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2/9/2016

The second annual Alabama Oyster Social was held January 29 at the Alabama Farmers Pavilion at Auburn University. The social is a nonprofit event held to promote the importance of Mariculture in Alabama as well as raise money for the Auburn University Department of Fisheries and Aquatics.

The Auburn Shellfish Laboratory in Dauphin Island focuses on the research, education, and training for farming quality oysters in a sustainable way and is led by Dr. Bill Walton. In 2011, Auburn University found an opportunity to lease 60 acres of oyster rights from a family. There would be a research area for Auburn and area for Alabama oyster farmers for five years. “The intent of it was to help jumpstart the industry to provide a zone that was permitted for this where you have your neighbors to cooperate with and keep an eye on things,” said Walton. By 2013 the park had been filled with about 17 farmers who had gone through the Auburn training and were using the waters. Because of the growth, Auburn began talking about extending the lease contract for 10 years and after contacting the family everything seemed to be moving forward.

The first Alabama Oyster Social was held in January 2015 and raised $8,000 to give to the university. “In a town where there’s usually something going on there is not a whole lot to do in January. So it’s a good time to get people together and party for a purpose,” said Chef David Bancroft, host of the event. With the success of the first social, they were eager to plan for the next year. Then around May of 2015, Auburn learned that the lease was denied renewal and that no one would get the oyster rights. It was upsetting but they would be able to find water and get the permits for a new farm. “The first thing we’re trying to solve here is what do we do with all these farmers that have businesses that depend on their oysters in the water and their gear in the water, they need another area,” said Walton. The contract ends this summer and everything must be out. Auburn has sighted two areas and are in the permitting process for both, they hope to come out stronger and arrange two farms with longer lease contracts. The current farmers will have an opportunity to move to either of the parks, but it will be an expensive and time-consuming move to get their equipment out of the water and relocated to the new park. Auburn hopes to help offset costs for these farmers.

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Photo // Guests trying oyster samples at the Auburn Oyster Social.

Bancroft contacted an all-star team of 16 chefs from around the South that are supporters and users of local seafood to come and partake in the second social. After talking with Walton and learning about the denied renewal, the chefs came up with an ambitious goal of $100,000 to raise through ticket sales and donations. Ten days before the social, general admission and VIP tickets had sold out. At the social on Friday night a crowd of about 300 people sampled oysters and other specialty dishes, listened to live music, and socialized. Towards the end of the evening, Bancroft presented Walton with a check for $25,000 for the AU Shellfish Lab. Bancroft said he intends to reach the $100,000 goal by the end of 2016.

To learn more about the Auburn University program please visit http://sfaas.auburn.edu/ and if you would like to make a donation to the Alabama Oyster Social you may do so at http://www.alabamaoystersocial.com.

One yard. A big giant step. One yard and your life changes. One yard from glory.

Former ballplayers have the best stories. The good talkers can take an incident from a game many years ago and make it the centerpiece of speeches that they give long after they have finished playing. The “formers,” can be funny, heart wrenching, give inside looks at the teams in their respective eras, inside look at great stars. Randy Campbell is good at it.

Randy is one of the good guys. Today he is a financial advisor in his business Campbell Wealth Management. We serve on the Auburn University Foundation Board together. Imagine that two former football players. We made the transition.

I didn’t know Randy well before he came on the board a year ago. We played in different decades at Auburn. I knew of him. He played quarterback in the 1980s, on some great Auburn teams. He is a great speaker. Randy jokes he was famous for handing off to all-everything runner Bo Jackson. There is some truth to that. Bo was the truth so why not?

Still, Randy was no slouch. He is well remembered. He was 20-4 as a starting quarterback. In the 1983 Tangerine Bowl, he became the answer to a TV trivia question. “The 1983 Tangerine Bowl featured two Heisman Trophy winners, Bo Jackson and Doug Flutie. Who was the MVP?” The answer, Randy Campbell!

Back to Randy’s story. He relishes telling it. It’s like the secret only he thought of.

Here goes.

It’s the 1984 version of the Iron Bowl rivalry game Auburn vs Alabama. It’s a game that Bo will make famous with his “Bo Over the Top” leap at the goal line to give Auburn the victory over Alabama 23-22.

Randy tells the story.

“It’s third down, we’re threatening to score. I throw a swing pass out to Bo. Bo takes it down to the one-yard line. He almost scored. He came up a yard short. Of course he then goes over the top on the next play for the winning touchdown.”

I’m waiting for the punch line. Randy wears his “I’ve got a secret” look on his face.

“If he had scored on the swing pass, instead of “Bo Over the Top,” the headline could have read, “Campbell throws the winning TD in victory over Alabama.” Instead Bo was close, so close, tackled at the one-yard line. Man, I was one yard from glory.”

He looks me in the eye. I grin. It’s a great story. Crowd pleaser. Crowds like self-deprecating humor, especially from athletes who have been at the top of the food chain.

Sports is full of close, almost, damn near, shoulda, woulda, coulda, one play here, one play there type moments. If only such and such, stays safely locked in our memories many years later.

One yard from Glory!

I’ve embellished Randy wanting to be the hero. He is a pretty humble guy. All winning team oriented athletes will tell you, what mattered is that their team won far more than they lost. The team is what counts.

Randy says that. But like many of us “formers” he likes to have fun with his stories.

He says, “I told that story to Bo. I said, ‘Man, if you hadn’t gotten tackled on the one-yard line, the headline would have been “Campbell Tosses Winning TD” instead of Bo Over the Top.’ He wasn’t amused.”

Randy repeated, “Campbell to Jackson for the winning TD.”

He smiled.

I never thought I’d write this column. I never knew I’d feel this way. A teammate has passed on and I can’t stop thinking of him. Our journey together brought us a long way. Because we accomplished great things on the football field 40 years ago, the sports media named us, “The Amazins.” As we grew older, had families, and matured, learning to love each other along the way, we coined our own phrase, “Teammates for Life.”

That’s how I feel about David.

David Langner, died Saturday April 26, 2014. He was one helluva football player. A little guy, I often said he was crazy on the football field but if I had the first choice, I’d take David. I’d rather have him on my side than be against him.

David and I traveled a long way in our journey to friendship. I knew him before he knew me. We played against each other in High School. He was a star at Woodlawn High in Birmingham. They were very good. The night we played them they dressed nearly a hundred guys. They came out of their locker room, cocky and proud and ready to feast on the 40 or so players we had from the small Catholic school who had no business on the field with them. David, his brother, his cousin, and their teammates blanked us 39-0 and it wasn’t that close. David, a winner of all kinds of honors, became a highly touted signee of Auburn University.

I walked on at Auburn. One of three blacks on the practice fields of over a hundred players and the only black walkon. David and I didn’t start out as friends.

Walkons have it tough. David didn’t care for the fact that I had dared to walk on to that hallowed ground that he had already earned a spot on. To further confuse things, we had both grown up in Birmingham in the 1960’s when legal segregation meant we could not play ball with or against each other. Friendship was out of the question.

We didn’t get along. David had further to go than I did. We fought often on the field. But we were ballplayers and together we won many games. I won a scholarship and in 1972, we shocked the Southeastern Conference by winning 10 games, losing only once and finishing #5 in the nation. David was a hero that year with his two touchdowns against Alabama in the now famous “Punt Bama Punt” (look it up if you don’t know) game against Alabama. He also led us in interceptions, made All-SEC as a defensive back, and instigated many of the fights we had with other teams. He was a bad ass and we were glad we had him. We always knew he would make a big play.

As we won games, he and I tolerated each other the way teammates will do when they are not friends. Winning does that.

When we were done, he went his way and I went mine. Many years later in Nashville, while filming a Legends of Auburn video, we sat across from each other at dinner. We talked and laughed. He’d already had some health issues and discussed them freely with me. It was a great night for me and, I believe for him. After those many years, we were learning to be friends.

Later, at the thirty-year reunion of “The Amazins,” David came up and gave me a hug. Not one of those quick man hugs but a real hug. He wouldn’t let me go. I hugged him back. I remember standing there in the middle of the floor hugging. Hugging for what seemed like a very long time. That is my favorite memory of my friend David.

Since I heard of his death, I can’t stop thinking of him. I’m proud that we overcame society to be friends.

David will be celebrated for the touchdowns against Alabama, and the great career he had at Auburn. There’s talk that David belongs in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. You will get no argument from me on that. But most importantly, I will fondly remember the impact we had on each other’s lives. We are teammates for life, and now beyond.

“Sherman is Sherman,” I accidentally coined the phrase when describing, to a former Auburn teammate, how our mutual friend and teammate Sherman was doing. Immediately, the teammate understood and giggled. Everyone who knows Sherman understands. Keep reading . . . you’ll understand too.

I’ve known Sherman Moon since 1971. In those days of yesteryear, we were competitors for the same position on the football team at Auburn. We remained competitors on the field, but friends off the field. Forty years later we lived one street from each other. Our visits consist of football debates, reunions with teammates, parties at our neighbors’, and enjoying Sherman’s BBQ. The man can throw down on a grill.

Sherman, then and now, always has a smile for you.

You see; with Sherman the glass is always half full. Smiling, laughing, talking, talking, and talking until you reluctantly have to interrupt or ask for a break.

“Oh, Okay TG,” he’ll say, and relinquish the floor for a few – a very few – minutes before jumping back in. He’ll throw his head back and take you on another one of his verbal journeys. Upbeat, head held high, and fun. That’s Sherman. Rain or Shine. Sickness and in health, stage four cancer not withstanding. My phone chimes and there’s his familiar voice on the phone, “Hey TG, what you up to?”

Sherman beat prostate cancer. He got ahead early in that game, recovered, and came out with a victory. The carcinoid tumor he’s been battling for the last three years has proven to be a booger that, even Sherman has to admit, has tested his mettle. The cancer has metastasized into his stomach, liver, and lymphatic system. Doctors in the US have thrown their hands up and cried, “No Mas!” But you didn’t get to be a teammate on the Auburn teams of ‘72, ‘73, and ‘74 without a lot of courage and fortitude. We’ve never backed down from a good fight.

I have not once heard him complain. I’ve not once seen him in a bad mood.

Several former teammates, who have occasionally run into him, call me and ask, “Is Sherman still sick?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“I saw him, and he was as upbeat as he’s always been,” they counter.

“Sherman is Sherman,” I respond.

Sherman says, “I have Cancer. Cancer does not have me.”

My friend Sherman is on his way to the Netherlands for treatments that, over the next few months, will cost him upwards of $70,000. With all the debate about Affordable Health care in the US, there is little doubt that remaining healthy and finding cures is expensive. In Sherman’s case, it has cost him dearly. He and his wife have lost their income and their home. His final chance at a Hail Mary pass, to regain his health, needs assistance.

Sherman’s teammates and friends are lining up at his side.

Sherman reluctantly agreed to have his story told and to have others solicit funds for him. Nineteen thousand dollars flowed in instantly from family and life-long friends. Next up, was a benefit golf tournament that included a dozen former teammates, some who had not seen him in forty years.

Teammates drove to Florida’s Fort Walton Beach from Mississippi, Tennessee, Central Florida, and Auburn, AL. Sherman made a brief appearance and took pictures with his friends. Then he took off for the airport, leaving for his trip to the Netherlands and the first of four treatments. His teammates and other golfers raised another $8,000 that day.

In Sherman’s honor, we laughed, reminisced with some great Sherman stories, and realized how special we are that Sherman came into our lives. Those who hadn’t seen him in many years marveled at how fun, positive, and upbeat Sherman was.

Just like always.

Sherman is Sherman.

**Want to support Sherman and Vicki Moon?**

Send donations to:

Sherman Moon

PO Box 2077

Fort Walton Beach FL 32549

Or contact Sandy North:

sandy_north@earthlink.net

It’s the same guy, in the same location. The other guys, the regulars – at least the ones living – still hang out there. And yes, they talk a lot of the same loud trash talk they did back in the day.

Welcome to Duke’s Barbershop located across the tracks in Auburn, Alabama.

Back in the day, we were forced to go there. No other options. Our coach made regular haircuts a mandatory team rule. No exceptions. Granted, this was before dreads and fashionable baldheads. Then, it was a time of huge afros and integration.

In 1969, James Owens had the courage to sign with Auburn University as its first black football player. In 1970, I joined him as Auburn’s second black football player. We began an odyssey that we still laugh, cry, and reminisce about today, forty odd years later.

What’s the big deal? Where have you been? College football has been king in Alabama since long before I was born and more than likely until long after I’m gone. Dragging it’s feet on civil rights and cultural integration, the deep south fought, scratched, and embarrassed itself in a fruitless fight against progress; preferring to fight to keep people from going to school, eating a hamburger or having anything to do with the Federal Government of the United States. It was serious business and those times should never be marginalized or forgotten.

But along with seriousness, lives lost, boundaries falling, and unbound courage there was also the absurd. This was one of those moments in time.

“Get a haircut,” we were told. We were reluctant but obedient. Contrary to my look today, I had a huge, sprouting, afro. James had what we described as, in those days, a TWA (teeny weenie afro).

James approached a barber in downtown Auburn who, upon seeing the strapping black athlete enter his shop with the intention of getting a haircut, nearly messed his pants. He begged James to leave his shop, “Please get out. I’ll lose everything. I can’t cut your hair.”

James asked, “Where do I go?”

We were directed to Duke’s Barbershop, across the tracks. It was literally across the railroad tracks that separated the black community from the university community. Rush, the barber, doubled as the local school bus driver; meaning, the shop was closed while Rush shuffled children back and forth to school. We had to time our haircut visits around football practice, classes, and Rush’s bus schedule.

After all these years, a film project took me back to Duke’s with James. It had been over forty years for me. Rush knew we were coming. He was waiting. We walked into the shop and time stood still. The small shop looked the same. Rush stood over the same barber chair. Regulars sat in the same waiting chairs, not to get haircuts but because Rush had told everyone he knew that James and I were coming by. “You gon’ film me?” Rush wanted to know.

The photos of Auburn athletes Cam Newton, Bo Jackson, Charles Barkley, and at least twenty more former Auburn football players hit me.

“All these guys come here to get their haircut?” I asked.

“All except Bo and Cam,” Rush answered. “The young boys, they cut their own hair now. Never cut Bo. He wanted me to open the shop up for him on my off day. Told him no sir.”

Unknowingly and unwillingly, James and I started something that lasted through the ages. The photos were a who’s who of black Auburn players down through the years, Byron Franklin, Doug Smith, James Brooks, Joe Cribbs, Harold Hallman, and many more.

“Where’s our picture?” we asked. Rush didn’t miss a beat. “Did they have cameras back then?” The laughter flowed until the phone rang. Rush answered, “Hey we filming over here, you better hurry up and get here.”

“I’ve been here since 1966,” Rush related. “Man we were proud when you guys started playing. Up until then we would go to the games and root for the other team if they had a black player.”

“We sat in Kinfolks corner,” he continued. Black spectators had to sit in makeshift bleachers in those days, separated from the white fans.

“We named it Kinfolks corner,” Rush explained. “Boy, when ya’ll started playing we had our own players then.”

James and I exchanged a look. We’d always said we felt the weight of the black fans on our shoulders. Now we knew.

More guys came in as the cameras continued to roll. They treated James and me as heroes.

Going back to Duke’s still brings a smile to my face. We brought joy to some old timers who, forty years earlier, had cheered us on in the social experiment of college football integration. Perhaps we should thank our coach for making us go in the first place.

If work is supposed to be fun, I’m having a ball. For the past year I’ve been working on a project that feeds my soul and in the words of the old Native American Chief in the film Little Big Man “causes my heart to soar like a hawk.” Quiet Courage, a film documentary on my good friend James Owens gets my juices flowing.

James Owens has been my friend since 1970. We were pioneers of college football integration at Auburn University. When we played black players in the Southeastern conference of college football were relegated to one or two per team.

In comparison to James I had it easy. He was the first African American football player in Auburn’s history.

The loneliness, the slurs, the suppression of hurts and emotions stayed with me a long time. It was three decades before I could express it in this manner or any manner. It was many years before I could bring myself to talk about it with my wife and son. Just couldn’t. It was too painful.

But this isn’t about me: Nor about the pain. It’s about my friend and his forty-year relationship with Auburn University.

“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” James tells me. “I had no idea of the magnitude of being the first black.”

In 1969, James Owens realized a portion of Martin Luther King’s dream. He fulfilled the legacy of Jackie Robinson. He answered prayers of many blacks and some whites in the state of Alabama by answering Auburn’s call to play football at the University. What has followed over the last forty years is a love story.

Not knowing what to do to aid their only black football player and only the second black athlete in Auburn Athletic history, Auburn attempted to treat James as if he was no different than the other athletes. “We treat all our athletes the same” was the philosophy.

Imagine being the only white among a team of blacks. Imagine being the only white in a University of 15,000 blacks where everyone, students, alumni, whites and blacks examine your every move. Imagine there are so few people who look like you on the campus, that your social life consists of sitting in the TV room after games while all your teammates are out partying and enjoying the spoils of victory. Imagine being seventeen and having no family, nearby. Imagine possessing a second rate education, a by-product of segregation that leaves you inadequate in the classroom. Imagine.

Quiet Courage explores these issues and others as told by James, his teammates former coaches and friends. It’s introspective, funny, sad, and full of love. Mistakes were made. James did not graduate. He didn’t play professional football. The University brought him back as a graduate assistant to get his degree. The rules were changed and he was asked to leave. He wandered. Jobs came and went. His wife Gloria who he met when she became one of the few black women at Auburn his senior year, became his salvation.

Then he found the ministry. Saving souls was as tough as scoring against bigotry, but it was more rewarding. His church was only forty miles from where he’d made history, but he didn’t venture close to campus. Nor did the University reach out to him. Love relationships are like that.

Fate intervened. His nephew, Ladarious signed a scholarship to play football at Auburn. James was drawn back to his Alma Mater. This time it was different. Auburn loved him back. Auburn Athletics created the James Owens Award of Courage to honor him. He received his award and a standing ovation in front of 86,00 Auburn fans. Auburn named him an Auburn legend and he was honored at the SEC Legends dinner with other legends from the conference before the 2012 championship game.

Life was good. He was back in the fold. His teammates honored him as the soul of the 10-1, 1972 team known as the Amazins, one of the favored teams in Auburn history.

Then came the diagnosis. His heart was failing. Tears followed. His teammates and the University rallied to his side. Letters, phone calls, and loads of love poured in.

Yes. He realized, they loved him, not only as a football player but, as James Owens, the human being who notched his name in the Auburn history book.

He had one regret. He never received his degree.

The phone call from the Auburn administrators shocked him. The robe, the march, the arena full of the Auburn family, his name called, the honorary degree handed to him, his acceptance speech. He was an Auburn University graduate.

They were back together again, a happy ending. Just like in the movies.

The War Eagle Nation got its due, 22-19. It could have been more. It should have been more but, after so many shoulda, woulda, coulda, almost, damn near but not quite years of great Auburn football, the 2010 version of The Auburn Tigers got er done in early 2011. In the bright lights of the Arizona desert, the boys brought home the crystal football that shines so brightly in the light of a national championship. Auburn Football is the best in the land. No doubt. No more do we have to sing that familiar litany, if only such and such would have so and soed, we would have won, but we’ll get them next year. Never again.

We won it once before. So we’ll behave like it. Coach Ralph Shug Jordan taught those of us lucky enough to be one of “Shug’s boys” to act like a champion, win or lose. He won The National Championship fifty-four years ago, before two generations of today’s Auburn Nation was born. College football’s bright lights didn’t shine as brightly then and the stakes were not quite as high.

Cam, Nick, Michael, Lee, Antoine, Zack, Josh and hero after hero after hero delivered us to the Promise Land of a 21st century National Championship. We’re still drinking from the cup. Cheers to those young men with hearts of champions beating inside them. They reign at the top of the greatest lists of AU football. The teams from 2004, 1993, 1983, 1972, 1957 all have to move over at the top of the pedestal called bragging rights and make a place at the peak for this group. They earned it. Along the way they’ve created new memories for former Auburn players who labored on teams that were on the wrong side of 35-0 scores and promises of wait until next year. Yep, they’re at the top. I’m getting out of the way. Moving over, fast.

This Auburn coaching staff coaches its ass off. They are one of the finest to walk a Jordan Hare sideline. First and ten with the opportunity of a lifetime, they scored and danced in the end zone, the scoreboard of opportunity flashing brilliant high definition color in television sets all over America.

The phone calls and texts began with the final kick, 00:00 on the clock and the Auburn nation inebriated on the elixer of a championship and other worldly juices. Old teammates, cried with joy and professed to me, “I love you.” Ralph who played basketball at Birmingham Southern College, texted “War Eagle Baby.” Terry, my Hollywood actor friend, a native of Oregon, left a voice message, “You guys are the best.” Joe, a writer from Los Angeles, a Texas grad, whose wife died of stomach cancer, last year e-mailed “So happy for you. What a great game.” An anonymous writer texted, “War Damn Eagle.”

Closer to home, my next-door neighborhood an Auburn grad, enthusiastically garbled something inaudible over the Arizona desert cell phone lines, but I got the message. My other next-door neighbor, the Alabama grad, turned off his lights while Auburn celebrated The National Championship in the desert and pretended he could sleep.

The Auburn Nation stands taller today. As football National Champions, (Can you ever say that enough) there will be more scoring opportunities for the University. Academic growth, gifts and donations, business development, and marketing of the University will be ratcheted up. Auburn’s administration with Dr. Jay Gogue calling the plays continues to grow fiscally, academically and internationally. Athletic Director Jay Jacobs guides athletics with class.

The Auburn Nation today is larger, and more relevant on the world stage. We’re here we’re there. We’re everywhere.

Oh yeah. Did I mention we’re the college football national champions?

Let’s do it again!

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