{"id":573885780,"date":"2013-12-14T22:58:06","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T04:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573885780"},"modified":"2013-12-21T04:18:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-21T10:18:00","slug":"auburns-fall-commencement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2013\/12\/14\/auburns-fall-commencement\/","title":{"rendered":"Auburn&#8217;s fall commencement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t go to a lot of graduations, but this was a good one. <\/p>\n<p>Stan White &#8212; who played quarterback at Auburn from 1989-1993, in the NFL for a few years after that and is now an insurance mogul and the color analyst for the Auburn football radio broadcasts &#8212; delivered the keynote speech. He talked to the graduates about what they would do when their &#8220;one second&#8221; came up.<\/p>\n<p>So, basically, the Iron Bowl wrote his speech for him, altar call and all: <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec43.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Adam walked as he has completed his master&#8217;s degree in public relations. Here he is shaking hands with President Jay Gogue:<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec44.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Our friend Tim also walked, having completed his bachelor&#8217;s in computer engineering: <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec45.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Chris Davis, he of the 109-yard Iron Bowl kick six, also graduated. He was, as you might imagine, something of a hit:<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec46.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Dee Ford was the last person across the stage. If you look over his shoulder you can see Ric Smith, who announces the graduates. Smith often calls Ford&#8217;s name in his other role as the PA announcer in Jordan-Hare Stadium. <\/p>\n<p>I think Gogue here was asking him to get a few sacks of Jameis Winston in his last game in the blue and orange: <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec47.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Ford was the last to walk today. We later learned that was because he was late. He was no doubt off somewhere being cool, because that&#8217;s what he does. (I can say this because we&#8217;re Facebook friends. And the guy is cool.)<\/p>\n<p>Several other people we know in one way or another graduated today. It was a fine ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>Near the end, just before the alma mater and the cap tossing, I was trying to find Adam in the crowd. He wasn&#8217;t where I thought, which meant I couldn&#8217;t get the shot I wanted. But this one isn&#8217;t bad, either. They were telling him to wave so I would see him, and the longer it took the bigger his waves got. And he accidentally smacked the president who was walking by. Hence the look:<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec48.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>After graduation, and meeting up with Adam&#8217;s parents, we walked around campus taking pictures. The standard stuff, cap and gown in front of all the right buildings and logos and signs. I like this one the best: <\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/dec13\/dec49.jpg\" alt=\"graduation\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>We had dinner with Adam and Jessica and his parents. They&#8217;re sweet people. They remind me a lot of my family, which is an easy leap since they&#8217;re from about two towns over. They have the same familiar accents and pace of speech and everything. As you might imagine, they are just so proud. <\/p>\n<p>Why wouldn&#8217;t they be? Earlier today their son caught a pass from a Heisman winner. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t go to a lot of graduations, but this was a good one. Stan White &#8212; who played quarterback at Auburn from 1989-1993, in the NFL for a few years after that and is now an insurance mogul and the color analyst for the Auburn football radio broadcasts &#8212; delivered the keynote speech. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,36,22,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573885780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auburn","category-football","category-friends","category-photo","category-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573885780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573885780"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573885780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573885784,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573885780\/revisions\/573885784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573885780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573885780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573885780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}