family narrative somewhat. Prior to researching that text for this post, the thought was that there was an adoptive relationship. But, the book has a written family history that indicates that W.J., the older man in the above picture, was a cousin of the James boys. W.J. was orphaned as an infant (his father died in a Civil War prison camp and his mother died soon after) and adopted by his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Joshua James, was the uncle of Frank and Jesse James.

Moving a generation or two into the future, here’s a picture I’ve had for some time:

That very tall man young man in the background is my grandfather. The woman to his left is my grandmother. Their kids, my mother and uncle, are in the front center. The older couple are my mother’s father’s parents, my great-grandparents. My great-grandmother, on the far right, looked that way until the day she died four decades later. In 1995, she became the oldest ever graduate from the University of North Alabama. (One of her daughters was the youngest graduate, in the 1960s.) My great-grandfather, the oldest gentleman in the picture above, is the kid on the far left of the previous, ancient picture.

On the other side of the family, here’s a picture of my maternal grandmother’s father:

That’s me on the right, and my cousin on the left. She’s all grown up, and has three kids who are now older than she is in that picture. I doubt she remembers him at all.

That building is still standing at my grandparent’s home. I have two or three scant memories of this great-grandfather, his home and the stories about others’ memories. Research on this side of the family isn’t as well developed, but can be traced back to a few family names I’ve never heard of elsewhere. Alas, there are no ties to outlaw folk heroes.

I love old pictures and the stories they whisper.