Auburn Magazine Summer 2014

JCSM advances American Art pg. 40 FEATURE

STUDENTS Building a healthier kitchen pg. 21

Mel Rosen’s early days on the Plains pg. 22 SPORTS

SUMMER 2014

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Art, beauty, truth The work of noted sculpture artist Jean Woodham ’46 was on exhibition at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art last summer and fall as part of the museum’s 10th anniversary focus on sculpture. Two of Woodham’s pieces live on campus— “Spinoff” at the museum’s entrance and “Auburn Monody” outside Goodwin Hall.

The exhibition featured 16 of Woodham’s works in bronze, brass, wood and steel.

She has more than 150 works in large outdoor spaces, including the World Bank, General Electric, Nynex and the New York Board of Education. Woodham lives in Connecticut. Read more about the JCSM collections on Page 42. (Photograph by Jeff Etheridge.)

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S U M M E R

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From the Editor

Voices from the past SUZANNE JOHNSON Editor, Auburn Magazine

university wishes. Approved media members waited in the library to witness the official integration of Auburn University with cameras and notebooks poised to record and share the story. A couple hundred students gathered across the street to watch—some to catcall, but most just to witness the act of one lone man, hunched against the rain in his long trenchcoat, walking across campus alone.

The story of Auburn’s integration began long before that rainy day in 1964.

Like all stories—the ones that become our vignettes of memory in later years—it was more than a single experience.

We’re honored to have Harold Franklin share his story in the pages of this issue, as well as others whose memories and viewpoints enrich the story and give it life: Ralph B. Draughon Jr.’s memories of his father’s actions, and the stress the AU president endured during the years before and after; Jim Vickrey, SGA president in 1964, who recalls how determined the students were that Auburn not be embarrassed; Thom Gossom, who felt the isolation that still existed in 1970 when he arrived as the university’s first AfricanAmerican walk-on athlete. Plainsman staff members, student workers, faculty: their stories all put us in the moment, and give us more than our own grainy vignettes in which to remember.

AUBURN MAGAZINE (ISSN 1077–8640) is published quarterly; 4X per year; spring, summer, fall, winter, for dues-paying members of the Auburn Alumni Association. Periodicals-class postage paid in Auburn and additional mailing offices. Editorial offices are located in the Auburn Alumni Center, 317 South College St., Auburn University, AL 368495149. Phone 334-844–1164. Fax 334-844–1477. Email: aubmag@auburn.edu. Contents ©2013 by the Auburn Alumni Association, all rights reserved.

LETTERS Auburn Magazine welcomes readers’ comments, but reserves the right to edit letters or to refuse publication of letters judged libelous or distasteful. Space availability may prevent publication of all letters in the magazine, in which case, letters not printed will be available on the alumni association website at the address listed below. No writer is eligible for publication more often than once every two issues. No anonymous letters will be printed. Auburn Magazine is available in alternative formats for persons with disabilities. For information, call 334-844–1164. Auburn Magazine is a benefit of membership in the Auburn Alumni Association and is not available by individual subscription. Back issues may be found online at www.aualum.org/magazine. To join the association, call 334844–2586 or visit our website at www.aualum.org.

POSTMASTER Send address changes to AU Records, 317 South College St., Auburn, AL 36849–5149.

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CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Shannon Bryant-Hankes ’84

As we grow older, our memories tend to become a series of vignettes rather than a steady stream of thoughts and feelings.

Our shared vignettes about public events differ depending on our age, our gender, our proximity to the event and a host of other factors.

Among the vignettes from my own young childhood growing up 50 miles northwest of Birmingham in the early 1960s were scenes of police officers and dogs and fire hoses. I see these images in my mind on a grainy black and white television screen with rounded corners. I remember being frightened, too young to grasp the meaning or importance of the social flood passing through the South, of why Birmingham police were using dogs and water as weapons against peaceful civil rights protesters.

It’s hard to look around now at the Auburn University campus and appreciate the political and cultural climate that faced a young black man named Harold Franklin as he arrived to register in January 1964.

It would be naive to say that today’s Auburn University has reached its full potential as a diverse campus. But it would be a disservice to not recognize the strides it has made in the past 50 years. Diversity has been identified as a core value at AU, with outreach and initiatives designed to make the Auburn Family inclusive of all races, genders and nationalities.

That was not the culture awaiting Harold Franklin when he arrived at Auburn to enroll in graduate school classes. Entrances to campus had been blocked off by state police, against

ADVERTISING INFORMATION Contact Jessica King at 334-844– 2586 or see our media guide at www.aualum.org/magazine.

EDITOR

Suzanne Johnson

suzannejohnson@auburn.edu

ART DIRECTOR

Audrey Lowry ’12 UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHER

Jeff Etheridge EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

Anna Claire Conrad ’14 Kerry Coppinger ’15 Jordan Dale ’14 DESIGN ASSISTANT

Whitney Potts ’14 PRESIDENT, AUBURN UNIVERSITY

Jay Gogue ’69 VICE PRESIDENT FOR ALUMNI AFFAIRS AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AUBURN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Deborah L. Shaw ’84 PRESIDENT, AUBURN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Bill Stone ’85 AUBURN MAGAZINE ADVISORY COUNCIL CHAIR

Neal Reynolds ’77 AUBURN MAGAZINE ADVISORY COUNCIL

Maria Baugh ’87 John Carvalho ’78 Jon Cole ’88 Christian Flathman ’97 Tom Ford ’67 Kay Fuston ’84 Julie Keith ’90 Mary Lou Foy ’66 Eric Ludgood ’78 Cindy McDaniel ’80 Napo Monasterio ’02 Carol Pappas ’77

Joyce Reynolds Ringer ’59 Allen Vaughan ’75

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This is Tradition.

This is Family.

This is Meaningful.

This is Auburn.

M AY 17 – A U G U S T 31 , 2 014

Experience the spectacular woodturned bowl created from the Auburn Oaks by Matt Moulthrop and beautiful pieces from three generations of master woodturners at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University.

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Auburn University 241 South College Street • Auburn, Alabama 36830 • Direct (334) 821-8200 • Fax (334) 826-8755 • reservations@auhcc.com • www.auhcc.com @hotelatauburn

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On the cover The hair has a touch more gray, but photographer Jeff Etheridge captured Harold Franklin’s same expression of quiet dignity.

Summer 2014 F R O N T 4 From the Editor

From many voices, one story from the past.

10 College Street

New soil, new landscaping: the renovation of Samford Park at Toomer’s Corner begins. Also: a record gift for engineering; new small animal hospital dedicated for veterinary medicine.

Melena Smith was honored a few weeks ago as Auburn’s SEC Community Service team winner.

26 Tiger Walk

Looking back at how legendary track and field coach Mel Rosen almost didn’t get the job. Also: basketball’s coming back and Bruce Pearl is here.

B A C K 49 Alumni Center

Board nominations and a wealth of travel options. Below, Charles

1968 Cake Race winner, Eddie Collins of Atlanta, collects his traditional kiss from Miss Auburn, Jane Howard of Toney.

16 Research

AU researchers help bees make honey in Kenya. Also: what hens can tell us about fibroid tumors.

20 Roundup

What’s happening in your school or college?

Check it out.

22 Concourse

A new Wellness Kitchen will bring healthier dining choices to athletes and students in general. Also: A student becomes a YouTube phenom.

Harold Franklin prepares to register with Auburn graduate school dean William Van Parker while a photographer stands by.

F E A T U R E S

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The Sound and the Fury

Harold Franklin’s integration of Auburn University went smoothly, thanks to courage, conviction and months and months of careful planning. Behind the scenes, however, things were far from easy.

by Suzanne Johnson, w/ Anna Claire Conrad, Kerry Coppinger, Jordan Dale photography by jeff etheridge and courtesy au archives

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52 Class Notes 56 In Memoriam

A Living Lab...with Linguine

64 The Last Word

The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center is more than just a great location to spend a game-day weekend. It’s a living lab for students from all across campus and a variety of disciplines. by anna claire conrad photography by jeff etheridge

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R. Moody ‘64 meets Aubie at the Golden Eagles Reunion in April.

Coach Pat Dye recalls meeting Cam Newton, and how Cam compares to Bo Jackson.

For Love of Art

Ten years after its opening, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art is bringing world-class collections and exhibitions to the people of Auburn. photography courtesy of jcsm, auburn university

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C A M P U S

N E W S

COLLEGE STREET

Entry point THE WALLS COME TUMBLING DOWN Dunstan Hall is just memory and dust. Built in 1959 and named for early engineering professor Arthur St. Charles Dunstan, the 33,000-square-foot academic building was the first air conditioned building on campus. Dunstan Hall, like several older facilities in the core of campus, was identified for demolition in the Comprehensive Campus Master Plan. The site will be reused as green space.

FOR THE BIRDS Auburn University and the Southeastern Conference announced in April that professor Geoffrey Hill of the College of Sciences and Mathematics received the SEC’s Auburn University Faculty Achievement Award for 2013-14.

“The 2014 SEC Faculty Achievement Award winners are some of our nation’s most accomplished instructors, researchers and scholars,” said AU president Jay Gogue, who serves as president of the Southeastern Conference. “It is my great

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pleasure to preside over an intercollegiate athletics conference that not only recognizes their work, but strives to support it as well.”

Hill, an alumni professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and curator of birds for the Auburn University Museum of Natural History, received a $5,000 honorarium and represented Auburn as the university’s nominee for the SEC Professor of the Year.

The SEC Faculty Achievement Awards, created to recognize

faculty accomplishments, scholarly contributions and discoveries, were first presented in 2012.

Hill’s research focuses on the function and evolution of ornamental traits in birds and on the co-evolution of hosts and pathogens. His research has garnered $8.8 million in external grant support, including grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

He was recently appointed director of the Division of Integrative

Organismal Systems at the National Science Foundation, which is the largest of the four divisions within the Biological Sciences Directorate at NSF. The Division of Integrative Organismal Systems has an annual budget in excess of $200 million and is the primary funding source in the U.S. for basic research in neurobiology, development, physiology, behavior and plant genomics.

Hill and his research were featured in the Summer 2010 issue of Auburn Magazine.

The best-known, most-loved corner at Auburn University began its redevelopment on April 2, almost a year after the oak trees were removed.

The initial step in Phase I of the redevelopment and enhancement of Samford Park at Toomer’s Corner was the removal of the iconic eagles perched on top of the 1917 brick gates. The stone birds were temporarily taken down on March 27 by The Lathan Co. Inc., the Mobilebased firm that restored the eagles in April 2012. They will be stored on campus and returned to the corner upon completion of the project. The gates will remain on site.

Phase I includes the installation of new pavers and a circular seating wall, and replacement of the soil contaminated by the 2011 poisoning of the original oaks.

This work is expected to be completed before the fall semester.

Phase I, which will cost about $900,000, also includes the planting of new adult trees in early 2015.

Design of the Samford Park redevelopment was unveiled by the university on A-Day 2013. It was chosen following a series of public workshops and an online survey in which more than 10,000 alumni, students, fans and friends provided opinions and ideas.

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AUBURN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Flashback 100 years ago

75 years ago

50 years ago

25 years ago

10 years ago

Summer 1914

Summer 1939

Summer 1964

Summer 1989

Summer 2004

Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, establishing a network of cooperative services connected to the land-grant universities.

Today, this educational system includes professionals in each of America’s 1896 land-grant universities, Tuskegee University and the 16 land-grant universities of 1890.

Final touches were added to the brand new football stadium which allowed Coach Jack Meagher’s Tigers to stop using Drake Field for games. Officials began worrying about how the town of Auburn would accommodate so many Florida Gators, who’d be helping fill the new 7,290-seat structure.

Jordan-Hare Stadium is now the tenth-largest campus stadium in the country.

With none of the media attention given to their predecessor Harold Franklin, Willie Bee Wyatt Jr. ’67 and Anthony Tilford Lee ’68 registered at Auburn, the third and fourth African-American students to do so (following Franklin and Samuel Pettijohn ’67).

Wyatt declared pre-law and Lee intended to study electrical engineering.

A drainage ditch on the North Auburn Research Station overflowed after a heavy rain, causing localized flooding. Hit hard: the Counting Shed, constructed in 1948, with up to a foot of water inside. Built with drains in the floors designed to send the water into a nearby creek, the shed housed a lively fish market that has since moved to new facilities for the fisheries program.

Auburn University agreed to contract with the City of Auburn for police services. The move was considered to be mutually beneficial financially, and interim president Ed Richardson said the move would allow for better coordinated, more streamlined police protection on and off campus.

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Above: Forget the hightech kitchens of Ariccia; these 1930 home economics students relied on waxed paper and bread trays to show off their culinary creations.

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Thumbs up Auburn University has received confirmation from the Aviation Accreditation Board International, or AABI, that its flight education and aviation management programs have been reaffirmed for accreditation. The AABI sets educational standards for university aerospace programs worldwide.

Paying Forward Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has received a $10.55 million philanthropic investment from Walter S. “Walt” ’69 and Virginia E. “Ginger” Woltosz to support its students’ educational needs and faculty’s research efforts, while bolstering the technical advances of its research facilities. Their charitable gift is the second largest in the college’s history.

In recognition of their support, the Auburn University Board of Trustees voted to name engineering’s central research facility in the Shelby Center for Engineering Technology as the Woltosz Engineering Research Laboratory.

Walt Woltosz earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969 and a master’s degree in 1977 in aerospace engineering from Auburn and also holds a master’s in administrative science from the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He is chairman and CEO of Simulations Plus, a company he founded in 1996 that is a leading developer of simulation and modeling software for drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Simulations Plus products are used by more than 200 pharmaceutical firms, including the world’s Top 25, helping to analyze new products and saving millions of dollars in research and development costs.

When Ginger Woltosz’s mother became ill, Walt Woltosz began developing augmentative communication systems for persons with severe disabilities. In 1981, the couple founded Words+, a leader in creating state-of-the-art products that “unlock the person” by providing the highest quality communication and computer access tools available. The products have been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution. When world-renowned astrophysicist Sir Stephen Hawking’s ability to communicate was compromised by ALS, it was the Words+ Equalizer and EZ Keys programs that allowed Hawking to continue his groundbreaking work.

“The quality of an Auburn engineering education is evidenced by the tremendous successes of so many of the college’s alumni, and I have been one of the very fortunate ones,” Walt

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Woltosz said. “We know our educations were supported by the gifts of others, so now it’s our turn to ‘pay it forward.’ Ginger and I believe in Auburn and hope that our gifts will assist in continuing its progress toward the forefront of engineering education in the nation and in the world.”

Their charitable gift will enhance their previous support of the Woltosz graduate fellows program while at the same time fund educational initiatives, research efforts and advancements in the college’s research facilities. It also creates a new endowed professorship in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in addition to the one the couple previously funded.

Charitable gifts made in support of Auburn’s academic programs are received by the Auburn University Foundation on the university’s behalf. For more information, visit https://develop. auburn.edu/how/.

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Auburn’s strategic focus JAY GOGUE ’69

President, Auburn University

NURSING

HOME Alacare Home Health and Hospice Services Inc. has made the lead gift to Auburn University to help construct a proposed new building for the School of Nursing.

Alacare President and Chairman John Beard and CEO Susan Beard Brouillette are longtime advocates of the corporate partnership between Alacare and the School of Nursing. Alacare facilities around the state have long served as clinical rotation sites for Auburn nursing students. Alacare’s prior philanthropic support has helped to purchase lifelike mannequins for the school’s simulation lab.

The mannequins were appropriately nicknamed “Mr.

Charlie” and “Miss Mary Sue” after John and Susan’s parents. Charlie Beard founded Alacare in 1970.

“Space is always at a premium on a college campus, but there’s only so much you can do when the size of your student body and breadth of your academic programs exceed your existing building,” said Beard, a 1972 alumnus of Auburn’s Raymond J. Harbert College of Business.

Built in 1952, Miller Hall is only 14,403 square feet. The proposed nursing facility would be more than 47,000 square feet.

“Everyone should see the value in supporting the nursing profession,” said Brouillette.

Some of you may have seen the news recently on Auburn’s most recent academic ranking as No. 1 in the state. The group is called TheBestSchools. org. It ranked the best four-year, comprehensive university and the best four-year liberal arts college in each state. Within our state, TBS picked Auburn and Spring Hill College in Mobile. For Auburn, it gave credit to the reputation of faculty and the university’s overall academic caliber.

TBS described Auburn as “one of the best, yet least expensive, universities in the southeastern U.S.” That’s certainly the result of hard work and dedication by faculty and staff.

Another indicator of Auburn’s success is its Prestigious Scholars Program. Over the past year, several of our students won prestigious scholarships, including the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, Marcus L. Urann Fellowship and the Harry S. Truman Scholarship. Most recently, it’s the Clinton Hunger Leadership Award and several nominees for the Rhodes, Marshall and Mitchell scholarships.

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Related to that success, the board of trustees last summer approved an updated strategic plan that will serve as our guide for the next five years, and it includes objectives impacting students and campus life.

The plan includes specific initiatives designed to improve student retention and their ability to graduate on time. Students who stay in school and graduate in a timely manner are more successful after they leave. And we’ll provide several new or improved support programs to help students in this regard.

We also want to enrich every student’s academic and out-of-classroom experience, which entails finding ways to support the talents of students as they prepare for an increasingly global environment. It also means that we are moving to diversify the student enrollment.

A third objective involves our focus in harnessing the capabilities of new technology. In large part, that means redefining and emphasizing development of eLearning opportunities. And that helps us meet the needs of current and future Auburn students.

The strategic plan also covers the enhancement of research, scholarship and creative work, as well as strengthening, refreshing and diversifying faculty, and more.

If you haven’t reviewed the plan, go to ocm. auburn.edu/strategic_plan/.

Auburn will only improve as we work toward accomplishing these strategic commitments.

War Eagle!

jgogue@auburn.edu

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C O L L E G E

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LESSONS LEARNED

Pet TLC Auburn’s College of Veterinary Medicine has long been considered one of the nation’s best, not only for training new generations of veterinarians but also providing veterinary care for generations of families and their ailing pets.

The best just got better as the college dedicated the new 208,000-squarefoot Wilford and Kate Bailey Small Animal Teaching Hospital, located on the College of Veterinary Medicine campus, on April 11.

The facility is named for the late Wilford ’42 and Cratus “Kate” Bailey.

Their son, W. Edward Bailey, spoke on behalf of the family. Auburn graduates and family friends John and Rosemary Brown ’57 also spoke.

The Browns made a philanthropic investment through the Auburn University Foundation to benefit the College of Veterinary Medicine and to name the teaching hospital for the Baileys. The gift was in appreciation of their friendship with the Baileys, which began when the Browns were students at Auburn in the 1950s.

Wilford Bailey, a 1942 graduate of the College of Veterinary Medicine, had 50 years of continuous academic and administrative service to Auburn, including serving as Auburn’s 13th president.

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The $47 million small animal teaching hospital, one of the largest and most technologically advanced teaching and referral hospitals in the country, currently serves a growing caseload of 15,000 new cases each year.

The College of Veterinary Medicine’s Teaching Hospital, which includes the Bailey Small Animal and the J.T. Vaughan Large Animal, is the largest academic outreach program to be housed on the campus of Auburn University.

Inside the facility are 12 clinical services, which include: cardiology, critical care, neurology and neurosurgery, oncology, radiology, orthopedics, physical therapy/ rehabilitation, internal medicine, general surgery, ophthalmology, dermatology and theriogenology.

The new building also houses a centralized pharmacy, serving both small and large animal teaching hospitals; a clinical pathology department; an 82seat high-tech conference room as well as smaller meeting spaces to expand the college’s instructional and outreach capabilities; and the Auburn University Veterinary Clinic, which is providing veterinary students experience in operating a small animal practice.

The clinic is open to the public.

From pecan pie to bread pudding, cornbread dressing to sweet tea, Southern cuisine might comfort the soul. The body? Not so much.

Longstanding Southern traditions of cooking and eating often clash with the dietary requirements needed to manage diabetes.

In particular, type 2 diabetes is consistently problematic in Alabama, which has ranked among the top three states for diabetes for the past several years.

To combat the problem, Auburn and Tuskegee universities recently teamed with East Alabama Medical Center’s Diabetes and Nutrition Center in Opelika to develop “Reaching Out for Better Health,” a project funded by the American Association of Diabe-

tes Educators, or AADE. The collaboration was one of only 10 projects funded nationwide. The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama Caring Foundation also supported the research aspects of the project.

“We want to help empower people who have diabetes while also measuring the impact of accredited diabetes self-management education,” said Jan Kavookjian, associate professor in health outcomes research and policy in Auburn University’s Harrison School of Pharmacy.

The Reaching Out program’s objective is to increase access to diabetes self-management education and training for people considered at high risk for diabetes and its complications.

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Dev. Ad

C O L L E G E

S T R E E T

Software visionaries Walt ’69 and Ginger Woltosz are known internationally as engineering pioneers. Their software breakthroughs have improved the quality of life for those with speech disabilities and have enhanced discovery and development in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

At Auburn University, they are known for their generous, charitable support that will continue to transform educational and research programs in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

The couple’s recent philanthropic endowment of $10.55 million — the second-largest gift in the college’s history — will support the educational needs of engineering students and the research needs of faculty, while bolstering the technical advances of the college’s research facilities. Their support also includes enhancing the current Woltosz Graduate Fellows Program and endowing a second professorship in the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

We support Auburn because…

The quality of an Auburn engineering education is evidenced by the tremendous successes of so many of the college’s alumni, and I have been one of the very fortunate ones. I know my education was supported by the gifts of others, so now it’s our turn to “pay it forward.” Ginger and I believe in Auburn and hope that our gifts will assist in continuing its progress toward the forefront of engineering education in the nation and in the world.

- Walt Woltosz ‘69

In recognition of their continued, very generous support of Auburn University, the Board of Trustees has honored Walt and Ginger by naming the college’s central research facility in the Shelby Center for Engineering Technology as the Woltosz Engineering Research Laboratory.

OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT

THIS IS AUBURN. a u a l u m . o r g Auburn Magazine

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C O L L E G E

S T R E E T

A world of options–over

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For the people Two students and one faculty member were recognized with Auburn’s highest honor for humanitarian service April 15 at the annual President’s Luncheon. The Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award was presented to seniors Azeem Ahmed and Courtney Bessemer, and William I. Sauser Jr., a faculty member in the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business. The national honor has been presented at Auburn since 1951.

The

C O L L E G E

S T R E E T

Stacks

Fourteen essays on Alabama’s role in the Civil War and its aftermath, not only military but political and cultural aspects. (University of Alabama Press)

How Bill Sanford and his wife Melanie’s faith was strengthened following the emotional roller-coaster that followed the loss of their daughter. (Morgan James)

Chronicles the evolution of the Rural Studio program founded by Samuel Mockbee, showcasing a wealth of building projects. (Princeton Architectural Press)

Kenneth W. Noe (Editor)

Bill Sanford ’81

Andrew Freear

Noe is an Alumni Professor and Draughon Professor of Southern History at Auburn.

Sanford is the owner of Banner Industrial Construction Co. in Birmingham.

Andrew Freear is director of the Rural Studio, based in Newbern.

A no-holds-barred account of the good, the bad and the ugly of motherhood, from the creator of the popular Robin’s Chicks blog. (St. Martin’s Griffin)

Follows the life of the legendary coach Mel Rosen from his early days in Brooklyn to his 28-year career as Auburn’s track coach and four SEC championships. (NewSouth)

A new edition of this “Pictorial History of the Loveliest Village,” chronicling Auburn’s history from 1836 to 2013, featuring more than 800 photos. (www.auburnpictorialhistory.com)

Robin O’Bryant ’04

Craig Darch

Jack Simms ’49 /Mickey Logue ’52

O’Bryant is a syndicated humor columnist and blogger living in Greenwood, Miss.

Darch is the Humana Foundation-Germany-Sherman Distinguished Professor at Auburn.

Simms and Logue are professors emeriti of journalism at Auburn University.

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Research

Bee safe

In Kenya, traditional cultures place a high value on honey and related products of the beehive—in the past, it was part of the dowry or “bride price” for marriage, and a man needed to have at least 20 liters of choice honey to present to a prospective father-in-law when asking for his daughter’s hand.

More than just a tradition, this commodity could be the key to improving many aspects of Kenyan lives.

Auburn University’s Global Water Watch has joined with Kenya’s Green Belt Movement to find innovative ways of linking honey production with improved nutrition, higher incomes, community development and river protection.

“Honey has been an important part of the human diet for millennia, and gathering wild honey predates agriculture in many parts of the world,” said William Deutsch, Global Water Watch director. “We believe we can improve production, and in turn their lives and livelihoods, through cleaner water while also helping the environment.”

The Global Water Watch program, established at Auburn more than 20 years ago, is a worldwide network of community-based water-monitoring groups that has worked in almost a dozen countries with citizen groups that often include indigenous peoples. These include the Quichua of Ecuador, Quechua and Aymara of Peru, Akha of Thailand and Tala-Andig of the Philippines, among others.

Following two trips to Kenya by Auburn researchers, the EPA funded a one-year pilot project in a cooperative agreement with the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, a nongovernmental organization from Washington, D.C. Deutsch and his colleagues in October 2013 initiated watermonitoring and environmental education activities in the Upper Tana River Watershed. He returned to Kenya in mid-March to conduct more workshops for new community members and to establish new water-monitoring sites.

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Hunger games An inaugural forum of university leaders convened at Auburn in late February to identify ways that collective action by universities can solve world hunger issues. Afterward, the ninth annual Universities Fighting World Hunger summit began, with 300 students and educators from member institutions participating.

C O L L E G E

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Auburn Speaks

FOOD

Fowl fibroids An estimated 70 percent of women in the United States develop uterine fibroid tumors by age 50, and while the noncancerous tumors cause no symptoms for the majority of those women, they make life miserable for tens of thousands of others.

Within his own family, Wallace Berry has seen the pain and distress that uterine fibroids can inflict, and in his newest research undertaking, the Auburn University poultry scientist aims to use his findings to help reduce the incidence and severity of fibroid tumors.

Using the laying hen as an experimental model, Berry and Haruka Wada, an Auburn biological sciences assistant professor specializing in the short- and longterm effects of pre- and postnatal developmental stress in birds and other animals, are investigating their theory that over-nutrition during infancy and childhood and early onset of puberty increase a woman’s chances of developing uterine fibroids.

Berry’s expertise is in the reproductive physiology of poultry, and in extensive research over the past decade, he has established the egg-type chicken—the hormonal cycle and ovarian surface cells of which are remarkably similar to humans’—as a valid

animal model for studying human reproductive-tract disorders.

“Uterine fibroids are a huge quality of life issue for a large segment of the population, but little progress has been made in determining what causes the disease or recommendations for prevention, in part due to a lack of experimental models to study it,” Berry said.

“Dr. Wada has formulated the hypothesis for our study, which is among the first to examine how the developmental environment, such as childhood diet, impacts a woman’s risk for the disease.”

Fibroids are most common in women in their 30s and 40s. Depending on a tumor’s size and location in the uterus, it can cause symptoms including abdominal pain and pressure, bloating, heavy or prolonged menstrual bleeding, backache and, in rare cases, infertility.

Although a few new experimental treatment procedures have become available in recent years, fibroids still are a major cause of hysterectomies in the United States, accounting for a third of the 600,000 performed each year.

A $40,000 Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station grant is funding the fibroid study.

Berry said he and Wada will use data they collect from the project to apply for a substantially larger grant from a National Institutes of Health/U.S. Department of Agriculture funding program for projects that use domestic animal species to improve human health through basic and translational research.

Auburn University released a new book, Auburn Speaks: On Food Systems, during the university’s third annual Research Week. A panel discussion with the editors, writers and researchers was held on April 17 at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center.

“The book traces the university’s exceptional food-related research across many disciplines,” said John Mason, Auburn’s vice president for research and economic development. “Each year we select a topic that captures Auburn’s land-grant role in addressing the increasingly complex issues facing our state, nation and world.”

Auburn Speaks: On Food Systems is the third book in the Au-

burn Speaks series, following previous editions that covered the university’s research pertaining to the Gulf oil spill of 2010 and water.

This year faculty members penned articles or were interviewed on their food-related research in areas such as nutrition, engineering, economics, marketing, horticulture, poultry science, veterinary medicine, fisheries and many others.

Auburn Speaks is produced jointly by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, the Office of University Writing and the Office of the Provost. More information is available on the Auburn Speaks website at www.auburn.edu/ auburnspeaks.

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C O L L E G E

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Gone green Auburn has been named one of the 332 most environmentally responsible colleges in the United States and Canada in The Princeton Review’s Guide to 332 Green Colleges. Schools were chosen based on a survey conducted in 2013 of administrators at hundreds of fouryear colleges to measure each school’s commitment to the environment and to sustainability.

Roundup COLLEGE OF

Agriculture John Fulton, a professor of biosystems engineering and specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, has been awarded the Alabama Farmers Federation Agriculture Professorship. A member of the College of Agriculture faculty and an Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station researcher since 2004, Fulton’s work has focused on machine systems, precision agriculture and agricultural and forestry cellulosic biomass. He leads the Alabama Precision Ag Program and has successfully transferred knowledge gained through on-farm research into outreach efforts throughout the Southeast.

“The Alfa Professorship represents an opportunity to further

advance Alabama agriculture by helping growers statewide improve their farm operations through new management strategies,” said Fulton.

“Auburn University

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must provide scientific solutions to the new challenges farmers confront, followed by high-value Extension activities. This position addresses these needs directly.”

COLLEGE OF

Architecture, Design and Construction For the second consecutive year, industrial design students and faculty from Auburn’s School of Industrial + Graphic Design were invited to participate in late March at an international innovation workshop at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Saint-Etienne, France. Working under the direction of associate professor Shea Tillman, students traveled to Saint-Etienne and took part in a multidisciplinary four-day

creative event.

Their design challenge was to “Imagine the Future of Retail Environments and Experiences.” AU students Seth Maddox, Vanessa Lee, Jonathan Dunn,

Marcus Crawford, Will King and Elené Weaver were tasked with generating, developing and presenting concepts that addressed this challenge.

The Auburn students worked on teams with students from Brunel University (London), Politecnico di Milano (Milan), Ecole des Mines (Saint-Etienne) and Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Etienne, France).

In addition, faculty/program director Shea Tillman led and facilitated two teams that included students from France, Italy, Korea, Malaysia and Tunisia.

RAYMOND J. HARBERT COLLEGE OF

Business Auburn University’s Raymond J. Harbert College of Business will become the university’s first college to offer an online undergraduate program when its School of Accountancy opens its new Bachelor of Science offering this fall.

The program, designed for working professionals interested in pursuing careers in accounting, will be added to the college’s current online offerings, which consist of graduate-level degrees.

“Our online programs combine traditional instruction with modern technology

delivery to offer educational opportunities to working professionals beyond Auburn’s campus,” School of Accountancy Director DeWayne Searcy said.

“We are very pleased to be the first academic unit at Auburn to offer an online undergraduate degree and to pave the way for other programs to follow.”

Admission will be limited to second degree candidates who have already completed a bachelor’s degree or MBA at a school or college accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or AACSB. Students balancing career and family obligations will be able to complete the 30-semester-hour program in two years by taking six credit hours per semester.

Full-time students may graduate more quickly.

COLLEGE OF

Education The American College of Sports Medicine has appointed Auburn University’s Bruce Gladden as editor-in-chief of its flagship journal, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Gladden is a Humana-Germany-Sherman Distinguished Professor in Auburn’s School of Kinesiology. A fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine since 1980, he has an international reputation in the field of exercise physiology with more than 100 cited scientific

publications and more than 3,500 citations to those publications.

Gladden obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee and completed two years of postdoctoral work at the University of Florida. His first faculty position was in the exercise physiology laboratory at the University of Louisville, where he remained for 11 years. He has been at Auburn since 1989.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF

Engineering Four out of the five Auburn University students and alumni awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships this year came from engineering programs. The five, plus two students who received honorable mention, set an Auburn record for number of NSF fellowships awarded.

Students receiving the NSF fellowships were Chris Bartel, an Honors College Senior in chemical engineering, Zack Coker, a 2013 Honors College graduate in software engineering, Alex Roman, an Honors College senior in chemical engineering, Jacob Clary, an Honors College senior in chemical engineering, and Casey Ruark, a 2013 Honors College graduate in biological sciences.

Receiving an honorable mention were

Alex Wolff, a senior in chemical engineering, and Ryan Weaver, a graduate student in biological sciences.

SCHOOL OF

Forestry and Wildlife Sciences Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences hosted its Spring Fling on April 18 at coach Pat Dye’s Crooked Oaks Farm and Quail Hollow Gardens in Notasulga. Net proceeds from the fundraising gala will fund scholarships, program support and educational initiatives in forestry and wildlife sciences.

Events included an archery exhibition; live and silent auctions; demonstrations from the Louise Kreher Forest Ecology Preserve, Birds of a Feather and the Southeastern Raptor Center; and live music provided by Kidd Blue.

COLLEGE OF

Human Sciences Auburn students bound for the new study abroad experience in Port Alfred, South Africa, this summer say they hope to make the journey with a large collection of school supplies to benefit an educational program outside Johannesburg.

Three students and Martin O’Neill, head of the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Hos-

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Flying high Graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering won first place in the research paper portion of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Southeastern Regional Conference. Josef Fleischmann, a graduate student in aerospace engineering, and Sanny Omar, a senior in aerospace engineering, competed in the master’s and undergraduate divisions of the conference, bringing home the top awards for the fifth consecutive year.

pitality Management, are piloting the new study abroad program and have already delivered an initial collection of backpacks and other school supplies to the Teboho Trust in Soweto.

The 10 students traveling to Port Alfred this summer already have started collecting more supplies, specifically flash cards, markers, colored construction paper and scissors. The fundraising efforts are being led by Eta Sigma Delta, the national hospitality honor society, and the Hotel and Restaurant Management program’s Student Advisory Board.

Administrators in the College of Human Sciences learned about Teboho last summer when they were traveling to Port Alfred to discuss a study abroad agreement with Stenden University. On a stop in Soweto, a neighborhood about 20 miles west of Johannesburg, O’Neill said he noticed the need for basic school supplies in observing Teboho’s Saturday Academy, and upon his return to Auburn, enlisted students in the Hotel and Restaurant Management program in collection efforts.

COLLEGE OF

Liberal Arts Bo Jackson, ESPN host, play-by-play announcer Joe Tessitore and ESPN vice president of production for college networks Stephanie Druley joined Auburn students, alumni and fans on April 18 in

the Foy Hall Auditorium for a free public sneak peek into the launch of the SEC Network. The group talked Auburn football and athletics, as well as Jackson’s latest projects including his Bo Bikes Bama event.

The School of Communication and Journalism in the College of Liberal Arts partnered with the athletics department at Auburn

School of Nursing, but the couple recently made a gift to the school, establishing the Elizabeth Kersey Bowling and William Bismarck Bowling II Endowed Scholarship.

Bill Bowling earned his pharmacy degree from Auburn in 1957, while Libba Bowling earned a nursing degree from what is now Georgia Baptist School of Nursing at Mercer University.

to allow students the opportunity to learn about sports production and contribute content to the SEC Network. Athletics is teaching “Introduction to Sports Video Production” for the school’s majors next fall.

“Our students will have experience shooting live sporting events for broadcast and the Web,” said Jennifer Adams, director of the School of Communication and Journalism. “Students will also have the opportunity to do play-by-play announcing, producing and the possibility of serving as on-air talent for some of the shows Auburn Athletics plans to develop.”

She currently serves on the Auburn School of Nursing’s clinical advisory board.

Bill Bowling, a fifth-generation Auburn graduate, is the greatgrandson of James F. Dowdell, Auburn’s second president. The Bowlings live in Pine Mountain, Ga.

SCHOOL OF

Nursing Neither Libba nor Bill Bowling graduated from Auburn University’s

HARRISON SCHOOL OF

Pharmacy For most students, summer is a time to relax and recharge, maybe take a class or two. For most students at the Auburn University Harrison School of Pharmacy, the summer also includes a two-week pharmacy practice rotation. But second-year pharmacy student Elizabeth Wood will spend her summer working at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country.

C O L L E G E

S T R E E T

Wood, a native of Vestavia Hills, will spend the summer in Rochester, Minn., at Mayo Clinic. She was selected as one of four students nationwide to work in the clinic’s outpatient pharmacy program.

While internships are not required for Auburn pharmacy students, Wood said she saw the opportunity as an important one for helping her reach her long-term goals.

“I applied to two programs, Johns Hopkins and Mayo,” Wood said.

“I am interested in doing a residency eventually, so I thought it would be good to get clinical experience.”

COLLEGE OF

Veterinary Medicine The Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine hosted its 107th Annual Conference in mid-April. Some 450 veterinarians attended conference sessions and labs, which offered the latest in continuing education from experts in the field and featured Auburn alumni and faculty. Attendees had the opportunity to earn 20 continuing education credit hours in a variety of small animal and large animal fields.

This year’s conference coincided with the dedication of the new Wilford and Kate Bailey Small Animal Teaching Hospital on April 11.

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S T U D E N T

L I F E

CONCOURSE

GOING

BIG The green space outside

“This year’s BIG Event,

the Auburn University

with the slogan of ‘One

Student Center was

BIG family, One BIG

filled with more than

difference, One BIG

2,200 students at 8 a.m.

Event,’ is all about

on a recent Saturday,

connecting the Auburn

and it wasn’t game day.

community,” said James

On March 22, the 12th

Prewitt, assistant

annual BIG Event sent

executive director of the

students into 168 job

event. “The BIG Event is

sites in the surrounding

an amazing opportunity

community to perform

to show the people of

community-service

the community how

projects. Among the

Auburn students

sites were Opelika

appreciate them for

Municipal Park,

allowing us to call

Loachapoka High School,

Auburn home.”

Magnolia Place Assisted

The BIG Event

Living facility and other

originally began at Texas

homes, businesses,

A&M in 1982 and has

churches and schools,

since expanded to 75

where students did

other schools.

everything from landscaping to painting to pressure-washing.

Letting it all go With the March 18 DVD release of Disney’s Frozen, people will be singing Idina Menzel’s Oscar-winning song “Let it Go” more than ever. But for one Auburn student, singing the song in the car or the shower wasn’t enough.

Caleb Hyles, a junior in broadcast journalism, is singing the song to millions of fans on YouTube. Two weeks after he uploaded the song to YouTube, Hyles re-

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ceived more than 2 million views. By midApril, his cover version of “Let It Go” has more than 5 million views and continues to grow.

While he said he wasn’t expecting such a large number of views, he wasn’t entirely surprised by the popularity of his cover. “I don’t say (I wasn’t surprised) to sound pompous or conceited, but if you were to look at how other ‘Let It Go’ covers on YouTube were performing, no matter the quality, I was definitely expecting a higher view count then I had previously received.”

Hyles, a member of a Montgomerybased fresh metal rock band named From the Dark, said he originally recorded the cover for his mother, who was a fan of the movie. The 22-year-old started recording both covers and original songs in 2003 and said his previous videos would typically get 500 views. His highest before “Let it Go” was an a cappella cover of Linkin Park’s “All That Remains,” exceeding 170,000 views.

“Every video has exponentially gone up in views,” Hyles said. “It has been really neat seeing other videos I’ve done that I’m really proud of get the attention I had hoped they would.”

Disney tunes are becoming a specialty.

“I am planning on doing several more Disney covers in the coming weeks because that seems to be my calling card,” he said.

“I’m not complaining, though.”

He has also been included in “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest’s March Music Madness, a competition featuring 15 covers of “Let it Go,” including artists such as Alex Boyé and Lexi Walker, Christina Bianco and Derek Govin. Boyé and Walker’s version, which is an Africanized tribal cover, has 28 million views.

Hyles’ cover has become so popular that even the video has fan videos. Because he performs it in the original key, something that is incredibly challenging for a male vocalist, YouTube users have taken Hyles’ video and Menzel’s original and spliced them together to create “duets.”

Hyles’ only formal training is in the form of church choir, so he used the video game Rock Band’s vocal scoring and training system as a way to perfect his pitch.

—Jordan Dale

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C O N C O U R S E

Dine well Auburn’s new state-of-the-art Wellness Kitchen, opening in the late summer or early fall, is designed to help diners maximize food as fuel and provide a new mealtime option for AU diners.

“We’re not there to count calories, we’re there to make calories count,” said Glenn Loughridge, director of Tiger Dining.

“We want the maximum benefit out of every calorie consumed.

When we look at a recipe we want to look at how to avoid empty calories and have components that work together. There

is a lot of thought that goes into the menu.”

Loughridge has worked closely with Scott Sehnert, the sports dietitian for Auburn Athletics, to create a menu that works for student-athletes as well as the general student population. “It’s very deliberate,” Loughridge said. “It’s not just about the culinary experience, it’s about the nutritional experience.”

Sehnert is working with the chef to iron out the fine details of the menu that will best meet the needs of his athletes. “There will be a focus on performance-enhancing meals that will have quality carbohydrates and protein along with nutrient-dense fats,” he said. “We will also give great thought to foods that can promote recovery and an overall healthy immune system.”

The Wellness Kitchen will feature a gluten-free kitchen to cater to those with gluten allergies and other intolerances. A smoothie station, salad bar, meat-and-three hot line, pizza oven using whole wheat dough and more will also be available.

Sehnert said he enjoys creating healthier options and thinks students will react positively to the Wellness Kitchen. “The excitement will come once students and student-athletes see that food they’ve always loved, like hamburgers and fettuccine alfredo, can be made in ways that also provide athletic and health benefits,” he said.— Jordan Dale

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S P O R T S

TIGER WALK JEFF ET H ERIDG E

Beyond all measure

Coach Mel Rosen’s 1993 U.S. track and field team won a record 20 medals in the Olympic Games held in Barcelona, Spain.

When 42-year track coach Wilbur Hutsell retired in 1963, the future of Auburn’s program was shaky, resting on the shoulders of a young assistant coach who was not only Jewish, but a Yankee. No one thought he could successfully recruit and coach in the South. He proved them wrong.

[Wilbur] Hutsell would reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 in September 1963. He wasn’t happy about it; he was ill-suited for leisure, his health was excellent, and he still had the energy and drive to do his job. The 1963 team, his last, won all four of their dual meets, defeating

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Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Georgia Tech, in that order, and finished third in the SEC championship meet behind LSU and Mississippi State.

When Hutsell announced his retirement, bringing to an end a 42-year run as head track and field coach, many of his

former athletes began planning a surprise celebration for their esteemed mentor. The final track meet of the season, a dual meet against Alabama, was selected as the occasion. Hutsell’s former athletes pooled money to present him with a new car, a 1963 Oldsmobile. The car was driven

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RFID to AU Auburn University will soon be home to one of the world’s leading research centers in radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology. In June, the RFID Research Center will move from the University of Arkansas to Auburn, with research collaborations initially involving the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business, the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the College of Human Sciences. When it opens in June, it will be reunited with its founder and former director, AU business dean Bill Hardgrave.

onto the track to surprise the coach.

“Coach Hutsell was fanatical about the care of the track,” [then assistant coach Mel Rosen recalled.] “So, all of a sudden they drove that big Oldsmobile on the track and headed right for Coach. As soon as he saw the car, he ran full speed at it, screaming at the top of his voice to get that ‘blasted thing’ off the track. He didn’t realize it was a gift for him. That was Coach Hutsell.”

Rosen (shown at right with Harvey Glance ’91) expected to be appointed head coach, but months passed and he wasn’t offered the position. He didn’t lobby for the job but waited patiently. Nor did he discuss the job with Hutsell. He thought Hutsell would be unwilling to go out on a limb and recommend him for fear of being held responsible if Rosen’s hire didn’t work out. Rosen told [his wife] Joan that if he didn’t get the coaching position he would continue his teaching for the year and then begin looking for other jobs.

As the weeks passed, Rosen grew concerned that his Jewishness was working against him. Hawthorne Wesley remembers talk around the athletic department by some of the coaches questioning whether a New York Jew could recruit Southern athletes or convince potential walk-ons to come out for the team.

Rosen himself recalls: “Well, you know I was still an outsider; a Jewish guy from Brooklyn. So they may have been hesitant about bringing in this Yankee. I don’t think there were any other Northerners on the staff at that time.”

Rosen’s three-month wait finally came to an end with a phone call from Jeff Beard, Auburn’s athletic director. “When the call came I wasn’t sure if it was going to be good news or bad.” It was good.

In August 1963, Mel Rosen, a Jew from Brooklyn, was named head track coach of Auburn University, only the second head track coach in Auburn’s history. His salary for the 1964 season would be $6,600, and he didn’t try to negotiate for more.

“The money was the farthest thing from my mind. In fact, I never signed a contract, never saw one. Beard just told me the salary, and I took him at his word.”

Rosen didn’t know at the time that Beard had “lowballed” his salary. The original budget for the position had been

$10,000. But Beard decided on a lesser salary with the athletic department funding half and the physical education department paying half. Notwithstanding one of the two pre-conditions he had declared to himself about staying at Auburn—not to continue teaching in the physical education department—Rosen thus was required to carry a teaching load of four classes along with coaching. It was an unusual arrangement; most head coaches weren’t required to teach that much, if at all.

Rosen also learned later that the coaching position was first offered to Fred Carley, a Hutsell favorite who ran for Auburn from 1946 to 1948, won the SEC championship in the mile for three years, and was named an All American. He ranked sixth in the country in the mile in his senior year. Carley had received the first full track scholarship awarded by Hutsell in 1946 and later served as his graduate assistant for two years....

Only after Carley turned it down was Rosen offered the position. In fact, Beard still wasn’t convinced Rosen was the right man for the job and considered him a transitional coach. In a September 1963 memo, he wrote to W.T. Ingram, AU business manager: “I feel we can get by with [Rosen] on a trial basis under this arrangement.” He obviously was prepared to replace Rosen should he not find early success.

Rosen was stoic. “I guess they needed to think it over before giving a Yankee the job,” he told sportswriter Elliot Denman.

After Auburn announced Rosen as the new head coach, a sportswriter from Birmingham called him. The sportswriter asked Rosen if he had been a student at Auburn. “No.” He then asked Rosen if he was a graduate of Georgia or Tennessee.

Again, “No.” Next the writer asked what church he attended. Rosen, noting the ever-increasing frustration of the writer, said, “I’m Jewish, I go to the synagogue.” There was silence at the other end of the line.

Then, impatiently, the writer said, “I think I have enough. I need to go,” and hung up the phone.

T I G E R

W A L K

door championships. He coached the U.S. Olympic team to a record 20 medals in the Barcelona Olympics in 1993 and was inducted into the U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame. Auburn named its new track the Hutsell-Rosen Track in 2006.]

Excerpted with permission from From Brooklyn to the Olympics: The Hall of Fame Career of Auburn University Track Coach Mel Rosen, by Craig Darch, the Humana-Germany-Sherman Distiguished Professor of Special Education at Auburn.

Copyright 2014, NewSouth Books, www. newsouthbooks.com.

[Coach Mel Rosen went on to a long and successful career as head of Auburn’s track program, coaching seven Olympians and 143 All-Americans and leading the track team to four consecutive SEC in-

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A LEGEND LOST Auburn football legend David Langner ’73 died of cancer on April 26 at age 62. Langner entered the realm of Auburn football stardom during the 1972 Iron Bowl, when he returned not one but two blocked punts for touchdowns in the fourth quarter. His heads-up play led the Tigers to a 17-16 comeback win and gave rise to the “Punt, Bama, Punt” legend. In a statement following news of Langner’s death, AU athletic director Jay Jacobs said, “He was a fierce competitor who fought cancer as hard as he fought any opponent he faced. I know the entire Auburn family joins me in offering our sympathy and prayers to his family.”

Bring on the spirit Late on an April weekday evening, as students took refuge in the library from oncoming threatening weather, a figure moved among them, armed with a bundle of positive chat and plenty of doughnuts.

Meet Bruce Pearl, Auburn’s new head basketball coach, on a little public relations mission. He’s working to connect with the fans he hopes will fill the seats of Auburn Arena next season as a new era of basketball hits the Plains.

Pearl came to Auburn after a coaching hiatus following his dismissal from Tennessee in 2011 over recruiting infractions. In April, AU announced it would not appeal the NCAA’s show-cause penalty that prevented Pearl from off-campus recruiting until August. Until then, he is able to assess recruits and work with his coaching staff.

In the meantime, he’s getting to know

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Auburn and its stu- Basketball head dents, and is excit- coach Bruce Pearl already made ed about his return has strides with the to SEC basketball.

Auburn community “It’s a good through a combination of irrepressible fit,” Pearl told enthusiasm and ESPN, for whom doughnuts. he’d been working as a commentator since leaving Tennessee. “They haven’t been able to do it consistently in men’s basketball. The league is on the upswing.

“I’m hoping I can get the program to join the upper division. We’ve got to get more than three teams in the NCAA tournament. I look forward to it.”

Pearl has a 231-99 record at the Division I level in 10 seasons at Milwaukee and Tennessee. He replaces Tony Barbee, who left Auburn with a 49-75 record in four seasons.

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T I G E R

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I L LU S T RAT I ON B Y M A RI A RE N DON

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Fifty years ago, unsure of his safety, a tall, soft-spoken black man walked alone across the Auburn campus to reg ister for classes. H a rold Fran k li n’s i nteg ration of Aubu r n Un iversit y went smoot h ly t han ks to cou rage, conviction and careful planning. But, behind the scenes, it was far from easy. b y

Su z a n n e

Joh n son

Additional reporting by Anna Claire Conrad, Kerry Coppinger and Jordan Dale

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S O U N D

A N D

T H E

F U R Y

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don’t stand in the doorway Don’t block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There’s a battle outside And it is ragin’ It’ll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin’.

—Bob Dylan, 1964 Fifty years have passed since Minnesota singer-songwriter Bob Dylan released “The Times They Are A’Changin’,” a song that became the rallying cry for social unrest throughout the turbulent 1960s. The song was inspired by the civil rights movement, hitting the airwaves the same year a married Air Force veteran named Harold Franklin arrived on a cold January morning to register for graduate school classes.

What made Jan. 4, 1964, different from any other registration day was that Harold Franklin was black, and Auburn University wasn’t.

Like the civil rights movement itself, the story of Auburn’s integration began long before, with an escalation of litigation, a a violent social landscape, a divided nation, and a governor deeply at odds with one of his state’s key university presidents.

I

t’s hard in these times to imagine the undercurrent of fear and anger that accompanied life in the South in the early 1960s. As early as 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v.

Board of Education that state-sponsored segregation of public schools violated the U.S. Constitution, Auburn University President Ralph B. Draughon had been closely following developments. A historian with an interest in public affairs, Draughon kept tabs on civil rights cases as they played out in courtrooms around the South, and began advocating, unsuccessfully, for Alabama to increase its funding to minority institutions.

But by the early 1960s, increasingly violent civil rights clashes had reached the Southern university. January 1961 had seen a week of protest as the first two black students entered the Univer-

28

sity of Georgia, and in fall 1962, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at Ole Miss, setting off riots that required a takeover by U.S. Marshals and federal troops. Two people died and more than 200 were injured.

The incident at Ole Miss prompted Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace to promise to thwart any attempts at desegregation at the University of Alabama, where one attempt to integrate, back in the 1950s, had proven unsuccessful.

His infamous “schoolhouse door” stand at the University of Alabama took place on June 11, 1963, when Vivian Malone and James Hood arrived in Tuscaloosa. Heavy media coverage sent dramatic images around the world, resulting in negative publicity for both the state and the university.

Draughon was determined that such a thing would not happen at Auburn, but he’d already had several heated clashes with Wallace over the issue.

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On the first Saturday in January 1964, Harold Franklin registered for classes at a table in the Auburn University library with Malcolm C. McMillan, right, a history professor, and William Van Parker, left, dean of the AU graduate school. Looking on, in addition to state police and library staff, were members of the media, whose numbers had been limited and controlled through the implementation of a carefully planned media campaign by Auburn President Ralph B. Draughon.

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Not long after Wallace’s theatrics in Tuscaloosa, Draughon received a telegram from President John F. Kennedy. “Right after the attorney general (Robert F. Kennedy) faced down Wallace about admitting the black students at the University of Alabama, President Kennedy sent my father a telegram,” says Ralph B. Draughon Jr. ’58. “He said, ‘Why don’t you come to the White House and let’s talk about the problems of civil rights and education in the South?’ And my father went, but he couldn’t tell anybody about it. He certainly couldn’t tell George Wallace.”

Another source of tension: Draughon’s desire to have Auburn integrate quietly and voluntarily, without involving the courts. “Of course nobody could know this, but [my father] had proposed to the board of trustees that the university find a really bright AfricanAmerican student and admit him or her, and do it as simply as possible,” Draughon Jr. says. “He convinced the board to go along with it, but George Wallace had a fit about it and wouldn’t permit it. He was very angry at my father about that.”

Auburn faculty and students weren’t immune to what was going on, either, and in her master’s thesis on the university’s integration and, in particular, Draughon’s handling of media coverage, L. Anne Willis ’05 outlines an ongoing series of disagreements between the staff of The Auburn Plainsman and the administration. Strongly worded editorials and articles by both students and faculty advocating integration in 1961 and 1962 resulted in suspension of publication during the summer of 1962 and the creation of new policy guidelines on the newspaper’s role and responsibility.

As 1963 progressed, Draughon was trapped in what seemed like a no-win situation, and his son remembers the toll it took.

“My father was caught in the middle. As he said, Auburn was caught between an irresistible force, the federal government, and an immovable object, George Wallace and the state legislature,” Draughon Jr. says.

“A lot of liberals thought he was doing too little and George Wallace thought he was doing too much, but he did do a lot behind the scenes. It was very stressful, and I’m sure it shortened his life. I think he deserves a lot of credit ultimately for the peaceful integration of Auburn.”

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hile Draughon worked behind the scenes, another drama unfolded in Montgomery involving a 30-year-old Air Force veteran named Harold Franklin. In 1962 he had graduated with honors from Alabama State College. Married, with a child on the way, Franklin dreamed of going to law school and becoming the next Thurgood Marshall.

He’d set his sights on law school at the University of Alabama, but civil rights attorney Fred Gray convinced him to instead pursue graduate school at the still-segregated Auburn.

“I reluctantly agreed,” Franklin recalls. “At the time Auburn had a heavy emphasis on agriculture, not liberal arts, but I sent Auburn my application. When they realized I graduated from Alabama State, they turned me down, not because I was black,

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a telegram they said, but because Alabama State was Following from President John F. not accredited.”

Kennedy (left), Ralph In August 1962, Gray filed a class Draughon made a setrip to Washington action suit on Franklin’s behalf, offer- cret to discuss civil rights. ing testimony from the state education Above, state police superintendent that Alabama State’s ringed the campus entrances, preventing lack of accreditation was due to inad- federal agents from equate state funding. It sealed a victory providing protection Harold Franklin for Franklin’s case, and Auburn was or- for while he registered. dered to admit him the next spring.

Jamie Hardin Freeman ’65 was working as secretary to admissions director E.J. Brumfield at the time. “I opened the envelope that had Mr. Franklin’s application for admission,” she recalls. “The admissions committee at the time had informed me as to what I should do when we received the first African-American application. I was to say nothing to anyone and give the application to Mr. Brumfield. He, in turn, carried the application to President Draughon for the proper channels to be activated for review and consideration for the admission of Mr. Franklin.

“To my knowledge, it was a well-kept secret because most staff members, faculty and students did not know about his entrance until he was on campus. At the moment it seemed to be a significant event, but never did I think it would become a major historical one.”

With the court ruling, Draughon’s planning went into high gear. According to Willis’ research, the Auburn president wanted to both accommodate the media coverage of Franklin’s registration and to control it. He limited access to a single mobile camera unit, decreed that only full-time employees of news organizations could be present, and set up a media-pool area just off campus.

SGA President Jim Vickrey ’64 remembers the student senate also getting involved to ensure things went smoothly, working with administrators to set up emergency rules of conduct to take effect when students returned from winter break.

“I remember those of us in leadership were called together

by President Draughon and other officials,” says Vickrey, now a resident of Montgomery. “We had a number of meetings about

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the details of planning for integration, and the reason that was so important wasn’t really because we expected Auburn’s campus to go bonkers over it, but because Governor Wallace had stood in the schoolhouse door at Alabama and created all that ruckus. We didn’t know what he was going to do, and he wouldn’t tell anybody.

“We felt honored to have been at Auburn at that moment in history. We were concerned about potential mischief—not really violence or arson, but mischief. And we were concerned about Auburn being embarrassed. We wanted Auburn to look good.”

The Plainsman staff also did some preparatory work. “The senior staff had some informal meetings with the leaders of Tuskegee Institute,” says George Gardner ’65, news editor of the paper and now living in Maryland. “These meetings had to be kept secret, and we did them over in Tuskegee on Sundays because we were kind of afraid to bring them to our campus.

That was the mood.”

Among the Plainsman staff, Gardner said, there was support for Franklin’s arrival. “It was the right thing to do,” he says. “It was just crazy that it hadn’t happened yet, and we were determined it wouldn’t happen with the sort of fiasco that the University of Alabama had. We were determined that at Auburn it would happen with grace and dignity.”

Registration complete, Franklin prepared to return to Magnolia dorm, where he lived alone on an entire wing. While Franklin did not receive his AU degree, he opened the door for Josetta Brittain Matthews ’67 to become the first African-American graduate degree recipient.

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On Tuesday, Dec. 3, 1963, Draughon called a meeting of the student body at the stadium, attended by 90 percent of Auburn’s students. “There must have been 10,000 students there,” Vickrey says. “The president and other officials said, in effect, ‘Live out the Auburn Creed. Be Auburn men and women, regardless of the way you feel about the court order or integration. Auburn will follow the law, and you’re expected to follow the law. If you don’t, you can expect to be invited out of town and dismissed from the university.’

“I remember that vividly, that and the letter that went out to parents echoing the same thing, not because of their impact but because of how simply true to Auburn they were.”

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aturday, Jan. 4, 1964, dawned cold and rainy. By 6 a.m., “Restricted” signs ringed campus. At 8 a.m., “News Central” opened in a hotel banquet room a block from the university.

Draughon held a last-minute meeting with the board. “They met and agreed about how things should work,” Draughon Jr. says. “They had gone to see George Wallace in Montgomery, and he agreed to the plan.

Among the things to which the governor had agreed was that federal troops would be allowed to enter the Auburn campus and escort Harold Franklin to register.”

Among the students, most of whom heeded the administra-

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tion’s request to stay away, things were tense. “It was an explosive situation,” Vickrey says. “We didn’t know what might happen, and we didn’t know what the governor was going to do.

We were planning a two-pronged strategy: what we would do if he did something, and what we would do if he did nothing.”

Wallace didn’t come to Auburn, but he did make a move.

“At the last minute George Wallace double-crossed [my father],” Draughon Jr. says. “Al Lingo, the head of the state police and sort of George Wallace’s official troublemaker, wouldn’t let the federal officials on campus to protect Harold Franklin. So that morning, my father fired off a letter to George Wallace and said, essentially, that he had double-crossed him and that if there was any trouble at Auburn, it would not be the responsibility of the Auburn University Board of Trustees or the administration or the students. It would be George Wallace’s responsibility.

“Wallace wrote back a very hot letter and said that he was disgusted with my father. He was still angry that my father had initially suggested they admit a qualified black student voluntarily, and he sort of threatened that Auburn’s appropriations would be affected.”

Harold Franklin would be without protection.

In the meantime, Franklin, being driven from Montgomery to Auburn by a friend, had been waylaid by a flat tire. He flagged down Fred Gray, who knew from the morning papers that Lingo had promised to arrest any federal troops trying to enter Auburn’s campus. Instead of taking Franklin to the university, Gray drove him to the Auburn United Methodist Church, whose minister had offered Franklin assistance.

Fearing Lingo’s men would try to plant a gun in Franklin’s bags as had been done to James Meredith at Ole Miss, the Methodist minister arranged for FBI officers to inspect Franklin’s bags so they could bear witness that he had no weapons.

“When I got out of the car, a guy reached in his pocket and pulled out his FBI badge,” Franklin recalled in a speech given on the 35th anniversary of his enrollment at Auburn. “He said, ‘May I search your things?’ I said certainly. He said, ‘You don’t have a gun,” and I said something crazy, like, ‘I’m going to school, not hunting.’ Later I found out why.”

Auburn’s development director Joe Sarver picked Franklin up at the church and ferried him to Magnolia Dormitory, where Franklin would be living. “When I got there, not only did they have a room for me, they gave me a whole wing to myself, three stories tall,” Franklin says. “So, I put my things in and went to register.”

As he left the dorm, he was met by Dean of Student Affairs James Foy and his assistant, who planned to walk with Franklin to the library for registration.

They didn’t get far. “Al Lingo stopped us. He said the court ordered me to be treated the same as other students.

White students weren’t escorted to registration, so I had to go alone,” Franklin says. “I knew then, they were going to kill me. They were setting me up to kill me.”

His conviction increased when, on his way to the library, he was stopped by a state trooper who demanded to see his student identification—which, of course he didn’t have because he hadn’t yet registered. Before the situation could escalate, however, another officer joined them, looked at Franklin’s driver’s license, and sent him on his way to the library. He walked away alone in the cold drizzle.

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In the end, Franklin’s registration went off peacefully. “The city police and campus officials were too mad at Al Lingo to bother paying much attention to me,” Franklin says. “They just wanted their town back.”

A couple hundred students stood across the street and watched. A few shouted insults, but most remained quiet, and the crowd dispersed when Franklin entered the library. As he came back out, two students—Jim Dinsmore ’64 and Bobby Boettcher ’64—shook his hand and welcomed him to Auburn.

“That was on a Saturday,” Franklin says. “I went to my dormitory and sat there until Monday morning.” Five days later, the state highway officers left Auburn. Seventeen days later, Franklin’s son was born in Montgomery.

Franklin says he made some friends at Auburn, and, mostly, people left him alone. “My classes went okay. I got in a couple of classes where, when the white students saw I was there, they withdrew from the class, but that didn’t bother me,” he says. “And I did have those 60 rooms in Magnolia all to myself. I counted them.”

Ultimately, Franklin left Auburn without his graduate degree when his thesis wasn’t accepted by his advisers. “I wanted to write something on the civil rights struggle, but the professors at Auburn told me that was too controversial. They wanted me to write on the history of Alabama State College.

Each time I would turn it in, they found something wrong with it.” So he left, first teaching at Alabama State, then joining the faculty at Tuskegee. Eventually, he received a scholarship to the University of Denver, where he finished his degree and enjoyed a teaching appointment at Talladega until his retirement in 1992.

Auburn University conferred an honorary degree on Franklin in 2001.

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ith Franklin gone, it fell to Samuel Pettijohn ’67 to hold the distinction as the first African-American student to earn an Auburn degree. Pettijohn, now a school principal in Maryland, started his college career at Tuskegee but found it didn’t meet his academic needs. “I was in an experimental physics program at Tuskegee,” he says.

“Experimental means they were just starting it my sophomore year, and when I went back for my junior year there were no courses for me to take.”

One of his professors talked him into driving to Auburn to finish his studies. “Auburn had been integrated about a year and a half at the time,” Pettijohn says. “There were seven other African-American students there, but the first semester I was really not aware of them.” Eventually, the students met and were able to offer each other support.

Much like Franklin, Pettijohn found himself isolated. “It was the typical type of things that were going on at that time, things now that just seem perfectly and obviously silly. Students would get up and move because you sat down at a table, or people that you were in class with would not speak to you.

Other than that, though, we had a little tight-knit group and we went about things as best as could be expected.”

The number of black students might have risen, but when Thom Gossom ’74 entered Auburn as a walk-on football player in 1970, integration in college athletics was still in its infancy.

Gossom, the second African-American player to join Coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan’s football team, had attended, at his mother’s insistence, the predominantly white John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham alongside another Auburn player named Pat Sullivan. “I didn’t want to go [to John Carroll] because I had to take two buses to get there and nobody from my neighborhood went there,” he says. “What I ended up becoming was an ambassador to two different worlds—the world I lived in and the world I went to school in, and their boundaries never touched.”

Recognizing that dichotomy early on helped some when he got to Auburn. “It was like going backward in time in some ways,” says Gossom, who went on to become a successful actor and author. “There was very little interaction with other students, so it took a lot of getting used to. Being an athlete made it different in a lot of ways, better in a lot of ways, because you have this thing that you’re trying to accomplish as a team, so you become closer to each other. But there were a lot of things that needed to happen that hadn’t happened over the years.

“I think we were all—the athletes, the non-athletes—we were the right people to come along at the right time and the university was at the period in its history where it was ready to move forward.”

In 2008, a new initiaJames Owens, who broke the color tive to enhance career resources and success barrier with Auburn football, and basfor male minority ketball player Henry Harris, Auburn’s students at Auburn was given the name first black scholarship athlete, formed a The Harold Franklin great support system for Gossom. “They Society in honor of were my big brothers,” he says. “We Franklin, seen at left with the society’s sigmade a great little team and looked out nature green tie. for each other. When Henry left, James

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was the oldest. When James left, I was the elder and by then we had 14 black athletes in the dorm. They became part of my responsibility.”

It wasn’t always a responsibility he wanted, but Gossom recognized his need to be a leader. “Auburn had only been officially integrated for six years, and that was just a handful of people and most of them didn’t stay. It was challenging, but you accept the responsibilities of where you’ve been placed.

Ghandi said, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ So if you want things to change you have to be part of the process.” Gossom pauses. “So we became a part of the process.”

In 1975, Gossom became the university’s first black athlete to graduate. His 2008 memoir, Walk On, recounts his time at Auburn.

A lifelong scholar and educator in Alabama, Franklin doesn’t hesitate when asked if he has a favorite book.

His copy of John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss’ From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans is dog-eared from multiple readings and holds a place of prominence on the bookshelves of his Sylacauga home.

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at the university and that our students are going all over the world and that we’re getting students from all over the world,” he says. “I like that the university is becoming more diversified.

It really is exciting.

“Auburn just has something. Even back in 1970, when I walked on that campus, there was something that said, ‘Yeah, this is where I want to be.’ Even then, there was something special about this place, this village, this feeling, this family, whatever you choose to call it. It’s wonderful to be a part of it.”

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ifty years after he made the long, lonely walk across campus to register at Auburn, Harold Franklin doesn’t see himself as a pioneer.

“I’m just glad I could do something during the civil rights struggle to help make things better,” he says from his home in Sylacauga, where, although retired from teaching, he still works at an area funeral home.

“I think I helped some people; I hope I did, anyway,” he says. “I think people began to learn that I was just as human as anyone. I bled the same blood that anybody else did, and I would cry if you made me too angry, and I would argue with you until hell froze over if I was right. If I wasn’t right, I would gladly apologize.”

For Vickrey, being at Auburn in 1964 changed his life and his perspective. “Auburn not only desegregated in 1964, but my personal experiences and growth separated me from my past and gave me the outlook I have today on racial matters. I have to thank Auburn for helping me gain perspective because I certainly didn’t go to college with it.”

Gossom, recently named vice-chair of the Auburn University Foundation, has made a number of trips back to Auburn in recent years. He likes what he sees. “I love the international focus

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From wine to window-dressings, Auburn students have their hands in more than just pies at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center. b y a n n a c l a i r e c o n r a d

A Living Lab... with

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you can’t miss it. Drive north on College Street from I-85, pass the Auburn Alumni Center, take a quick, nostalgic glance at the RBD Library, and there it is, in all its sprawling, multistoried glory.

The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center has become a mainstay on South College Street, becoming the go-to spot for university special functions, conferences and meetings.

Not to mention a hub on home-game weekends during football seasons.

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What most people who walk through the marbled lobby, sample the upscale menu in the Ariccia restaurant or stay in the recently renovated, well-appointed rooms don’t know is the relationship between the university and the hotel, the hotel and the conference center, and, of course, how it all relates to the university itself.

Turns out, the facility is a vital part of the university, not just as a dining and meeting venue, but as an important part of the Auburn academic experience.

Chef de Cuisine Chris McCurdy, right, combines magic in the kitchen preparing the menus and recipes for the Ariccia Italian Trattoria and Bar with mentoring behind the scenes. The restaurant serves as an invaluable training ground for students enrolled in the College of Human Sciences’ hotel and restaurant managment program.

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nce upon a time, there were two separate entities—a privately owned hotel and a university-owned conference center. Often, the two didn’t quite coexist in harmony.

“Obviously, when you have two completely different interests, that causes a lot of conflict,” says Hans van der Reijden, managing director of hotel operations and educational initiatives. “It was a recipe for disaster, basically, because when the hotel tried to sell rooms that needed conference space, the conference space was being used for something else already from the university, and vice-versa. That didn’t work.”

In 2001, the university solved the problem by buying the hotel. van der Reijden says the first move was looking for a management company that could not only run the hotel but partner with the university’s hospitality-management program and other academic areas.

They found Horst Schulze, who as president of the Ritz-Carlton hotel group had helped define what constituted a luxury hotel experience. He’d recently left to form his own company, Capella.

Nor was Schulze a stranger to Auburn University; he’d served on the College of Human Sciences advisory board for about 15 years by the time the hotel first opened, the same day the college kicked off its new hotel and restaurant management program.

When the university began looking for new management just as Schulze began his own company, he saw the opportunity and pursued it.

“The stars were aligned,” van der Reijden says. “The dean called him and said, ‘Hey, we’re starting an ultra-luxury hotel

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company. You most likely never considered Auburn, Ala., as a starting point, but guess what?’ He had been saying for 15 years that we needed to get a hotel, a restaurant and a kitchen so we could teach our students in a practical application, as well as well as in the classroom. And, that’s how we started.”

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hile the hotel is known for its superior quality in terms of lodging, accommodations and service, it is equally regarded for work with Auburn University students, for whom it provides a real-world work environment to learn about hotel and restaurant management outside of the classroom.

The first couple of years, the hotel was mainly focused on hospitality management, but since then, van der Reijden and his staff have made efforts to further bridge the gap between academia and business.

“We started to organize trips for the students,” he says. “We wanted to find a way to get leaders in the industry to Auburn, but also to get the students out to see something else besides just this hotel, besides Auburn and what lies between Atlanta and Birmingham.”

Twice a year, the hotel takes students on a trip to California wine country. They go to the restaurant trade show in New York City each year, and in recent years added trips to the Bahamas,

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Tahiti and Jordan. “We established an international partnership with a hospitality program that has campuses in Holland, South Africa, Doha, Bali and Bangkok,” van der Reijden says. “The first group of Auburn students is right now in South Africa. The second wave is going this summer. We’re opening up the campus in Bali and Bangkok as well.”

And as of 2015, the restaurant and hotel management program will become the first in Auburn history to make international experience a requirement of graduation.

Part of the university’s strategic plan is to prepare AU students to become global citizens and global contributors, something van der Reijden says fits in with exactly what they’re trying to do with the hotel. “[Becoming a global citizen] is very hard to do when all you’ve seen is within a two-hour driving circle around Auburn, Alabama,” he says. “I love this place and I’ve lived here for 10 years, but you’ve got to get out to experience and see the world.”

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couple of years after the hotel and conference center embraced the program in hotel and restaurant management, both hotel staff and AU faculty began looking for other ways to work together.

“We sometimes don’t see how many possibilities there are for some level of synergistic relationships because whatever we do with programs and students ends up benefiting the hotel,” van der Reijden says.

First up was the interior design program, which also falls in the College of Human Sciences. In 2009, students submitted new designs for the hotel’s jazz lounge, which serves cocktails and small plates, and features live music on Fridays and Saturdays except football home-game weekends.

“Piccolo is 90 percent the winning student’s design,” van der Reijden says.

The collaboration didn’t stop with Piccolo. Student teams also submitted designs for the terrace room, the pool area and, in 2012, the hotel’s flagship restaurant, Ariccia. “Ninety-nine percent of what you see in Ariccia comes from the winning design of one of the students,” van der Reijden says. “They’re that good.”

Currently, the hotel is working with a class to redesign the hotel’s lobby and conference center space.

Think it’s all about design and hospitality? Think again.

“We worked with the College of Veterinary Medicine on designing a pet-friendly room because a lot of people stay here, sometimes for weeks at a time, when their animals are going through therapy or treatment.”

You won’t see anyone’s pet zebra or python roaming the hotel hallways, though. “We stopped with large dogs,” van der Reijden says. “That’s where we draw the line.”

The hotel has also partnered with the horticulture department on an organic herb garden, which is about to be planted, and with the College of Agriculture on how to incorporate the fisheries and the meat labs into the hotel and restaurant.

“We also worked with the College of Business and their executive MBA program to redesign our guest rooms for renovation,” van der Reijden said. Visiting executives now have rooms with

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all the amenities they need to stay productive while on the road.

The Raymond J. Harbert College of Business’ supply-chain management program has also worked with the hotel. “We love working with them because we give them a real problem and then they unleash the creativity of about 12 Auburn students on it, and it’s amazing what they come up with.”

For example, the hotel has an interest in opening a small gift shop next to the front desk. “We don’t want to have a massive inventory of toothpaste, Advil, gum and Auburn shirts. How can we manage this process?” van der Reijden says as an example of the type of question posed to the supply-chain management students. “How do you not give up valuable real estate to store all of that stuff and without putting somebody in there to run it, because it needs to be self-serviced?”

Mary Evelyn Jordan ’12, special events and programs coordinator for the Office of Alumni Affairs, worked at the hotel after graduation and attests to the impact the university’s students have on the industry as a whole.

“From an employee perspective, having student involvement is so important because the hotel prides itself on being an educational forum for students,” Jordan says. “It reminds employees of the hotel to continue to use every moment as a teaching opportunity. Students also have their hands on the pulse of the newest innovations in the industry. So it’s a great asset to the entire staff.”

Jordan, like van der Reijden, says she believes the hotel can open a world of opportunity to any and every Auburn student willing to put in the hard work and dedication it takes to succeed, no matter their major.

“The hotel allows students to have real-world experiences whether they are in the hotel and restaurant-management program or any other majors at the university. The hotel acts as a cultural melting pot in Auburn. The interactions you have with the diverse people that work for and visit the hotel can shape a student’s life and impact them in so many ways. The opportunity to put to use what a student is learning in the classroom is vital and the partnership the university has with the hotel allows that transition to go over very smoothly. No matter what a student is majoring in, learning hospitality and customer service will benefit any future career.”

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he Auburn Creed states, “I believe that this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn. Therefore, I believe in work, hard work. I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge to work wisely and trains my mind and my hands to work skillfully.”

It’s a sentiment the management and staff of The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center take seriously.

“The goal of the Auburn program is to deliver students to the hospitality industry that are marketable and will come back to be a part of our program,” van der Reijden says. “We want them to be ambassadors for the program, and for more people to hire Auburn graduates because they know what they are going to get.”

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Dreams of a fine arts museum at Auburn University date back to the 1940s. Ten years ago, they finally came true.

love for the

of art IN 1948, FRANK APPLEBEE participated in a sealed-bid auction and came a step closer to his vision—make that a vision plus 36 paintings from a collection known as Advancing American Art by such American artists as Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden.

Applebee, the 47-year-old chair of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute’s art and architecture school, envisioned his deeply discounted $1,072 purchase of art as the cornerstone of a blooming Auburn museum collection. What he didn’t envision was that it would take another half-century to come to fruition.

Now, a drive along South College Street between the main campus and the bustling I-85 corridor takes you past apartment complexes and a growing landscape of eateries and hotels. In a pastoral break in the scenery lies an elegant building of travertine stone surrounded by landscaped walking paths and a lake.

Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last fall, is the culmination of Applebee’s vision, and then some. Given funding and the competitive art marketplace, developing a true “A to Z” collection of art history isn’t really possible. However, through alumni

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Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Standing Mother and Child, purchased in 2014 with funds provided by the 1072 Society.

Catlett was a noted African-American sculptor and printmaker for whom mother and child was a recurring theme.

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and community support, as well as donations of art through the museum’s development office and the Auburn University Foundation, the museum is establishing areas of excellence. With an exhibition schedule that changes from three to four times per year, the museum offers free admission to nearly 30,000 visitors annually, courtesy of JCSM’s business partners.

Preservation and care of these collections is one of the factors

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used to award professional accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums, which Auburn’s art museum received in April 2013. This recognition is held by fewer than than 6 percent of nearly 20,000 museums nationwide.

Now, with more than a decade’s worth of transformative art experiences and nearly 2,000 works in the permanent collection, we asked the staff to introduce us to 10 of their collection strengths.

Advancing American Art and the 1072 Society The U.S. State Department, in 1946, planned to show an exhibition of 117 American modernist paintings in Eastern Europe, Eastern Asia and Latin America in an effort to demonstrate America’s artistic freedom. The program was quickly halted due to political outcry over the use of taxpayers’ money to fund works that were criticized as “Un-American” based on subject matter, modernist approach and the melting pot of artists’ backgrounds.

The War Assets Administration auctioned the paintings as war surplus in 1948, and Alabama Polytechnic Institute successfully bid on 36 paintings for $1,072. These pieces laid the groundwork for the museum’s future collections and inspired the development of the 1072 Society, a collecting and giving group started in 2008. Each member contributes $1,072 annually as tribute to the amount paid in 1948. The efforts of the 1072 Society have resulted in the purchase of 18 works of fine art. The 201314 campaign focused on sculpture to enhance the collection’s existing 3D holdings and connect with the first juried outdoor sculpture exhibition in honor of the museum’s 10th anniversary. The 2014-15 exhibition is slated for November of this year.

Plane Production (ca. 1946) by American abstract painter and lithographer Ralston Crawford (1906-1978). From the museum’s Advancing American Art Collection.

Courtesy Ralston Crawford Estate.

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The Helen and Dwight Carlisle Collection Of Irish Belleek Porcelain Donated to the museum by Dwight Carlisle ’58 and Helen Carlisle before the museum building was completed, this collection comprises more than 300 pieces of the prized fine porcelain produced by the Belleek Pottery Works in Northern Ireland. There are examples of each historical production period, including a rare spider plate, woven baskets, vases, busts, tea sets, place settings and decorative objects.

Below, Botanica (2003), by American sculptor and printmaker John E. Buck, purchased in 2011 with funds provided by the 1072 Society. Buck was best known for his woodblock prints.

The Louise Hauss and David Brent Miller Audubon Collection A cornerstone of the museum’s holdings, this collection contains more than 100 prints by naturalist John James Audubon.

Audubon’s work has been long recognized as among the earliest and best records of American wildlife. Audubon’s Birds of America series, now acclaimed for its fine artistic achievements, is well represented in the museum’s collection.

Imprinting the South Lynn Barstis Katz has long been interested in Southern subjects in art. This works on paper collection she donated ranges from bucolic scenes and charming Southern towns to imagery depicting the South’s more troubled history.

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Above: Distant Blue (undated), by American artist William Dunlap.

Gift of Merritt P. Dyke.

Left: Rathmore Flower Pot, Second Mark (1891-1926), a gift of Helen and Dwight Carlisle and part of the Helen and Dwight Carlisle Collection of Irish Belleek Porcelain.

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The Robert B. Ekelund Jr. and Mark Thornton Collection Over the last decade, Robert B. Ekelund Jr. and Mark Thornton have presented the museum with numerous works of art originating in Mexico. Most of the works in this collection were created between 1940 and 1960 and represent major figures in Mexican art such as Diego Rivera and Ruffino Tamayo.

Mercado de Flores (1930) by Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957). Given

by Robert B. Ekelund Jr. in memory of his father. Part of the Robert B. Ekelund Jr. and Mark Thornton Collection.

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The Bill L. Harbert Collection This collection from the late Bill Harbert ’48 includes a strong group of European modernist works of art dating to the 19th and 20th centuries. Included are works

by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall.

This collection was one of the museum’s earliest, and was featured as one of the inaugural exhibitions when JCSM opened in 2003.

Right: Untitled (Self-Portrait in Purple Coat, undated) by Alabama folk artist Mose Tolliver (1920-2006). A gift of Micki Beth Stiller.

Noel (1966) by 20th-century artist Marc Chagall (18871985). A gift of Bill L. Harbert ’48 and part of the Bill L. Harbert Collection.

The Dana King Gatchell Collection The head of API’s food and nutrition program from 1923 to 1956, Dana King Gatchell collected teapots. The College of Human Sciences transferred her collection to the museum, including 59 objects ranging from 16th-century Asian pots to 20th-century works from Europe and America.

Right: Curvae in Curvae (2011-12) by American sculptor Beverly Pepper (1922-). Purchased by the museum in 2014 with funds provided by the 1072 Society.

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Outsider Art Many collectors have shared their passion for local folk art and outsider art with gifts to the museum. Outsider art is a relatively recent term for art that was made by self-taught artists. A collection of folk and outsider pieces is steadily growing thanks to donors such as Micki Beth Stiller, Justice Mark Kennedy ’73, Peggy Wallace Kennedy ’13, William Dunlop and J. Mark Jones.

Sangbin IM, Metropolitan Museum Project (Modern Art, 2009).

Purchased by the museum in 2011 with funds provided by the 1072 Society.

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Works

by Andy Warhol A patron call to action rallied by L. Nick Davis ’84 resulted in the museum’s winning bid of an Andy Warhol photograph of 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Famer John Oates. In the photograph, Oates is wearing a souvenir t-shirt from his tour stop at Auburn in 1981.

This photograph joins the museum’s large collection of photographs and prints

by Warhol, which were generously donated by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

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The Dunlop Family Endowed Acquisition Fund Composed of contemporary photographs, prints and outsider art, the works purchased through this fund and personal gifts offer a growing selection of challenging and non-traditional art, including work by Diane Arbus and David Lynch.

Left: S, from the series An American Alphabet by photorealist painter Robert Cottingham (1935-). A 2007 museum purchase.

Legacy of the Oaks The museum’s most recent acquisition for the permanent collection is the Auburn Oak Bowl. When noted artist Matt Moulthrop heard about the tragedy inflicted on the Auburn Oaks, he reached out to Jim Gorrie ’84 through a mutual friend and offered to make a bowl for the museum from the oak tree. Gorrie connected the artist with university and museum administrators.

As a part of the museum’s permanent collection, the bowl will represent the significant and compelling acts of healing and remembrance.

Moulthrop is a third-generation master woodturner, learning from both his grandfather, Ed Moulthrop, and his father, Philip Moulthrop, both renowned artists.

The Auburn Oak Bowl will be featured as part of an exhibition of works by the three Moulthrop family members May 17 through Aug. 31, with the bowl remaining on view with the permanent collection through the fall.

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BLUE SKY YOUR CAREER

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ALUMNI CENTER

Springtime on the Plains BILL STONE ’85

President, Auburn Alumni Association Hello Auburn Family, and WAR EAGLE! It’s been a great spring for our beloved Auburn. Our Auburn Alumni Association Lifetime Achievement Awards ceremony was the largest in our history. Four-hundred family members were witness to the induction of Tim Cook ’82 of Palo Alto, Calif.; John Brown ’57 of Portage, Mich., Dean Larry Benefield ’66 of Auburn; and Pat Sullivan ’72 of Birmingham. What an AUsome event!

We have also honored our 2014 class of Golden Eagles. This group celebrated the 50th anniversary of their Auburn graduation. It’s a joy to visit with these folks as they renew relationships and share special memories of their time on the Plains. Congratulations to all our Auburn Golden Eagles.

Spring also brings our annual Tiger Trek program. Coach Gus Malzahn is most generous with his time during April and May, and this year will visit 10 local Auburn Clubs to share with us about football, faith and family. Thank you, Coach! I hope you will continue to support the Tiger Trek program, and your local Auburn Club. Local Auburn Clubs are the foundation of the Auburn Alumni Association. If you are not involved with your local Auburn Club, please get connected today. You may go to www.auburnclubs.org to find the closest Auburn Family.

Your Auburn Alumni Association Board of Directors has nominated a talented and dedicated slate of new directors, and new officers, for induction at Homecoming 2014: President: Jack Fite ’84 of Decatur; Vice President: Beau Byrd ’89 of Birmingham; Directors: Dion M. Aviki ’04 of Houston, Texas; Susan K. Black ’77 of LaGrange, Ga.; Rob Crabtree ’86 of Bir-

mingham; and Angela S. Mitchell ’85 of Guntersville.

I ask you to support this outstanding group of Auburn men and women as they volunteer to serve you and our association.

What another AUsome A-Day weekend we enjoyed this year as well. Our team and our coaching staff are excited as they look to the fall and prepare for another great year of Auburn football.

While in Auburn for the A-Day football game, I was able to take in a couple of baseball games, see Aubie at the Easter egg hunt, and visit with a terrific group of our African-American alumni on the Samford Lawn. Wow! If you haven’t been to Auburn lately, I encourage you to visit soon. And while you are in town, please come by our Auburn Alumni Association building and meet our great alumni affairs staff.

The renovations to the campus at Toomer’s Corner are now underway. The new gateway will be ready later this year, and our new Toomer’s Corner trees are coming in 2015.

In closing, thank you all for your support of our Auburn Alumni Association.

We have much to share with all generations of the Auburn family. I’d also like to challenge you. Reach out to your Auburn friends and family, whether in person, by email, Facebook or Twitter. Share the joy of being a part of the Auburn Alumni Association. Get five new members to join with you, and the rest of our Auburn family, at the Alumni Tent this fall. Give your friends this link: www.aualum.org/join.

It is truly great to be an Auburn Tiger.

War Eagle, and God Bless,

Calendar Through May 30 KNOW AN OUTSTANDING ALUM?

Nominations are being taken through May 30 for the Auburn Alumni Association’s highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award, and its counterpart for more recent graduates, the Young Alumni Achievement Award—both to be awarded in 2015.

For more information and nomination requirements, visit www.aualum.org/laa or call 334-8441149.

July 14 BIRMINGHAM TIGER TREK

The final Tiger Trek of the season will be held for alumni and friends in the Greater Birmingham area, featuring Coach Gus Malzahn. For info, call 334-844-1148 or email auclubs@auburn.edu.

BOOK AHEAD FOR WAR EAGLE TRAVELERS!

In addition to the trips listed below, we have more than 30 tours being offered in 2015. Check out our website at www.aualum.org/travel.

Sept. 23 - Oct. 4 SPANISH SERENADE

Savor the sights and sounds of Spain, Gibralter, Morocco. France, Monaco and Italy aboard Oceana Cruises’ Marina as you sail along the Iberian Peninsula to the French Riviera. From $3,999.

Sept.26 - Oct 4 AUTUMN IN THE AMERICAN HEARTLAND

Discover autumn along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to St. Paul on an authentic river cruise aboard the luxury steamboat American Queen.

This all-American voyage features the river in its most classic glory. From $5,595.

BillStone@auburnalum.org

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Calendar Oct. 20 - Nov. 3 CHINA AND THE YANGTZE RIVER

This comprehensive journey reveals China’s mystique and highlights its timeless treasures, world-class cities and tranquil farming villages.

Includes a cruise along the Yangtze River to see the Three Gorges. From $3,595.

Nov. 26-30 THANKSGIVING IN NEW YORK

Join other War Eagle Travelers on this special trip to kick off the holidays with an exclusive indoor view overlooking the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as it winds its way through New York City.

Enjoy free time to explore this world-class city on your own. Then join the local Auburn Club to watch the Iron Bowl. From $2,799.

Dec. 28 - Jan. 2 NEW YEAR’S EVE IN LONDON

Visit the magical city of London and celebrate New Year’s Eve in style. Enjoy a guided city tour ending at the Hyde Park Christmas Market, then start 2015 with high tea and a champagne toast aboard the London Eye. From $1,876.

AUBURN TIGERS FOOTBALL FALL 2014

Aug. 30 vs. Arkansas, 3 p.m. kickoff, SEC Network Sept. 6 vs. San Jose State Sept. 18 at Kansas State Sept. 27 vs. Louisiana Tech (homecoming) Oct. 4 vs. LSU Oct. 11 at Mississippi State Oct. 25 vs. South Carolina Nov. 1 at Ole Miss Nov. 8 vs. Texas A&M Nov. 15 at Georgia Nov. 22 vs. Samford Nov. 29 at Alabama

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In support of scholarships DEBBIE SHAW ’84

Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Executive Director, Auburn Alumni Association The Auburn Alumni Association has chartered 92 alumni clubs around the country.

April marked the month that we deem “club travel season,” when many representatives from our office and members of the alumni board of directors travel to visit our clubs as they hold their annual spring and summer meetings.

Key speakers included athletic coaches, recruiting experts, faculty and administrators, alumni and other individuals who are happy to visit with alumni and friends of Auburn to share the great things happening on our campus. Club volunteers work tirelessly to plan these meetings, which center on raising money for scholarships for Auburn University.

Please support your local club by attending the meeting in your area, and show your support for Auburn. Clubs and meeting schedules may be found here: www. aualum.org/auburnclubs.

In February, we hosted the annual Auburn Club Leadership Conference at the alumni center, and you will find on the website a list of clubs that were recognized for outstanding service.

Special recognition goes to clubs which met the highest standards set by the Auburn Alumni Association: Atlanta Auburn Club, Cullman County Auburn Club, D.C. Auburn Club, Emerald Coast (Fla.) Auburn Club, Greater Birmingham Auburn Club, Greater Houston Auburn Club, HuntsvilleMadison County Auburn Club, Montgomery Auburn Club, Shoals Area Auburn Club and the West Georgia Auburn Club.

The most outstanding club leader award was presented to LuAnne Hart ’80 of the Barbour County Auburn Club. We are so grateful for the hard work of our volunteers, who love what they do because they love Auburn.

A major goal of the Auburn Alumni Association is to support Auburn University in raising money for student scholarships, and in addition to the work of our Auburn Clubs, the association coordinates fundraising programs such as Alumni Walk, consisting of pavers in front of the entrance to the alumni center.

These engraved pavers are a great way to honor a loved one, or even yourself!

Please visit our website at aualum.org/ scholarships to find out how you can order one, or call (334) 844-ALUM. This past year, the association funded more than 100

scholarships for incoming students from our endowment, and we hope to fund more in the future. You can help!

Here’s wishing you a great summer, and increased participation in Auburn activities and programs. Stay connected!

War Eagle,

debbieshaw@auburn.edu

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Libraries unlatched Auburn University Libraries has joined almost 300 other libraries worldwide in the formation of the pilot program, Knowledge Unlatched. The goal is to use the capabilities of the Internet to make more scholarly books available to library users. The initial group of 28 books from 13 recognized scholarly publishers in the program’s pilot collection will be freely available online to anyone in the world. A full list of works in this pilot collection may be accessed at collections.knowledgeunlatched.org/.

GOT NEWS? Auburn Magazine 317 S. College Street Auburn University, AL

the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service after 34 years.

36849-5149, or aubmag@auburn.edu Life Member Annual Member

’70-’79 George Prater ’70

has been elected the new mayor of Warm Springs, Ga. He began his service on Jan. 1.

John Roberts ’71 and

his son Michael Roberts ’04 traveled around the world in 23 days as part of the “Global Scavenger Hunt” organization. They visited 11 countries. Additionally, John retired from Carolinas Healthcare System as a management executive. He worked in North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama.

He also celebrated the birth of a grandson, Rory Jonathan Keane.

Linda Clary ’73

works on the University of Florida’s campus as a critical care nurse at Shands Hospital. Despite being surrounded by Gators, she says she wears her orange and blue scrubs to work on Saturdays and loves the Tigers and the band. She made it home during the SEC Championship with four minutes to spare and watched the Tigers win.

She immediately went out to her front yard and rolled her crepe myrtles in true Auburn fashion.

Perry Oakes ’78 of Auburn retired from

Kia Bentley ’78 published the fourth edition of her textbook, The Social Worker and Psychotropic Medication: Toward Effective Collaboration with Clients, Families and Providers.

She is also celebrating her 25th year on the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth, where she serves on the advisory board of the Center for Teaching Excellence.

’80-’89 Jim Sturdivant ’84

spoke at the Alabama State Bar White Collar Crime Committee on Jan. 30. Jim and three other panelists discussed key issues involving the pre-indictment stage, such as delivering effective arguments, negotiating a resolution and avoiding common pitfalls. A shareholder at Sirote & Permutt, Jim represents and defends clients in criminal and white-collar matters. Additionally, he maintains a diverse civil and commercial caseload.

Jeffrey Rickard ’85

was elected to serve as president of the Alabama Association of Justice.

ALAJ is a statewide attorney organization that works to protect the right to trial by jury.

Jeffrey is a partner at the law firm of Marsh, Rickard & Bryan in Birmingham.

J. Britt Johnson ’86

was selected as the new chief in charge of the Atlanta division of the FBI. Britt has held a variety of positions within the FBI, most recently deputy assistant director in the criminal investigative division, where he was in charge of investigations into violent crimes.

Chris Shirley ’87 has

finished his first novel, Playing by the Book.

It will be published by Magnus Books on June 11. Additionally, he was recently named president of the board of Lambda Literary Foundation. He has worked in corporate communications at CITI for the past three years after an 11-year sales career on Wall Street.

’90-’99 Camerson Wesson ’90

was promoted to associate dean for undergraduate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. James Dorsten ’91

has recently completed a project that analyzes the urban underground electric grids for Alabama Power. The project was the first of its kind for low voltage networks.

BORN A daughter, Harper McClure, to Bradley Burns ’93 and his wife, Betsy, on Aug. 28, 2013.

The family lives in Roswell, Ga.

Alex Schriver ’10 has been named chief of staff for U.S. Congressman Bradley Byrne. At 25, Alex is the youngest chief of staff on Capitol Hill.

Natalie Fultz ’12

A daughter, Charlee Lynne, to Heather Smithson ’98 and her husband, Christopher Smithson ’02, on July 28, 2013.

The family lives in Palma Ceia, Fla.

A daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, to Daniel Noles ’98 and his wife, Melody, on Sept. 30, 2009. The family lives in Soddy Daisy, Tenn.

A son, Benjamin Jesse, to Thomas Rowe ’99 and his wife, Rebecca Rowe ’02, on Oct. 14, 2013.

He joins a big sister, Leah. The family lives in Knoxville, Tenn., and is looking forward to raising a future Tiger.

’00-’13 Nicole Williams ’00,

an attorney at Thompson & Knight in Dallas, was recently selected for inclusion in Texas Rising Stars by Thomson Reuters. The list represents the top 2.5 percent of Texas attorneys younger than 40.

is currently a sports reporter, producer, news reporter and fill-in anchor at WLTZ, NBC-38, in Columbus, Ga. She was recently featured in The Corner News story, “Life After Auburn: Auburn Alums find Success.”

MARRIED Anna Marquis ’00 to Lane Brunson ’01 on

Oct. 26, 2013. They live in Birmingham.

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Jessica Reeves ’09 to Jonathan Ledford ’10 on

Sept. 21, 2013. Jonathan is a field engineer for Batson-Cook Construction in West Point, Ga., and Jessica works as a pharmacist in LaGrange, Ga. Taylor Dobson ’09 to Margaret Martin ’10 on

Feb. 8.

David Lowry ’11 to Audrey Matthews ’12

on March 22, 2014.

David is a mechanical engineer for Milliken in LaGrange, Ga., and Audrey is a graphic designer for the AU Office of Alumni Affairs. They live in Auburn.

BORN

Michael Brymer ’05 of Birmingham to

Kristen Leigh Hulsey of Anniston on March 1, 2014. They live in Montgomery.

A son, Ethan King, to Marcus Chatterton ’00 and his wife, Anna Chatterton ’01, on May 14, 2013. He joins big

HOTELS ARE EXPENSIVE. GAS IS EXPENSIVE. PARKING IS EXPENSIVE. TRAFFIC IS A PAIN.

BUT WE TAKE CARE OF ALL OF THAT.

Charles “Trey” B. Hill Jordan Moseley ’94

was recently promoted to development officer in the Auburn University College of Agriculture.

Previously, he served as a development coordinator in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

’03 has been named a

partner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Birmingham. He concentrates his practice in the area of economic development, assisting business clients in site selection, incentive negotiation and implementation processes.

BIG GAME BUS BIRMINGHAM, AL

ATLANTA,GA

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Class Notes brothers Ian and Owen.

The family lives in Hoover.

A daughter, Meredith Caroline, to Jody Hughes ’01 and his wife, Stephanie, on Jan. 6. The family lives in Marietta, Ga. In Memoriam THOMAS A. GLANTON

Firestone and then GMAC before founding Automotive Wholesale Co. in Forest.

LILLIE TIPPINS LITTLE ’37 of Mobile, AL, on

Jan. 29. She was a home demonstration agent for the State of Alabama and an elementary school teacher in Alabama, Kentucky and Georgia.

’32 of Newnan, Ga., on

Dec. 18. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, he enjoyed a 39-year career in public education, coaching athletics and teaching science and math before moving into administration. He was employed by the Coweta County School System as the principal of the Grantville Public School for 35 years before his retirement.

RICHARD LEE “DICK” WATKINS ’39 of Decatur on Jan. 10. A World War II veteran who served in Alaska and in Europe, he spent his career with Decatur Electric, working his way all the way from groundsman to general manager of Decatur Utilities before his retirement in 1981.

WILBUR HAIRE ’41 of

NICHOLAS STALLWORTH HARE ’34 of

Monroeville on Jan. 6.

A member of Kappa Alpha while at Auburn, he was an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II. After the service, he worked as an attorney in Monroeville for many years, in addition to being an inventor who held many patents.

JOHN FURNISS

Tallahassee, Fla., on Feb. 7. He was chief of the Florida Bureau of Poultry Services and served the state of Florida as a veterinarian in practice for more than 40 years.

MAGGIE SLOAN HAZELRIG ’42 of Decatur on

July 19, 2008. She was a housewife and 25-year volunteer at Decatur General Hospital.

BONDURANT ’35 of

Forest, Miss., on Dec. 21. A veteran of World War II, he earned the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and the Bronze Star and was injured during the fighting on the Philippines island of Mindanao. After service, he worked for

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GEORGE H. CARTER JR. ’43 of Florence on Dec. 18. A veteran of both World War II and Korea, he co-founded National Floor Products Inc., where he served as vice president until his retirement.

WARREN FLEMING ’43 of Opelika on

Dec. 12. A member of Sigma Chi fraternity at Auburn and a letterman in track, he was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, where he served as an artillery captain and supply officer. He attended law school after the war and practiced law for a few years before starting a successful real estate and hardware rep business until his retirement in the 1980s.

He enjoyed traveling, gardening, cats and Auburn football.

ROBERT HARDING

way up through all the departments to become president and chairman of the board. He also served a term as president of the National Associated Equipment Distributors. He also was on the board of the Alabama Roadbuilders Association as well as the Alabama Coal Association and was elected to the Roadbuilders Hall of Fame.

JOHN DANIEL DRAPER ’45 of Bessemer on Nov. 17. He worked for Woodward Iron Co. and CAPCO Pipe Co. as an accounting clerk during his 48-year career.

HARRIS ’43 of Atlanta

on Jan. 21. A member of Sigma Nu fraternity at Auburn, he piloted 150 missions over the Eastern Himalayas for the Army Air Corps in World War II. The route was referred to as “The Hump” by Allied pilots, and was the only supply route for U.S. troops between China, India and Burma. After the service, he enjoyed a 38year career with General Electric, retiring as vice president and general manager of Northern Pacific Operations in Tokyo.

J.E. PITTMAN ’43 of Enterprise on Dec. 23.

JAMES WHITFIELD WAITZMAN ’44 of

Birmingham on Feb. 1. A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, he joined Tractor and Equipment Co. after the war and worked his

1958-62, served 21 years on the board of trustees of the University of Alabama. He was also very active in the civic and cultural life of Opelika.

’45 of Naples, Fla., on

Dec. 30. He was an Army veteran of World War II. MARY ELVA HILL ’45

of Winter Park, Fla., on Dec. 19. She was known as a gifted cook and pianist.

of Springfield, Tenn., on Dec. 27. He was a retired veterinarian.

AUBRINE NICHOLS ’46

DANIEL MACMILLAN ’47

of Fayette on Dec. 30.

A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, he owned and operated Nichols Dairy until 1999 and served as Fayette County tax assessor for 30 years.

of Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 9, 2008. He was a former high school band director, dean of Trident Technical College, and was also very active with the Kairos Prison Ministry.

MARVIN M. SMITH ’45

ROBERT THOME

Fayetteville, N.C., on Jan. 2. He was a partner in the Cape Fear Animal Hospital for 35 years, during which time he served as president of the Fayetteville Rotary Club and director of the North Carolina Veterinary Research Foundation. He was an avid golfer.

JOSEPH JOHN PAINE JR. ’45 of Grand Bay on

MARY H. BAXTER ’47 of

Oct. 3, 2012

Macon, Ga., on Jan. 3.

She was a bank teller with C&S National Bank for several years before becoming a librarian at Willingham High School. She enjoyed traveling, including trips to Auburn for football games.

YETTA G. SAMFORD JR. ’45 of Opelika on

Dec. 28. A member of Alpha Tau Omega, he was the great-grandson of Samford Hall namesake William J. Samford.

He served in World War II as a B-17 pilot, attended law school, and returned to Opelika to practice law in the firm established by his grandfather, now Samford and Denson. He served in the Alabama Senate from

JOHN PAUL FOSTER ’47 of Cedar Bluff on

Jan. 12. He served in the Marine Corps during World War II and was employed by Anderson Electric/Square D Co. for 40 years.

STAPLETON ’46 of CLAYTON W. EZELL

tion industry for more than 45 years.

WALTER W. DEAN ’47

of Tuscaloosa on Feb. 7.

A member of Phi Delta Theta at Auburn and a Marine Corps veteran of World War II, he worked in the construc-

MARY LEE STAPP ’47 of

Montgomery on Oct. 27. She had a lifelong commitment to the law and worked as an assistant attorney general and chief legal counsel for the Alabama Department of Human Resources. In 1981, the Southern Women’s Archives presented her with the Alabama Women Achievers’ Award in recognition of her contributions toward elevating the status of Alabama women.

In 2013, the Women’s Section of the Alabama State Bar presented her with the Maud McLure Kelley Award for “being a pioneer for the rights of children and the elderly and a tireless leader in mentoring young women in the legal profession.”

FURNIE ORMOND “DICK” DICKERSON ’48

of Pensacola, Fla., on Dec. 31. A Navy

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OCM Ad

THIS IS HOW MEMORIES ARE MADE. A L U M N I

THIS IS MELISSA

sharing her knowledge and experience with her niece, Whitney Brown in Quesimpuco, Bolivia, while creating irrigation solutions with Engineers Without Borders.

Melissa Herkt ’77 and Whitney Brown ’14

Auburn helped prepare you for work and life with a solid foundation. Where has your Auburn education taken you? How has it changed you?

Share your images, stories, and posts with us by tagging @AuburnU or using the #thisisauburn hashtag.

You can also email us at thisis@auburn.edu. You may be featured in our next Auburn University ad campaign.

C E N T E R

THIS IS NELDA

after landing the F-15 Eagle fighter and logging 1.5 hours of flight time on April 29, 1980.

Boeing recently recognized her as one of the company’s trailblazers.

Nelda Lee ’69

THIS IS VALENTIN

who set up a model fish farm in Haiti. The successful tilapia hatchery allows Haitians to feed their families and increase their income twoand three-fold.

Valentin Abe ’91, ’95

THIS IS AUBURN.

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In Memoriam veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he established Building Supply Center in Pensacola. He was active in the social and cultural life of the community.

MARVIN P. FINK ’48 of

Hampton, Va., on Dec. 27. A B-17 pilot during World War II, he was one of the original “Hell’s Angels,” flying 35 missions without a loss. He retired from NASA, where he was a test engineer in Full Scale Tunnel.

HAL MORELAND HERRING ’48 of Cumming, Ga., on Feb. 9.

BARBARA ENGLISH HUTTO ’48 of Macon,

Ga., on Jan. 28. He was a teacher with the Bibb County public schools before joining the faculty of Middle Georgia State College, where she was chair of the art department prior to her retirement.

and worked as a media specialist for more than 20 years in the Johnson Elementary School.

THOMAS SELLERS ’48

of Santa Fe, Tenn., on Jan. 2. He served as an Army Air Corps pilot during World War II. RANKIN WILLIAM TIPPINS ’48 of St. Joseph,

Mich., on Jan. 9. A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, serving at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, he founded, owned and operated Lakeshore Marble in St. Joseph until his retirement.

J.W. VICK ’48 of

Eufaula on Dec. 21. A member of Alpha Gamma Rho at Auburn, he began his professional career as an agriculture teacher at Baker Hill School and later was an insurance agent. He retired as manager of Skinner Furniture Co. FERRIN WYATT EILAND ’49 of Columbus,

LIONEL L. LEVY ’48

of Los Altos, Calif., on Jan 1. A World War II veteran and later a professor at Cal Tech, he was an original member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and NASA. He was honored with the H. Julian Allen Award and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for his essential scientific contributions to manned space flight.

SUE MCCOWN ’48 of

Columbus, Ga., on Dec. 17. She taught

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Ga., on Jan. 5. He was a U.S. Army veteran of World War II, during which time he was a POW and, later, a member of the American Legion and the Disabled Veterans. He worked as a sanitarian for the Columbus Health Department.

EUGENE GRIFFIN

Dream design The graphic design program in Auburn’s School of Industrial and Graphic Design was named one of the Top Design Schools by Graphic Design USA in its March issue. It is included among 23 top graphic design programs from around the country. Graphic Design USA is a news magazine for graphic designers and other creative professionals.

VIRGIL MERRELL BISH-

ROBERT C. GREENE JR.

OP ’49 of Alexander

’50 of Phenix City on

City on Jan. 26. A U.S. Army veteran, he served from 1942 until his retirement in 1978 with the rank of colonel.

Jan. 9, 2010. He retired as director of the Phenix City Water Filtration Plant after more than 33 years.

MARY LOU DAUGHTRY

W.L. “JACK” HURLEY ’50

LOFTIN ’49 of Mobile

of Birmingham on Jan. 3. A U.S. Army veteran of World War II. Following his service, he went into banking, eventually becoming president and CEO of First Alabama Bank, and then chairman of the board. He retired in 1990.

on Dec. 27. She loved to read, play bridge and sing in the choir.

JEPTHA EDWARD MOODY JR. ’49 of Scotts-

boro on Jan. 27. He retired after a long career with the Jacobs Bank of Scottsboro, where he served as the chairman of the board as well as chief executive officer and led the sale of the privately held bank to Regions Financial Corp. in 1998.

GRADY RIGGINS PARKER ’49 of Mon-

tevallo on Jan. 26. An Army veteran of World War II with two Purple Hearts, he enjoyed a career in insurance before going to work in the U.S. Postal Service, for which he became the assistant postmaster of Montevallo. He also served as the mayor of the city of Montevallo from 1996-2006.

WILLIAM “BILL” FREDERICK WILLIAMS ’49 of Sylacauga on Aug. 15.

RICHARD SLADE INGE ’50 of Hammond, La., on Nov. 13.

hospitality industry, most recently as owner/ operator of the Oaks Motel in Palatka.

HUGH B. SEGREST JR. ’50 of Graceville

on Oct. 30, 2008. He was a veteran of World War II, and active in his community and family.

ERNEST SPIVEY ’50 of Titusville, Fla.,

on Aug. 25, 2013. He retired as a lieutenantcolonel from the U.S. Air Force and was a retired charter member of NASA-Kennedy Space Center as director of training.

GEORGE ABNER

BETTY JEAN WILSON JACKSON ’50 of Pell

City on Feb. 4. She was a home demonstration agent for the Auburn Cooperative Extension Service, and later became director of the St. Clair County Department of Human Resources, serving in that capacity until her retirement in 1991.

DAVID JOSEPH LOVE ’50

of Pensacola, Fla., on Dec. 31. A U.S. Army veteran of World War II who served with the occupation troops in Japan, he was a Methodist minister with the Florida Conference for 31 years.

DONALD AARON

HARRIS ’49 of Good-

FLETCHER ’50 of Mont-

OTHA F. POWELL JR.

water on Dec. 20. He enjoyed working on his farm and on construction projects, and served as a scoutmaster and a Mason for many years.

gomery on Dec. 23. A veteran of World War II, he was retired from the architectural firm of Sherlock, Smith and Adams Architects.

’50 of Palatka, Fla., on Feb. 22, 2013. A Navy veteran, he was a longtime employee of the paper industry and also worked in the

THOMPSON JR. ’50 of Pell City on Dec. 25. A veteran of World War II, he was a pharmacist for more than 30 years prior to opening the first drugstore in Moody, where he was the only pharmacist for 12 years.

ROBERT G. BURTON ’51 of Birmingham on

Jan. 12. After working for other construction firms, he joined F.R. Hoar and Son, where he pursued and won several large contracts, including the country’s first office park and Birmingham’s Eastwood Mall, the third enclosed mall in the U.S. He later became majority owner and CEO of the firm.

MARY ELIZABETH “BETTIE” WALKER FRICKE ’51 of Dothan on Dec. 11. A member of Delta Zeta at Auburn, she was a member

of many genealogy organizations, including Daughters of the American Revolution, Daughters of the American Colonists, and Colonial Dames of the Seventeenth Century.

All five of her children attended Auburn.

JOE GRAHAM ’51 of Albertville on Feb. 3.

He was a Navy veteran of World War II, and donated the land for Graham Park in Albertville.

LANDIS THOMAS MCMILLON ’51 of Selma on Dec. 23. An Army Air Corps veteran of World War II, he and his brother owned the Monroeville Pharmacy and the Camden Pharmacy until 1987.

MINNIE SMITH WATSON SCOTT ’51 of Opelika

on Jan. 13. She was known as a gifted seamstress and served as nursery director and hand bell director at First United Methodist Church.

CHAPLIN HOWARD TISDALE ’51 of Peachtree City, Ga., on Dec. 22. A Navy veteran of World War II, he retired as chaplain and counselor for Ryder Truck Lines.

JOHN L. YATES ’51

of Town Creek on Jan. 25. A Navy veteran of World War II, he worked in education in Lawrence County for more than 30 years as a vocational agriculture teacher at Hazlewood High School and as principal

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of Lawrence County Technical High School.

He served as board member and president of the Alabama Vocational Agriculture Teachers Association, and in leadership positions with other agricultural-based organizations.

INEZ KING BALLEW ’52

of Cullman on Feb. 10.

After working with the Cullman County Extension Service and helping establish the Cullman Headstart Program, he taught at Baileyton Junior High School until her retirement in 1990.

pha at Auburn, he was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War and remained a member of the Air Force Reserve until 1980, when he returned to active duty at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the Pentagon and Robin Air Force Base. He retired as commandant of the Engineering Battalion in 1985, returning to Alabama.

JOANNE EDWARDS PARKER ’53 of Enter-

prise on April 23, 2013.

She taught in the local elementary schools.

L. HERSCHELL BASS

MARY EMMA RHODES

’52 of Opelika on Jan.

WINGERT ’53 of Wake

15. He was a longtime employee of the Opelika-Auburn News, and enjoyed softball and square dancing.

Forest, N.C., on March 20, 2011.

JOSEPH HAROLD TAYLOR ’52 of Seagrove Beach, Fla., on Dec. 21.

A U.S. Navy veteran of World War II, where he served at Normandy on D-Day, he spent his career as a pharmacist and owner of Taylor Drug Co. in Gadsden.

Board matters The Auburn Alumni Association Board of Directors’ nominating committee, having solicited nominations from the membership as required in the association bylaws, has submitted its list of candidates for two new officers and four new directors to the full board. The recommended candidates have been approved by the board and are presented below for the membership’s consideration.

According to the association’s bylaws, members may propose other candidates via the process outlined in Article XI, Section 4 (see below). The deadline for contesting any candidate recommended by the board is June 16, 5 p.m., CDT. If no further nominations are received, the unopposed candidates will be deemed automatically elected and will begin their terms at the association’s annual meeting on Sept. 27. All annual and life members are invited to attend.

EMPLOYMENT: Community volunteer, civic

leader AUBURN ACTIVITIES: Marshall County Auburn

Club; Samford Society; former member of the Honors College Development Council, 2009-2013.

Vice President WILLIAM C. “BEAU” BYRD II ’89 RESIDENCE: Birmingham MAJOR: Accountancy EMPLOYMENT: Partner, Bradley, Arant, Boult,

Cummings, LLP AUBURN ACTIVITIES: Board member and com-

mittee chair, Auburn Alumni Association Board of Directors; past president, Birmingham Auburn Club; Circle of Excellence, Orange & Blue; Petrie Society; Samford Society.

President

DION M. AVIKI ’04

RESIDENCE: Decatur

GROOVER JR. ’54 of

RESIDENCE: Houston, Texas

MAJOR: Building science

Shelby on Dec. 23.

He served as a pilot in the U.S. Navy from 1953-56, and went on to become a successful Birmingham businessman as president of Builders Manufacturing for almost 20 years before he founded Custom Finishing Inc. in Helena.

MAJOR: Chemical engineering

EMPLOYMENT: President, CEO and principal, Fite Building Co. Inc. AUBURN ACTIVITIES: Vice president and committee chair, Auburn Alumni Association Board of Directors 2009-present; past president and board member of Morgan County Auburn Club; Circle of Excellence, Diamond; 2011 Lloyd Nix Achievement Award, North Alabama Auburn Club; Capital Campaign Committee, 2012- present; Jack and Laura Fite Endowed Scholarship, McWhorter School of Building Science; Samford Society; Petrie Society.

ROBERT S. NEWMAN

Dec. 9. A veteran of World War II serving in North Africa, Italy and Okinawa, he went on to become a pastor in the Cumberland Presbyterian church, serving in Gadsden, Kosciusko, Miss., and Florence.

Dec. 14. A U.S. military veteran, he was a co-op student with TCI and worked as a chemist for the Michelin Tire Co. in Opelika.

A member of Kappa Al-

MAJOR: Management

THOMAS GRADY

’54 of Birmingham on

JOHN EDWARD BLUE

RESIDENCE: Guntersville

WILLIAM JACKSON “JACK” FITE ’85

REN ’52 of Florence on

’53 of Foley on Jan. 14.

ANGELA S. MITCHELL ’85

Directors

EMPLOYMENT: Technical marketing manager &

product development, Advantix Systems AUBURN ACTIVITIES: President, Greater Houston Auburn Club; current Engineering Young Alumni board member.

SUSAN K. BLACK ’77 RESIDENCE: LaGrange, Ga. MAJOR: Accountancy EMPLOYMENT: President, J.K. Boatwright & Co., P.C. AUBURN ACTIVITIES: President, West Georgia

GEORGE HUGH WAR-

C E N T E R

ROBERT E. TAYLOR ’54 of Homosassa, Fla., on Dec. 23. A veteran of the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps, he established the Gon-

Auburn Club; Circle of Excellence, Orange; Samford Society; Business Shareholder’s Club.

ROBERT M. CRABTREE ’86 RESIDENCE: Birmingham MAJOR: Pre-hospital administration EMPLOYMENT: Administrative director of ortho-

paedics, University of Alabama Health Services Foundation AUBURN ACTIVITIES: Past president, Greater Birmingham Auburn Club; past president, Auburn University Health & Hospital Administration Organization; member, Auburn University Alumni Health Administration Society.

Applicable passage from Auburn Alumni Association Bylaws Article XI, Section 4: Nominations from Members at Large. Section 4. Nominations from Members at Large. Members may propose other candidates for any position provided that (1) the name and a biography of their proposed candidate is submitted in writing to the Secretary of the Association by the time specified in the notice which can be no sooner than thirty (30) days from the day of the announcement; (2) the submission specifies which candidate submitted by the Directors the new candidate opposes; (3) the submission bears the new candidate’s signed consent; and (4) the submission of the new candidate contains the signed endorsement of at least seventy-five (75) Members. Mail, facsimile or email transmissions of this information will be accepted.

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Tim Cook SNAPSHOT

Tim Cook enters a dimly lit private room in The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center. The room is part of the hotel’s restaurant, outfitted with two long dining tables with placemats set at each spot.

He pauses in the doorway and says, “Let’s go get some coffee.”

The Apple CEO and 1982 Auburn graduate is on an abbreviated [early March] visit to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Auburn Alumni Association. He’s already made use of his time, commenting on how still campus was the night before and how impressed he is with the new Recreation and Wellness Center.

Once he arrives at the Wake Up Coffee Co., Cook settles into a leather chair.

Sitting cross-legged in faded blue jeans, Cook appears at ease in the town of his alma mater.“I get flooded with memories when I come back [to Auburn],” Cook said. “It always gets overwhelming.”

He sips on a black hand-brewed coffee from Bali and continues speaking at a metered pace about his time during undergrad.

“I played intramural softball. I was on a great team. We won very few games, but it was a lot of fun.”

He recalls working on UPC, selecting entertainment and showing movies at Langdon Hall, which he glances at through the coffee shop window.

But the mark Cook left on the university extends beyond extracurricular activities or receiving a diploma in cap and gown.

Seventeen years after his graduation, Cook’s field of study, industrial engineering, faced the possibility of being shut down.

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and the magic of community At the same time, Alice Smith arrived as the program’s new department head. One of the first moves she made to revitalize the program was to form an alumni advisory board. The initial group that served on the board chose Cook as its chair.

Cook acknowledged his duty as the board’s chair was simply to advise. He likened it to sitting shotgun, or sometimes in the backseat, but never driving.

Riding as a passenger didn’t stop his vision for the destination.

“He wanted to provide students with not only excellent technical education, but also with being well rounded, and with a lot of what he would call ‘high touch’ (education). This means that [students] have a lot of personal interaction with faculty, with staff and with each other,” Smith said.

“It’s a very conducive environment, not just to help with book learning, but really learning to stretch as a human being and as a future professional.”

Cook envisioned a collaborative learning environment for the industrial engineering program, blurring the lines between teacher and student. The goal was not to have the highest enrollment, but a hands-on learning experience that produced well-rounded students.

“The best places where people learn, you can’t tell the difference between teacher and student,” Cook said. “The truth is, we all learn from each other and we teach each other. I don’t think the schools that focus on having the most students can do that very well.”

The decision to pursue holistic learning wasn’t based solely on educational tactic.

The community also played a key role.

“Auburn is about family and community; (it’s) very high touch,” Cook said.

“And so, to me, bringing that back, bringing that human feeling back, was key in getting the program back on track. It’s something I always wanted for the school.”

Fifteen years after the program scare, the industrial engineering program is thriving. Cook has contributed to its status by funding a professorship attracting prestigious faculty, as well as two student scholarships.

Cook was a typical Auburn student.

He lived on Gay Street. He spent too

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In Memoriam much time at a shop that used to serve homemade ice cream. He and a group of buddies even broke into Samford Hall one night, climbed to the clock tower, and tried to change the music it played.

“We thought we were [successful] because we put a tape cassette in. We were waiting for it to play but then the hour comes, and it chimes. So, we failed miserably,” Cook said, laughing. “Somehow, at the time, it seemed like a good idea.”

He’s come a long way, from swapping cassette tapes in Samford Hall to playing a part in the digital music revolution. But for Cook, life isn’t about the destination.

“The journey is the reward,” he said.

“You should live every day like it’s your last one. If you’re always waiting for something to occur, some destination to get somewhere, if you’re always saying, ‘I’ll do that when I graduate, or I’ll do that when I get a job, or I’ll do that when I’m married, or I’ll do that when I get the promotion...’ I see people putting off their life so much, waiting for something to occur, and it invariably just moves.

“The graduation becomes the job, the job becomes the promotion, the promotion becomes the next promotion, and so I think people that get caught up in that are postponing their life. I credit Steve (Jobs) a lot in getting me to look at that very differently.

His dream was always in his journey.”

For many, Auburn becomes a destination, a check off life’s to-do list. For Cook, it remains with him as part of the journey.

“When you come here, you think of Auburn as a place, as a location,” Cook said. “You might think of it as a football team, but somewhere along the line I think for many people, it certainly clicked for me, you realize Auburn is not a location at all.

“It’s not a place. It’s a spirit that you take with you for the rest of your life.

That’s the magic of the place. Said in a simple way, that is the magic of the place.”

—Kelsey Davis Kelsey Davis is editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman; this article originally appeared in a March print edition of the paper. Find The Plainsman online at www. theplainsman.com. Reprinted with permission.

zales Animal Clinic, in Gonzales, La., and later moved his practice to the Highland Animal Hospital in Baton Rouge.

MONNIE JO PRICE TOBIN ’54 of Char-

lotte, N.C., on Jan. 5.

She taught elementary education in California, Georgia and New York.

After retirement from teaching, she worked at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.

JOHN “JACK” LAMPKIN JR. ’55 of Erie, Pa., on

Jan. 11. A U.S. Army veteran, he retired as a manager of engineering at General Electric.

ALICE JEAN ORTEGA ’55 of Montgomery

on Jan. 4. She was a teacher at Montgomery Catholic High School for many years.

College in Pennsylvania before returning to Auburn to take on the same role. He left Auburn to become director of the educational Opportunity Center at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn., before retiring in 1998.

BARNES ’56 of Fort

Valley, Ga., on Jan. 27.

An Army aviator who retired from the Army Reserves with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, he founded Valley Cable TV. He loved music and participated in the Heart of Georgia Barbershop Chorus and the Middle Georgia Concert Band.

T. DREW RAGAN ’56 of Nashville on Feb. 1.

A veteran of the U.S. Navy’s “Hurricane Hunters” air squadron, he served as dean of students at Allegheny

Ga., on Jan. 18. An Army veteran, he enjoyed a successful career with Price Waterhouse Coopers as a CPA and retired in 1992. He was an avid golfer.

RITA CLAIRE WHIGHAM

terprise on Feb. 4, 2013.

RICHARDS ’56 of

Louisville on Jan. 25. A member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority at Auburn, she taught in the public school systems of Dale and Barbour counties until her retirement.

JANIS STRENGTH ’56

of Gulf Breeze, Fla., on Jan. 14. She worked for Gulf Power as a home economist and for the public school system as a teacher of home economics and science.

JAMES THOMAS

Brook on Dec. 29. A member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at Auburn, he served in the U.S. Navy as a fighter pilot aboard the U.S.S. Oriskany and later in the Naval Reserves.

He retired as president of O’Neal Steel in 1991.

FRANK D. HORN ’57 of Lineville on Jan. 17. A U.S. Army veteran, he worked in commercial construction building Gulf service stations, and retired from Ace Products with more than 30 years of service. He also worked as a cattle farmer.

returned to Auburn in his retirement. For the past 20 years, he was known to AU students as the “Candy Man” for supplying them with candy bars during their final exams.

JAMES FRANKLIN

ROY SIMS ’57 of En-

WALL ’56 of Mountain FLETCHER H.

ROBERT CLARK KING ’57 of Sandy Springs,

JOHN REESE ALDRED ’58 of Florence on Dec. 20. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force Strategic Command, he was employed as a botanist for Tennessee Valley Authority.

Later in his career, he became an independent contractor for residential construction and landscaping.

EUGENE SYLVESTER ’58

of Dothan on Jan. 18.

He was employed in the computer management industry for 32 years prior to his retirement in 1994.

ROY BAILEY BAIN ’59 of

Tuscaloosa on Dec. 20.

An Army veteran who served as an intelligence analyst during the Berlin crisis, he was retired as the publisher of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.

RONALD C. BARR ’59 of Auburn on Dec. 18. He enjoyed a long career in the hospitality industry, beginning with management of several hotels in Hawaii. He retired as group chairman for all of Amfac’s hotels, resorts and national parks operations, and

FOY ’59 of Alexander City on Dec. 31. He worked for Russell Corp. for 43 years and was the vice president of dyeing and finishing.

JAMES LAWAYNE NIX ’59 of Hartselle on

Jan. 8. He worked as an engineer.

MARY LOVETT MATTHEWS PEDDY ’59 of

Prattville on Jan. 19.

He taught for a number of years in both high school and post-secondary schools.

JAMES ELMER “JIM” CARTER ’60 of Florala

on Nov. 30. A U.S Navy veteran who served on the U.S.S. Yorktown from 1953-57, he served as an engineer at Eglin Air Force Base for more than 38 years.

GORDON EDWARD DERAMUS JR. ’60 of Huntsville on Dec. 17. He got his start working in the quality and reliability lab at Marshall Space Flight Center.

He also was a 33year member of Boy Scouts of America.

SARA KAY MATTHEWS PRIEST ’60 of Ocala,

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A monumental man In the recent film The Monuments Men, actor-director George Clooney plays one of a group of Allied soldiers whose mission involved finding and saving priceless art and cultural artifacts from being destroyed by the Nazi regime.

Pete Turnham ’43 didn’t have to see the movie; he lived it.

In April 1943, only four years after leaving his family farm in Pinson with dreams of earning a degree in agriculture from Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Turnham and the rest of his ROTC classmates boarded a train to Atlanta, where they were sworn into the U.S. Army for overseas duty in World War II. At the time, he thought he was simply doing what was right by fighting for his country and its freedom. Little did Turnham know that he would be assigned to what has proven one of history’s great missions: guarding some of the world’s most treasured artwork.

“I came to Auburn in the summer of 1939, right out of high school and with no money,” 93-year-old Turnham says. “My mother and father had six children with a 40-acre farm and a tworoom house. I came up rough, but I worked my way out of it.”

At the time, API required all male students to take two years of ROTC and then gave them the option of working additional time for an Army commission. “I joined the Civilian Conservation Corps work camp that helped build Chewacla State Park,” Turnham said from the private office of his Auburn company, Alabama Contract Sales, where he still keeps regular hours.

“They let us come into Auburn every night and take courses, so I took some at night.

We made $30 a month and had to send $22 of it home to our parents because that was in the middle of the Depression. I

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chose to go in for the next two years, and that’s how I got my commission in the Army.”

In December 1944, Turnham headed to Europe, where he would fight through France, Germany and Austria as the commander of a 200-man infantry outfit in General George S. Patton’s third army.

Toward the end of the war, he and his men were commissioned with guarding

and protecting the priceless contents of Castle Neuschwanstein in southern Germany, a fairytale confection of Romanesque Revival architecture upon which Walt Disney based the iconic castle for Sleeping Beauty. Neuschwanstein was constructed and lavishly furnished in the late 1800s by eccentric Bavarian king

Ludwig II as an homage to composer Richard Wagner.

Dreaming of a “Führermuseum” filled with priceless artwork taken from throughout Europe, Adolf Hitler had stashed his stolen treasure in Neuschwanstein, which lies near the Austrian-German border.

Even though Turnham’s commanders told him he would be guarding a castle stocked with stolen European artwork, he had no idea of the treasure’s value.

“I was scared to death. It was an awesome responsibility, one that I did not realize the magnitude of till much later,” Turnham says. “It was unbelievable. Just think about what we had on our hands. They told us it was worth $8 million at the time. Just think about what it’d be worth now.”

However, the dollars and cents behind the artwork pale beside its real value.

“Art belongs to the world, not to any one man, and it was my awesome responsibility and my men’s responsibility to keep that art safe for the whole world to have after the war,” Turnham says. “I mean, it’s priceless, really. It teaches the whole world about the importance of protecting that kind of treasure since it belongs to the world, those masterpieces. It was just one of the most beautiful places you ever saw.”

Turnham’s face grows somber as he describes the horrors that resulted from a war that destroyed so much. Before he and his men protected artwork from Axis powers, Turnham and his 71st Infantry division witnessed some of the most devastating travesties of the Axis’ anti-Semitic regime. After months of fighting on the front lines through France and Germany, he and his men aided in the liberation of Gunskirchen Lager, a concentration camp concealed in the dense woods outside Lambach, Austria.

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“One of the last things we found during the end of the war was a prison camp where the Germans had put the prisoners mainly of the Jewish race. It was in Wels, Austria. It was so gruesome. People were dead all over the place. Some of them were so emaciated that when they started to us to greet us and thank us, they’d fall dead.

“When we saw that, we knew why we were there. It was an awful sight. You cannot mistreat people like that and not take care of them. So, I realized at that moment, why I went to war—to protect people.”

Turnham returned home from the war in August 1946 and spent the next two years completing postgraduate work at Auburn on the G.I. Bill. He also served

in the Army Reserve, from which he retired in 1959. Overall, Turnham would receive three degrees from Auburn: a bachelor’s in 1944, master’s in 1946 and an honorary doctorate in 1994.

The end of active military duty didn’t mark the end of his public service, however.

Turnham was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1958 for what he assured himself and everyone else would be one four-year term. Forty years later, he retired as Alabama’s longest-term legislator.

“I said then, ‘If I win, I’ll go for four years and never come back, and I stayed 40,’” he laughs. “It’s just like a politician to lie like that.”

Jokes aside, he’s proud of his years of

C E N T E R

service. “It gave me a chance to promote Auburn and help Auburn. I sponsored legislature that built the Haley Center and the old Coliseum, improved the pharmacy school and the vet school, and I was there when the president at the time wanted to move the pharmacy school to Montgomery,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Not on your life are we going to move it.’”

Turnham said serving on the Alabama Legislature, like serving in the Army, was “an awesome responsibility,” and if given the chance to do it all over—fighting during World War II, guarding the castle, serving the public, and making a home in Auburn—he sums it up in four simple words.

“I’d do it again.” —Anna Claire Conrad

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C E N T E R Budapest-bound Graham Gordon, an Auburn University Honors College student double-majoring in mathematics and physics, has been chosen as a 2014 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, an honor bestowed only to approximately 300 students nationwide each year. Gordon will travel to Hungary in June to participate in the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics summer program at the Technical University of Budapest.

In Memoriam Fla., on Jan. 20. A member of Phi Mu sorority at Auburn , she was an accomplished ballet dancer and bridge player, and enjoyed volunteer work with Grace Church.

SANDRA SAXON TRAYWICK ‘60 of

Opelika on Feb. 8. Her lifelong work was at Saxon Oil Co., founded by her father. Among her many volunteer activities was the Pilot Club of Opelika and the city’s growing civic and cultural programs.

She also was the longtime treasurer of the Opelika Historical Preservation Society and an active member of the East Alabama Genealogical Society.

GARY NAHRSTEDT ’61

of Lenexa, Kansas, on Dec. 21. He was a professor of education at the University of MissouriKansas City until his retirement in 1992.

Weathersby Elementary School in LaGrange, retiring in 1983.

KEARNEY H. WINDHAM ’61 of Mobile on Feb. 1. He was employed for 35 years by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and served as chief of the Natural Resource Management Branch. He was a former president of the Society of Military Engineers.

ROBERT ALLEN “BOB” HARDEKOPF ’62 in Los Alamos, N.M., on Dec. 21. A member of Theta Chi at Auburn, he served in the U.S. Navy aboard the U.S.S. Bainbridge, the first nuclear-powered destroyer. He joined the nuclear research team at Los Alamos in 1973 and worked on advanced research projects until his retirement in 2005.

JAMES ROBERT “BOB” HOLLINGSWORTH ’62 of

DIETER JURGEN SCHRADER ’61 of

Huntsville on Feb. 11. He worked on the Titan II Missile bases in Kanses until 1963, when he returned to Huntsville to work for Thiokol Chemical Corp. He later went on to law school and practiced law for more than 20 years.

PAULINE WITHERSPOON HUTCHINSON SMITH ’61

of LaGrange, Ga., on Jan. 26. She enjoyed a long teaching career at Dallas Street Kindergarten, at Happy Haven School and also Berta

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Birmingham on Jan. 21. A U.S. Air Force veteran and a member of Delta Chi while at Auburn, he enjoyed a long career in the telecommunications industry.

He also was a retiree from Blue Cross and Blue Shield and SouthTrust/Wachovia and, after retirement, was an avid woodworker.

ALVIE BERNARD LEWIS JR. ’62 of Columbus,

Ga., on Jan. 29. He was the owner/operator of A&S Carpets.

MICHAEL NELSON PON-

Naval Air Station.

1961-63.

JIMMY CLYDE MAT-

ANGELA WHIPPLE WISE

THEWS ’63 of Birming-

’65 of Athens, Ga., on Jan. 5. She was retired from Oconee County Schools after 30 years as a teacher.

DER ’62 of Point Clear

on Jan. 14. A U.S. Navy veteran and member of Pi Kappa Alpha at Auburn, he founded Ponder Engineering and Survey in Daphne before retirement.

ROBERT E. “BOBBY” CHAMBLESS ’63 of

Dawson, Ga., on Aug. 14, 2009. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he was a third-generation farmer and in 1961 moved into cattle farming.

O. EARLE “BUDDY” DENSON ’63 of Midland, Ga., on Jan. 1.

He founded Denson Construction Co. and was a member of the Columbus Bank and Trust Co. board of advisors and the Green Island Country Club, and was a former member of the Association of General Contractors, Home Builders of Columbus and the Columbus Jaycees.

WILLIAM GOFF JR. ’63

of Las Vegas on Dec. 24. A U.S. Navy veteran of Vietnam, he served as a fighter pilot aboard the U.S.S. Roosevelt.

After the service, he joined Delta Airlines as a pilot, retiring after 32 years as an international check pilot during which time he also maintained his status as a fighter pilot in the reserves.

He finished his 30year U.S. Navy career as a commanding officer of a famed “Top Gun” squadrons at Miramar

ham on Jan. 1. A U.S. Air Force veteran of Vietnam, he became a registered nurse and worked as a nurse anesthetist for 30 years at Carraway School of Medicine at the University of AlabamaBirmingham.

WILLIAM H. HALLIWELL ’64 of Stuart,

Fla., on Dec. 27.

During his service in the U.S. Air Force, he taught cadets applying to medical school and was in charge of the Falcon Mascot Program. Afterward, he joined the faculty at the University of Missouri colleges of medicine and veterinary medicine, and then worked in research both as founder of Westpath Laboratories in Colorado, Hoffmann LaRoche, and Shering Plough Research Institution. He retired to Florida in 2005.

MARY ALLEN ’66 of Dothan on Feb. 13. A Chi Omega while at Auburn, she was employed with the Haven for many years and finished her career with Ventress Correctional Facility in Clayton prior to her retirement in 2009.

WILLIAM RAYMOND

on Jan. 12. He was a U.S. Air Force veteran of Vietnam, and after his years in the service he spent his career as a pilot with Delta Airlines.

“RAY” BEAN ’66 of Montgomery on Jan. 18.

A Theta Chi at Auburn, he entered the U.S. Air Force after graduation from Auburn and served as an aviator, stationed at many locations before being sent to Vietnam.

He was taken as a prisoner of war in Vietnam on March 28, 1973, and was released following the fall of Saigon in April of 1975. After a 30-year career that took him around the globe, his final assignment with the Air Force brought him to Maxwell Air Force Base. Retiring with the rank of colonel, he then joined Civil Air Patrol and was director of cadet programs for nine years.

LOWELL L. MCCORMICK

JOHN WALTON JENKINS

’65 of Baton Rouge, La., on Dec. 31, 2011.

’66 of Montgomery on Jan. 9.

LARRY EUGENE RAW-

WILLIAM DAVID ARNOLD

SON ’65 of Troy on

’67 of Powder Springs, Ga., on Dec. 31. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, he was

JOE MORRIS WILLIS ‘64 of Alexander City

March 3. A member of Sigma Nu at Auburn, he lettered in football from

the owner of Mableton Veterinary Clinic in Mableton, Ga., and was active in civic affairs.

CAROLYN WALLER MOORE ’67 of Auburn on Feb. 1. She worked in banking in the Daytona Beach, Fla., area before returning to Auburn in the 1990s.

THOMAS GARY VOYLES ’67 of Clanton

on Jan. 18. He was the pastor of three churches in Chilton County over the past 25 years, serving Collins Chapel Baptist Church for 21 years, and New Covenant Baptist Church and New Cedron Baptist Church for two years each.

BARRY WILSON ’67 of Huntsville on Feb. 7.

MICHAEL TERRY JETTON ’68 of Opelika

on Dec. 24. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he retired from Swift Textiles in Columbus, Ga., after 20 years, most recently as chief financial officer.

He also retired from Prudential Insurance Co. and from Regions Bank/Morgan Keegan Investments.

WILLIAM ARCHIE “BILL” MCMILLAN ’68 of

Auburn on Jan. 7. He spent most of his adult life in Auburn, working in the real estate business and serving for a number of years as president of McMillan Realty.

He also was active in civic and community

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C E N T E R Recovery resources Still dealing with the aftermath of the spring storms that have hit around the country? The Alabama Cooperative Extension System has a wealth of storm recovery information available online to the public. Visit www.aces.edu/ main/ for information and tips.

In Memoriam ALBERT THORNTON ’68 of Valley on Jan.

27. He was a former employee of Wehadkee Yarn in West Point, Ga., and former president of Valley Haven School for Neglected and Dependent Children and Youth.

rank of captain. He enjoyed a long career in the telecommunications industry in Birmingham and in Baton Rouge, La. Upon retirement from BellSouth, he served as a personal financial consultant with Nowlin and Associates in Birmingham.

JAMES RICHARD BLACKLEY ’69 of Cum-

WARREN HAMPTON

ming, Ga., on Feb. 3.

WALLACE ’69 of Sanford,

WILLIAM LARRY

N.C., on Jan. 19. He was an electrical engineer.

LACY ’69 of Henagar

on Feb. 1. He was retired from Game Time as vice president of manufacturing.

KATHLEEN MARNOCK

LARRY MONROE ATKISSON ’70 of Childersburg on Jan. 18. He was a pharmacist at CVS in Sylacauga and at Crew Drugs on Rockford.

’69 of Winter Park, Fla.,

on Feb. 13. She worked for Delta Airlines, and later taught English at Bishop Moore and Colonial high schools.

MONCURE “MONTY” CAMPER O’NEAL ’69 of Point Clear on March 8. He was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and completed his military service in the Alabama Air National Guard as a staff sergeant.

He enjoyed a long and distinguished career in banking, corporate finance and venture capital. He enjoyed golf, fishing, was a California Master Gardener and an avid Auburn Tigers and Boston Red Sox fan.

LEY ’69 of Hoover on

Feb. 8. A member of Lambda Chi Alpha at Auburn, he was an Army veteran of Vietnam, achieving the

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RUDOLF H. EGERSDORFER ’71 of Lilitz, Pa.,

on Feb. 1, 2013. He enjoyed a 33-year career in the U.S. Army, retiring with the rank of colonel, and during his service received the Commander’s Cross, Order of Merit, Federal Republic of Germany; the Silver Star; and Purple Heart. In addition to World War II, he served two tours in Vietnam.

WILLIAM LESLIE JOHN BURL PRICE ’71

on Jan. 9. He worked in retail pharmacy for 35 years and was a former member of the Athens City Council and the Athens City Board of Education.

of Grimes on Feb. 6. A Marine Corps veteran of World War II, he retired after a career as an automotive instructor at Patterson Technical School in Montgomery.

RICHARD HENRY SFORZINI JR. ’70 of

Little Rock, Ark., on Dec. 19. He was a Judge Advocate General in the U.S. Air Force, and, more recently, practiced as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. He was a member of the Florida, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee bar associations.

DENT III ’71 of Fort

Walton Beach, Fla., on Jan. 1. Over his long career with the U.S. Air Force, from which he retired with the rank of colonel, he logged more

from the 26th Circuit Court, he was one of the longest-serving judges in Alabama, working in Russell County for 34 years.

WALTER COLES PITMAN ’72 of Albany,

NELSON ’70 of Decatur

FREDERICK RODGERS JOSEPH A. STAN-

than 3,587 flight hours in 36 different aircraft, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal and the Air Force Commendation Medal.

CARRIE MAE DENNIS QUEEN ’71 of Athens, Tenn., on Jan. 16. She worked in various fields, including teaching, during her husband’s 24 years in the Air Force. She was an active amateur HAM radio operator.

NOEL D. WHISENANT ’71 of Birmingham

on March 13. He was a member of Shades Mountain Baptist Church.

GEORGE R. GREENE ’72 of Phenix City on

Jan. 1. At the time of his retirement in 1998

Ga., on Feb. 7, 2013.

He was retired as manager of the state Department of Family and Children’s Services.

BOBBY WAYNE ADCOCK ’73 of Roanoke on Jan. 11. He was former director of the Alabama State Chemical Lab in Auburn, retiring in 2012 after 38 years.

JOAN SCHMITZ DUGGAN ’73 of Hamburg, N.Y., on March 6.

MARY AVERY DINSMORE KEATLEY ’73 of

Tallahassee, Fla., on Jan. 5. An accomplished oil and watercolor artist, she was an illustrator for Historical Resources in Tallahassee.

JOHN NASH ’73 of

Billings, Mont., on Feb. 5. An aviator with the U.S. Navy, he retired from the military after 27 years and worked for several years with SEMCO Systems Engineering Co. before moving to Montana in the 1990s.

HELEN SCHLESINGER ’73 of Auburn on Jan.

23. She worked as a chemist before becoming a teacher at Opelika and Auburn high schools, where she worked for more than 35 years.

BUDDY ALLGOOD ’74 of Columbus, Ga., on Jan. 3. A U.S. Army veteran of Vietnam, he lost his leg during his first tour of duty, became the first military soldier to complete jump school with a prosthetic leg, and then returned to Vietnam as a commanding officer.

During his military career he received numerous decorations, including the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal and Vietnam Service Medal. He was retired as manager of AMEC Inc. MICHAEL W. HARRIS ’74 of Las Vegas on Feb. 10, 2013. Flying was his passion for his nearly 26-year career in the U.S. Air Force, logging more than 5,100 military flying hours, more than 4,000 hours of which were in fighter aircraft.

He left the service with the rank of colonel.

JAMES ORVILLE TINNEY ’74 of Tampa, Fla., on Jan. 1. He was employed by ADECA after having retired from the USDA Farmers Home Administration.

MICHAEL WOLFE POOLE ’75 of Macon, Ga., on Jan. 10. He taught for 30 years at Macon State College, where he retired as professor emeritus. He taught at Mercer University, Wesleyan College, Central Ga. Technical College and Stratford Academy.

RICK RAY ’75 of

Homewood on Jan. 18.

A member of Lambda Chi Alpha while at Auburn, he enjoyed a successful sales career in the communications industry in Birmingham.

GARY MICHAEL NEWBERRY ’76 of Savan-

nah, Ga., on April 16, 2013. He was a criminal defense and animal law attorney.

CARLON BRUCE TIDWELL ’76 of Oneon-

ta on June 22, 2013.

He served on the board of the Blount County Agribusiness Center.

He was retired from Appalachian High School as an agriScience teacher and was a member of Blount County Cattlemen’s Association. He also raised registered Limousin cattle, and was president of the Blount County Methodist Club.

SCOTT HEDEEN ’77 of Dothan on Dec. 21. He practiced law in Dothan for many years.

MARY RUTHVEN MARTIN ’77 of Panama

City, Fla., on Feb. 4.

She taught school for 19 years, 18 of those at Patronis Elementary, where she taught second grade. She loved boating and Auburn tailgating.

JANET CLANTON SMITH ’77 of Auburn on Jan. 6.

THOMAS N. BRAZELL ’79 of Moseley, Va.,

on Dec. 20. He was a geologist with Vulcan Materials Co.

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ROY E. NEWCOME ’79

of of Georgiana on Jan. 17. He retired from the U.S. Navy after 20 years and also was retired from teaching at Trenholm State Technical College.

JIMMY CASH ’80 of

Maylene on Dec. 23. He was employed at Barbers Dairy for 17 years, and enjoyed camping and bluegrass music.

EDWARD HENRY EASTERLING ’80 of Auxvasse,

Mo., on Jan. 7. He was most recently a professor at William Woods University, where he’d been on the faculty since 1985.

He was a member of the Missouri Valley Economics Association and also had worked as an economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

BRIAN FLETCHER CLOSE ’81 of Greenville on Dec. 28. He received his pilot’s license from the Auburn School of Aviation at age 19 and enjoyed flying, fishing and golf in his retirement.

managing non-profit or ganizations in Alabama and Georgia.

Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division.

DONALD EDWARD DREY

’89 of Uriah on Jan. 19.

’82 of Haymarket, Va., on Jan. 12. He was a reliability engineer for 30 years, retiring from Booz Allen Hamilton.

He enjoyed boating, camping and skiing.

He spent his career as a pharmacist at Walmart in Monroeville.

TIMOTHY L. POWELL

CHALICE ELAINE TUCKER ’82 of Hoover on Feb. 4. A member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority at Auburn, she practiced law in Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Alabama, and was a former managing partner of Shapiro and Tucker.

JAMES ROY POTEET ’83 of Austin, Texas,

on Feb. 6. He worked for Dell Computers from 2007-12 and directed teams in regulatory compliance and validation. In 2012 he became an engineering director at National Instruments.

PATRICK HUDSON

’81 of Dalton, Ga., on

Dec. 27. He spent his career as controller at Southern Centrifugal, a division of MetalTek International in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Auburn on Dec. 18.

on Feb. 5. She was an accountant and bookkeeper in construction, and was registrar at Auburn High School.

SNAPSHOT

Faculty and Friends FRED ADAMS, professor

emeritus of soil science at Auburn, on Jan. 14.

A veteran of World War II, he joined the AU faculty in 1955.

JESSE ROBERT “BOB” SHARPE of Lake

Martin on Jan. 20.

He served in both the Army and Air Force, then spent his career in civil service, retiring as head of air traffic control maintenance at Ft. Rucker.

ANN BRASWELL WATLINGTON of Mont-

CHARLES AUS-

Montgomery on Jan. 4. A former Army reserve officer, he was a partner with Harmon Dennis Bradshaw Inc., a property and casualty insurance firm.

MICHAEL A. POLLARD

PATREA ANN HULE-

’88 of Opelika on Jan.

BAK BONAKER ’82 of

12. He was assistant chief of the law-enforcement section of the State of Alabama

Huntsville on Jan. 17.

She began her career as a CPA dedicated to

CHRISTY HOLIDAY PRICE ’91 of Auburn

DRAUGHON ’85 of

TIN BRADSHAW of JOHN KENNEDY WILSON

C E N T E R

gomery on Feb. 10.

She was involved in the Women’s Alabama Golf Association for many years, including work on the WAGA board of directors and as an area director.

Watlington also served as a founding trustee member of the WAGA Women’s Scholarship Trust.

Shades of blue Robert Schaefer ’75 has always seen the world differently, as both an architect and an artist. Where other people see the wooden planks, brick, stone or sheets of metal of a building, Schaefer grasps something more profound. Through the lens of his camera, Schaefer sees a series of curves, angles and shadows that create a more interesting, artistic façade.

And where others see gray steel and concrete and reflective glass, he sees the world through blue-colored glasses.

Specifically, Prussian blue.

Schaefer is best known for his Architectural Blue collection, which he achieves by developing the photographs with the Cyanotype Process, invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842. “The resulting monochromatic Prussian blue color reminded me of architectural blueprints and I began to use it more and more,” Schaefer said.

His love of photography began as a child, where he habitually photographed family trips to World’s Fairs and other events. As for architecture, his parents were mechanical engineers, and Schaefer’s skill with painting and understanding of geometry led him to study architecture at Auburn.

One of his most influential teachers was Bill Gwin, a fourthyear design instructor and Schaefer’s thesis adviser. Gwin taught him how to print black-and-white images, and how to hang his photographs to make a more compelling exhibition.

After Auburn, Schaefer continued his education in Munich, Germany. His first photography exhibition, “Through the Looking Glass,” became the title for his next four exhibitions, which were shown in Germany and Austria.

Schaefer currently lives in New York City, where he owns RAS Productions, a company that produces photographs, film and designs for loft reconstruction in the New York area. He also teaches photography in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at New York University and the Center for Alternative Photography. He conducts workshops for Cyanotype and Van Dyke printing.—Jordan Dale

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C E N T E R

The Last Word

Bo, Cam and the ‘It’ Factor

BY PAT DYE I love the game of football, but I probably look at things differently than most people do. I’m always interested in what makes people the way they are, and what makes the great ones different.

Of course Bo Jackson stands out in his own way; he was one of the great all-time players. Even if he hadn’t gotten hurt as a pro, I don’t know if Bo would have ever really concentrated on football.

I think he would have gone back and forth to play baseball and football every year because that’s the way he was and that’s what he wanted to do.

If he wanted to play baseball, wanted to play football, wanted to go hunting and fishing, then that’s what he did.

And he was voted the Athlete of the Century, which is what he deserves. There may have been some who did one thing better, but I’ve never seen one athlete better at everything and who did everything as easily as Bo did.

I’ve watched a lot of football through the years. I saw Jim Brown. I’ve seen all the great teams over the years, with great quarterbacks like Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas, Ken Stabler, Peyton Manning; and great backs like Earl Campbell, Herschel Walker and Emmitt Smith. I’ve seen them all.

But the best football player I ever saw in my life, at least as a college player, not necessarily as a pro, was Tim Tebow at Florida. He could do more things to beat you—running, throwing, being physical, being a leader—than anybody I ever saw.

He was the best.

Until I saw Cam Newton.

[Leadership] has nothing to do with physical talent. It has to do with trust, competitiveness, confidence—the total package.

That’s what Randy Campbell had. When he stepped in the huddle, all the rest of those guys got better because of the kind of man he was. It was the same way with Jeff Burger, even though he had a different personality than Randy.

When Jeff Burger stepped in the huddle, those players knew and trusted Jeff. Same with Reggie Slack; they trusted Reggie.

They knew he would perform at his very best when his best was needed.

I don’t know when Cam got it and I don’t know when the coaches knew he had it, or even when Cam knew he had it. But I know when it showed. I knew he had it, without any reservations, was that LSU game—when he did what he did against LSU, which was a great defensive football team.

Cam not only made the offense better, he made the defense better too. The defense is over there and they know they’ve got a

64

chance with him at quarterback. They’re just going to play harder. It improved the whole football team to have a guy like that playing quarterback. It makes a difference when you know you always have a chance.

There’s a lot of great teams that may not have a great quarterback, just great leaders. But Cam had it all. He was the total package—ability, confidence, intelligence, courage—he had all of that.

Cam was bigger, faster, threw better, could make you miss or could run over you. And he could handle the ball on every snap.

Therefore, I think Cam Newton, as a football player, could do more things than any football player I’ve ever seen. And he was such a fierce competitor.

Watching him play in 2010, I’ve never seen an Auburn football player compete any harder than Cam Newton did to win.

A perfect example of that was, on third and short conversions, when he ended up with the ball at least 95 percent of the time, and we were 100 percent.

There’s one thing about Bo that I don’t think he ever got enough credit for, and that was how smart he was as an athlete.

He had a brilliant athletic mind. And the thing I say about Cam is that I don’t think he’s ever gotten the proper credit for what a fierce competitor he is.

You know, that’s not an easy thing for a guy that has always been bigger and faster and stronger than everybody else, because he could win without being the fiercest competitor. He was good enough to do that. But when the game was on the line, Cam was a fierce, fierce competitor. That’s the reason that coaches called on him in short-yardage situations. That long drive he engineered to beat Kentucky was a good example.

An even better example came against Alabama, when we won up there after he threw that fourth-down pass to Darvin Adams on the game-winning drive.

They put the game in his hands, not to run but to throw.

When you put it in the air, a lot of bad things can happen. It was just a simple out-route on fourth down. They had total confidence in Cam executing that play.

Because Cam had total confidence in himself.

Excerpted with permission from After the Arena by Pat Dye, written with Mike Jernigan ’80. Published 2014 by The Donnell Group (Rich Donnell ’77) of Montgomery. Learn more at www.coachpatdye.com.

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final AU

New Teammates.

Same Tradition of Support.

The Auburn University Foundation and Auburn University Real Estate Foundation, which receive private, charitable contributions made for the benefit of Auburn University and Auburn University Montgomery, welcome vice chair and new directors.

Thom Gossom Jr. ’75 of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, has been selected by the Auburn University Foundation board as its vice chair. Gossom, who has served on the AUF board since 2008, earned a degree in speech communication and is a veteran actor and owner of Best Gurl, Inc., which creates, produces, and distributes entertainment and corporate communications programs.

Also joining the Auburn University Foundation are:

Vice Chair, Thom Gossom Jr.

•

Walton Conn Jr. of Darien, Connecticut, a 1985 graduate of the School of Accountancy, and an audit partner and global head of Audit Methodology and Implementation with KPMG, Inc.

•

Dr. John Jernigan of Montgomery, Alabama, who earned a degree in chemistry in 1975 and is currently an internal medicine physician with Mulberry Medical Associates

•

Walter Woltosz of Palmdale, California, a 1969 aerospace engineering graduate and chairman, president, and CEO of Simulations Plus, Inc.

Joining the Auburn University Real Estate Foundation is: •

Walton Conn Jr.

John Jernigan

Edward Milton of Atlanta, Georgia, a 1974 pre-law/history graduate and senior managing director of CB Richard Ellis commercial real estate

Walter Woltosz

Edward Milton

“Our directors’ service, in collaboration with the Office of Development, is vital to Auburn University’s ongoing fundraising efforts for the betterment of its students, faculty, and campus.”

- Jeff Stone ‘79 Chair, Auburn University Foundation

Directors of both nonprofit, 501(c)(3) foundations serve four-year terms and may serve up to two terms.

For more information about our foundations, please visit www.auburnuniversityfoundation.org and www.auburnuniversityrealestatefoundation.org.

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Auburn Alumni Center 317 South College Street Auburn, AL 36849-5149 w w w.aualum.org

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