A Fond Farewell

On Nov. 15, my brother John closed a long and memorable chapter in his life when he marched in his last home football game at Jordan-Hare Stadium as a member of the Auburn University Marching Band. This marked John's fourth season with the AU band and he said the finale has been bittersweet. John has remained dedicated from that first summer at percussion camp to this last year when he served as leader of the bass drum line and every hot summer practice in between. He has even served as one of the band's four freshmen orientation leaders for the past two years. All the time he has invested has helped to shape his college experience. Here are a couple of pictures from the senior recognition ceremony and from John's last march around during the AU vs. UGA game. Margie Grace is convinced that football exists solely to allow John to play his drum (this year that's been the only exciting part!). It is strange to think we won't see him over in the student section anymore banging on that drum but of course this won't stop John from drumming on things in general (the table, the dashboard, the wall . . . you get the idea)!

A View from the Top

Yesterday I had the opportunity to climb to the top of Samford Tower and catch the view from the highest point on Auburn's campus. It was a really cool experience and I'm glad I got to go. Our office is working on a video project for the Web and needed to shoot some scenes from the venerable clock tower. So we hauled ourselves and the gear up several flights of stairs (reminding me why I am so glad I work in the basement as opposed to the fourth floor) and into the attic of Samford Hall where we accessed the ladders that ascend first to the bell tower and then to the clock tower above it. All four of the clock faces in the tower manually roll back and you can stand within their circular frame for a bird's eye view of campus (Let me just add here that there are no window panes or screens but only a knee-high webbed barrier that is draped across the opening once the faces are rolled back. It is this small barrier alone that keeps you from being one footstep away from the ultimate meeting with the heavenly Father so the words "don't trip" up there carry significantly stronger meaning!). The view is truly magnificent and especially yesterday, with the weather being cool and crisp, it offered a perfect glimpse of Auburn from above. Each of the clock faces is backed by a huge piece of plywood and over the years, folks who have been lucky enough to venture to the clock tower have signed their names on the boards. I took the opportunity to inscribe my name in perpetuity in the tower -- if you are ever there, check out the bottom left-hand corner of the board on the clock face pointing toward College Street. I think this is a relatively new tradition as I didn't notice any signatures dating beyond the mid-90s; however, there is a bit of graffiti dated '15 (as in 1915) in the portion of the tower where the bell is housed. I guess there is something about proving your presence in a place and literally leaving your mark that never gets old. With all the new buildings and the face of campus changing significantly in the 21st century, it was really neat to be able to step back in time so the speak and see it all from above. Seeing the exposed brick and old beams in the attic immediately made me think of what the university must have been like when Samford Hall was truly the hub of a campus which was only made up of a couple of buildings. In case you are curious, Samford Hall is actually taller than Haley Center and offers a better view as it sits higher above sea level. Also, next time you visit Samford and look up, notice the weather vane that adorns the very top of the building's clock tower. The vane itself stands at 14 feet tall!

My Brief Brush with "Fame"

For posterity's sake, I thought I'd put this picture on the blog, although I e-mailed it around last week to most everyone who reads this anyway. This past Friday, on the eve of the AU vs. LSU football game, my colleagues at work and I ran into ESPN Gameday's Lee Corso at AU's new Student Center. ESPN was broadcasting the game and had set up their headquarters in an office suite on campus. Corso was in the hallway talking on his cell phone and when we all emerged from the stairwell and turned a corner, my friend Kevin immediately spotted him. Corso's not really a big deal to me -- sure he's on TV and all but so is Rich Thomas the local weather guy -- so I kept walking. Not my male colleagues. They thought we'd run into Elvis back from the grave! And so they hatched a plan to pull a little stalkerazzi move so they could get their picture made with him (these are grown adult men -- wow, football is a powerful thing!). Deciding it would be worth it to wait for the right opportunity, they loitered around the corner in earshot of the man. Once he was off the phone, Kevin "casually" approached him about taking a picture. Corso was very cordial and accomodating and agreed right away. I snapped a picture of the guys and then decided since I'd gone to the effort to wait, I'd have one taken as well. So there you have it -- my most recent brush with "fame."

Pictured from left: Matt Laney, me, Corso, Brock Parker and Kevin Fichtner

(You can't tell very well from the picture but Corso actually had on an orange and blue tie!)