Autumn Leaves

This has always been my favorite time of year. I grew up in the southern part of the U. S., an area thick with trees, and during the months of autumn, the colors blazed so brilliantly before the leaves fell, leaving the trees bare and lonely. It's also the season of football, a season almost as important in the South as life itself. Of course that's an exaggeration but not by much. But it's truly a season that begins with high hopes that this year will be our year.

When I was a child, I lived across the street from a man who had played football for the University of Alabama in the 1940s. I found his picture once in a locker room celebration the team was enjoying after a Crimson Tide (the nickname of Alabama's sports teams) victory in the Orange Bowl. He served his country during WW II, which ended his football days. After the war, he joined the Alabama Highway Patrol and rose to become a Captain, his rank at the time of his untimely death during James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi.

As many of you know, Meredith's entrance into Ole Miss (their nickname is Rebels) was violently opposed by many whites, and there were riots, even deaths, during the days surrounding his matriculation. Meredith did eventually enter school but at the point of a bayonet and the barrel of a gun. When the violence broke out, the Captain was ordered to the state line in case any problems spilled over, which is not far-fetched if you knew the atmosphere in the South at that time. On the way, he was in an auto accident, and he died in hospital a few days later. I attended his funeral, as did Frank Rose, President of the University of Alabama, Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, and the entire Alabama football team, on which Joe Namath was a sophomore.

If you're old enough and a football fan, you might just have seen Capt. Tom on television. In Coach Bryant's 2nd year, 1958, the team earned a bid to the Liberty Bowl, at that time played in Philadelphia. And a Philadelphia newspaper reported on this physically imposing Alabama Highway Patrolman escorting the coach in full uniform and the traditional Smokey-the-Bear hat that many patrolmen and sheriffs wear now. Capt. Tom had become the official state escort of Paul "Bear" Bryant, a job he filled until his death. He was the first patrolman to serve in this capacity, though you see it a lot now. Imagine that! A coach who had played for Alabama in the 1930s and an official law enforcement escort who had played for Alabama in the 1940s. I can only imagine their conversations, which I'm sure they had.

During my childhood, the Captain's son and I played football together in the neighborhood. I remember one Christmas when each of us received a complete football outfit. His colors were blue and white, the colors of his favorite high school team. I can't even remember the colors of mine. But we spent that day kicking and passing to each other, even kicking field goals through a makeshift goalpost between two young pine trees. Of course we had dreams of future glory on the gridiron, but alas, we were never star athletes. We continued, however, as ardent fans of our favorite university, the Alabama Crimson Tide. And my friend's father had played for these giants of sport. Wow! Of course I was in awe of him, as any kid in Alabama would have been.

Football was a near religion in the South, and most young boys worshiped at the pigskin shrine. If a young boy was remotely capable of being an athlete, he was expected to go out for a football team, beginning long before high school. I played YMCA football, then later played as a freshman at a high school which had won several state championships in the sport. When I didn't return to the team in my sophomore year, the coaches refused to speak to me when we passed in the hallway. I shouldn't have been surprised. Football was truly that important then. To me, beer and cigarettes were more important

I continued as an ardent fan of the game, and my passion increased, if that were possible, when Paul "Bear" Bryant came to coach his alma mater in Tuscaloosa, our university. He began in 1957 to field teams which were not only respectable but which won 6 national championships during his tenure, which ended in 1982. He died 6 weeks after he retired from coaching. And at its best, the Alabama football team was championship calibre and even at less than its best, was always competitive with the top football programs in the nation.

While Bryant was coach, he could've easily become governor of the state. In fact, he was asked to run but refused. To the university's good fortune, he knew what he was good at. I remember vividly how emotionally involved I got in the fortunes of the football team. Even when I was attending college, working, and trying to bring up a family, I took the time every Sunday afternoon at 4:30 to watch "The Bear Bryant Show." I often left the University of Alabama at Birmingham (a separate institution) library in time to get home and watch Coach Bryant review Saturday's game film and charm all the mamas and daddies in the audience who might conceivably send their son to play for the coach.

To provide one last instance of Coach Bryant's popularity, he was once accused in a national magazine of "fixing" a football game with the coach of the University of Georgia. Alabama won handily, but it was alleged that points were somehow "shaved." When Paul "Bear" Bryant went on television in prime time to refute these scurrilous, false charges, nearly every television in the state was tuned in. Since Coach Bryant retired, the Alabama football program has won only 1 national championship and has turned out more mediocre teams than Bryant would've allowed. But I long ago realized that the fortunes of a group of young men playing a game truly had little true impact on my life. Oh, I'm still a fan, but nowhere close to the kind of "fanatic" that I used to be.

Still, when the Autumn leaves begin to fall, I still get twinges of nostalgia as I remember what fun it all was, especially when I watched a 'Bama" game on television, even more when I actually attended a game. I suppose that some of the good feelings I get as I reminisce come from the fact that we were all young and everything was ahead of us. And it was our team, representing our university, and our state.