Hodges Meteorite, Fall, 2010
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McKinney was probably the only major figure in the entire story to claim a satisfactory ending to the affair. Hulitt Hodges claimed other bids for the rock as high as $5,500, but the bad publicity and indeterminate ownership caused the withdrawal of the largest offer. Besides, Ann Hodges was reluctant to sell the meteorite. Not knowing how to bargain with fame and the media, she realized little profit from the incident that made her famous. She estimated that her expenses were about $3,000. Once it was established that the meteorite was the Hodges’, attorney Huel McKinney family and the second fragment of the Sylacauga Aerolite. L-R: Callie W. McKinney, grandson Wayne Madden, J.K. McKinney, and James McKinney.17
Love returned it to them. The Hodges, now living in a different house and not
knowing what to do with the rock, considered using it as a doorstop. By March of 1956, they had quite enough publicity. At the urging of George Swindel, Huel Love and the State Geologist, Dr. Walter B. Jones (and with her husband’s reluctant approval) Ann donated the famous meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History where it still on display. Sylacauga Aerolite The Hodges Meteorite, technically the Sylacauga Aerolite, is one of two known fragments of a meteorite that fell in the Oak Grove community, near Sylacauga, Talladega County, Alabama on November 30, 1954 at approximately 12:47 CST. McKinney Meteorite on exhibit in Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.16