Giving for a Lifetime

Giving for a Lifetime

by | May 25, 2023 | Alumni Stories, Auburn Magazine

Auburn Family | Auburn Spirit | Class of 1940s | Military | Raymond J. Harbert College of Business | War Eagle
Auburn grad invests in his alma mater for more than 65 years

Catesby ap C. Jones ’49 in his Selma home, holding a framed portrait from his days in the U.S. Army. He was drafted in 1944.

A love of Auburn runs deep for Catesby ap C. Jones ’49.

“You know, some people say they bleed orange and blue, but for me, Auburn is in my gut,” Jones said. “There’s just something about Auburn and the Auburn spirit—it stays with you and it’s different from any other school.”

And when something stays with you for that long, you find ways to give back.

Jones is the university’s longest consecutive donor on record, with his first gift documented in 1957. With his support over the course of 65 years, Jones is a member of Auburn’s 1856 Society, one of the university’s most prestigious giving societies.

“I don’t know any other way to say that I just love Auburn,” he said. “It’s special to me and I could do a little to help it be special for other people along the way.”

SERVICE TO COUNTRY

Born in Selma, Ala. on April 19, 1925, Jones—now 98—is the son of Catesby ap R. Jones and Elizabeth Beers Jones. The family is one of Dallas County’s most historic and uses a Welsh naming convention that places “ap” in the names of its male members, which means “son of.”

After graduating from high school in 1943, Jones enrolled at the nearby Marion Military Institute. He—along with both his father and his brother Roger ap C. Jones—served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Jones was drafted into the war in 1944 to serve with the Army Corp of Engineers in Europe.

“I was in a war zone, but my company didn’t get into any of the fighting part,” Jones said.

He arrived in SouthHampton in England on Dec. 21, 1944 and was assigned to Company A, 1280th Engineer Combat Battalion. The company traveled across France to the German front and began clearing debris and constructing bridges when they arrived in January 1945.

“It was all blown up when we got there,” he said. “Our company did pick up on minefields and worked on highways. And, in fact, our last thing we did was build a Bailey Bridge on the Rhine River. Gen. [George S.] Patton used that bridge for some of his tanks to go all the way to Berlin.”

Jones said that while building the bridge in Germany, he injured all the ligaments in his knee and spent three months in a French hospital before being flown back to the U.S. to rehab hospitals—first in New York, then Mississippi and finally Florida. He came back home to Selma in April 1946 after being released from active duty.

AN AUBURN MAN

Former Auburn President Luther Duncan once estimated that nearly 800 veterans from World War II would enroll at Auburn through the G.I. Bill, but in his in June 1946 report to the Board of Trustees, Duncan reported that a “tidal wave of students had descended on Auburn”—many were veterans returning home from war—with enrollment growing one academic year from 1,162 to 4,383.

In June 1946, Catesby Jones was one of them.

“A bunch of the guys I roomed with had been in the Air Force, and we lived on South Gay Street with a lady who owned a rooming house,” he said.

Majoring in business administration, Jones said Ralph Brown Draughon, who would soon become Auburn’s 11th president, was a mentor during his studies and inducted him into the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi.

After graduating in spring 1949, Jones returned to Selma to work for two years before moving to Mobile to work for his father at Mobile Fire & Marine Insurance Agency. He worked for other companies as well in auditing and management until he moved back to Selma to join his father in an insurance and investment management business, Mabry Securities. He continued work there until he sold the business when he retired in 1985.

Through his success in business he was asked to serve on the board of what would become Regions Bank, a position he held for many years until he retired from the board in 1997.

GIVING BACK

Jones began giving back to Auburn soon after graduation. Through the years his philanthropy has helped support Auburn University Athletics, the Harbert College of Business and the Ralph B. Draughon Library, among other areas of impact on campus.

In addition to financial contributions, Jones donated a collection of presidential letters to Auburn Libraries and Special Collections in 2017.

The collection included several historical documents, including letters written to Gen. Roger Jones—Jones’ great-great-grandfather—who was an officer in the United States Marine Corps and Army. He was the longest-serving adjutant general in U.S. Army history, serving under Presidents James Madison, James K. Polk and John Tyler. One letter included an invitation for Gen. Jones to attend a dinner honoring the Marquis de La Fayette on his return to the United States in 1824.

Jones said he was proud to have received a letter early this year from Auburn President Christopher B. Roberts thanking him for his lifetime of support and his commitment to the next generation of the Auburn Family.

So proud, he said, that he sent back a note to President Roberts.

“I told him that I love Auburn, and I’m proud to be an alum.”

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The Auburn Rugby Club’s Rise to Greatness

The Auburn Rugby Club’s Rise to Greatness

by | May 9, 2023 | Auburn History, Auburn Magazine, Students

Auburn Spirit | Class of 1970s | Class of 1980s | Graduate School | Military | War Eagle

For decades, Auburn’s Rugby Club fought for relevance as much as victory. Then they were national champions.

They lined up 15 men to a side, each tense with concentration. Over the next 80 minutes the two teams’ fates would be determined through bone-rattling hits, tactical precision and an all-out team effort in the pursuit of victory. And it would all be played without pads.

Auburn University versus Montana State for the 2021 Division II College Rugby Championship.

Self-coached, self-recruited, self-funded—the story of the Auburn Rugby Club’s rise to national prominence is burnished with hard work, personal touch and perseverance—hallmarks of the Auburn Creed. Perennial underdogs, the Tigers would cap their season with the most improbable moment in the program’s more than 50-year history—a national title.

The quest for perfection began in 2020. Nick Prather, a third-year veterinary grad student, took over as the team’s head coach after playing as a student at the University of Kentucky. Before Auburn he spent time on a New Zealand rugby club, and he volunteered as head coach out of love for the game.

“I know somebody in just about every country because of rugby,” said Prather. “Because of rugby you might have a job offer, a place to stay. You have friends no matter where you go.”

He found a kindred spirit in Sam Parks, vice president of human resources for Global K9 Protection Group. Parks discovered rugby as a youth, and it guided him virtually everywhere he went, from attending college at Oxford to playing for clubs in Ireland. After he and his family moved to Auburn, it felt natural to contact the local club and lend a hand.

“I was welcomed by a group of criminals, doctors, lawyers, you name it,” said Parks, the team’s assistant coach. “People understand and respect the commitment and sacrifice it takes, so when you meet other [rugby] people, there’s a real camaraderie.”

Bonded by the sport, Prather and Parks embarked on a recruiting tour to build a team of student-athletes familiar with the game. Auburn’s national recognition proved an easy sell for out-of-state students. With little more than a plan—and a promise—they recruited five players from around the country to the Plains.

“Everything was equal between Auburn and a bunch of other Power Five schools, except the rugby program,” said Prather. “The only reason the students came to Auburn, all five, was to come play rugby here. We looked at their parents and said, ‘We will help your kids not only become better rugby players, but better people.’”

The new arrivals kickstarted a development cycle that achieved in one season what Prather said it took his coach at Kentucky a decade to do. The new recruits and veterans—some also military veterans—coached one another and sharpened their skills for a sport that requires as much technique as toughness to succeed.

Among the new recruits was Danny Helton, a junior from Nashville who fell in love with rugby in high school and served as captain during the 2021 season.

“We had a lot of new guys come out who were great athletes, but they’d never touched a rugby ball, and within a season, they were already high-performing players,” said Helton. “We’re seeing the new guys turn into the veterans, and they’re passing on knowledge to the new guys. You get a lot of individual skills and knowledge from the players above you, then the coaches come together and lead the team in the right direction.”

Easily one of the most unique coaching dynamics in Auburn’s history, Prather and Parks couldn’t be more different. Parks is “old school”: soft-spoken, focused on player development and conditioning. Prather, a student of the modern game and a keen tactician, is a sometimes volcanic presence on the sidelines, bellowing commands from one side of the pitch to the other.

The 2022-2023 Auburn University Rugby Club. The coaches, in blue, are (L-R) Sam Parks, Nick Prather and Niko Spino ’23.

They were joined by player-coach Niko Spino ’23, a former grad student and U.S. Army veteran who by season’s end was voted D2 Player of the Year. Their combined experience was crucial.

For years Auburn had consistently ranked at or near the bottom of the Southern College Rugby Conference (SCRC), the Division II (DII) conference for schools in the SEC and around the South. Since the team was unable to practice or play for the majority of 2020 due to COVID, expectations were already low.

Compounding the issue was the team’s status as a club sport, making it ineligible for funding from the Auburn Athletics Department that would go toward recruiting players, buying new equipment and paying for team travel to away games.

In years past, club teams like Auburn played in small-college or DII divisions against teams with similar financial situations. But larger schools with fully funded varsity or even “pseudo-varsity” teams have recently been entering into lower divisions to develop their program and dominate their schedule. In 2021, the year Auburn won the DII national championship, they were the only nonvarsity team to reach the Final Four.

All this is to say that the odds were against them. Yet day after day, through a nine-game season, the team grew stronger until the Tigers at last reached their goal of a postseason berth.

Their playoff entry meant a rematch with Georgia Tech, who tied Auburn on a technicality in the first game of the season. The Tigers would not be denied twice, winning 24-22 in gutsy fashion.

Next, against national powerhouse Memphis in the SCRC title game, Coach Prather identified a strategic weakness that sprung the Auburn counterattack and suffocated the opponent. The final score, 25-15, suggests a game closer than it was.

On Dec. 4, 2021, at the College Rugby Fall Classic in Charlotte, N.C., Auburn defeated Montana State 31-12 for the American College Rugby/SCRC Men’s DII Championship. At long last the Tigers were on top.

“That Montana State game in the championship was one of the hardest-hitting games I’ve ever seen, and I’ve played for 30 years all over the world,” said Parks.

The Tigers flew home with the trophy in hand, while their 23-year-old head coach flew home with alumni on a private jet—a surreal ending for such an unremarkable beginning.

“I had never coached a team at anything, and I had been out of the game for about year with my first year of vet school and COVID,” said Prather. “But I am luckier in a sense that no team I’ve ever been a part of had been so coachable and loved each other like this one.”

The national conversation on Auburn changed with their victory that day. From underdogs to champions, the Tigers finally had earned the respect of teams and sportswriters around the country.

“In the end, Auburn, a program that has not been prominent on the national stage for a long time, showed they can not only win their conference, but win across conference boundaries as well,” wrote the Goff Rugby Report of the championship. “And for Newman [Garrett Newman ’22], who just took up the game recently, it was an MVP day.”

If rugby was played at Auburn before the advent of American football in 1892, we have no record. But a 1968 exhibition match on the Plains, between Huntsville’s Redstone Rugby Football Club and the Pensacola Rugby Club, spurred enough interest for Auburn to field its first team on Oct. 16, 1969.

Wayne Wolfe, who joined the team in 1971 as a student, vividly recalls the haphazard conditions of the field the early teams played on.

“We played games usually on Sunday, sometimes following an Auburn football game,” said Wolfe. “Our ‘pitch’ was on the west side of Jordan-Hare Stadium, which was used to park cars and tailgate. They would somewhat clean the pitch before a match, but we would find ourselves rolling in chicken bones and broken bottles!”

Wolfe and teammate Howard Porter met with Athletic Director Lee Hayley, who promised to help find a new field and invited the team to play a demonstration match during halftime of the spring 1973 football game as a gesture of support. Eventually the field at the intersection of West Thatch Avenue and Hemlock Drive, across from the Farmhouse and Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity houses, became the AURC’s home for the next 40-plus years.

The sport surged in popularity during the 1970s. Even Auburn President Harry M. Philpott’s son, Cabell Philpott ’75, played on the team, and the president could often be seen watching from the sidelines.

At the time, Auburn played year-round in the Georgia Rugby Union (GRU), often against older, more experienced teams.

A player on the 1973 Auburn Rugby Club goes all in to complete the play.

“In the old days, teams in the South would play anyone, club or college,” said Tim Curry ’73. “Club teams were mostly made up of members that were over 21 and had an [experience] advantage. The games were more physical—the push sometimes would go back and forth for minutes before the ball would come out.”

Despite the physicality of the sport in the 1970s and ’80s, Auburn won its GRU division in the 1982-83 season—its first such championship of any kind.

“It used to be called ‘Cowboy Rugby’ when I played, and things have improved dramatically since that time,” recalled Mark O’Neill ’88. “Auburn Rugby at our peak in the early ’80s was based on a fast, physical pack and the occasional aligning of the gods that gave us some backs that would tackle, and one who could kick—Mark Kribel ’85. One season—1981?—we beat Alabama like 11 times.”

Auburn built its reputation as the 1980s progressed, but off the field, a different kind of challenge was far from over—the scrum for funding. To compete, the players had to find ways to finance their own team.

The Rugger Huggers, the team’s “little sister” group, supported the club through bake sales and T-shirts. In other instances, personal donations from players and alumni were required. Once, in 1982, the AURC auctioned off a 1975 Buick LeSabre to raise money for the team. One-dollar chances were sold outside Haley Center, with the winner announced before the game against the Fort Benning Flyers.

Circumstances were already dire when a bizarre coincidence—a rumor that hazardous chemicals had been dumped at the site of the future rugby pitch back in the 1950s—prompted an EPA investigation. No evidence was found, but, unable to practice or play home games, the AURC went on hiatus from 1987-1990.

Upon its return, the AURC was once again met with widespread support across campus. A women’s rugby club was established in 1992. Hardly a decade later, in 1999, now playing in the SCRC, Auburn won the DII conference championship, becoming the first Southeastern team to win a game at the national level. In 2013 they did it again.

“Winning the SCRC Championship in 2013 is one of my favorite memories—we rolled Toomer’s Corner when we got back in town,” recalled Morgan Bevins ’16. “Also the ‘Prom Dress Rugby’ with the women’s team. My wife [Karen Dillon ’16] played on the women’s team, and we met each other on the sidelines. My old Auburn teammate—and current Birmingham Vulcan teammate, Tyler Taunton ’15—was the officiant at our wedding.”

“Give Blood, Play Rugby.” The 1977-1978 team scrums with an opponent in the backfield.

With their rough-and-tumble past seemingly behind them, the future is bright for the Auburn University Rugby Club.

Though their defense of the national title came up short, 2022 was another hard-fought season that further established the Auburn brand of rugby. Coaches Prather and Parks have already recruited 10 incoming student-players to the team—some away from previous commitments—and are poised to replenish a deep roster with even more experience.

Contributions from alumni like Howard Porter ’73, who’s established scholarships and matched funding, have gone a long way toward strengthening the foundation he helped lay as a player decades before.

“This current team is an incredible bunch of young men—outstanding character, incredible athletes and destined for greatness in a variety of fields,” said Porter. “You’ll never know how great the game is until you lace up the shoes and get out there.”

Long gone are the days of scrumming in chicken bones and beer cans. The Tigers’ new home, located inside a brand-new $22 million-dollar Sportsplex completed in 2020, has five multipurpose turf fields for clubs, intramurals and student recreation. It was funded entirely through student fees.

For Coach Prather, whose time in veterinary school—and at Auburn—is coming to a close, the team’s elevation to contender is one he can still savor, no matter how bittersweet. And yet, he gives Auburn the credit.

“Auburn sells itself,” said Prather. “To see alumni and friends who don’t know a single kid on the team wearing Auburn rugby gear in the cold, cheering us on as we win our first playoff game since 1999—it just shows the sustainability this program can have if given the right opportunities.”

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We’ll Perform Again

We’ll Perform Again

by | May 9, 2023 | Alumni Stories, Auburn Magazine

Arts & Entertainment | Auburn Family | Auburn Spirit | Men's Basketball | Military | Raymond J. Harbert College of Business | War Eagle

Thanks to some passionate supporters, a powerful Holocaust play with Auburn ties will extend its run through September

Last year when Auburn Men’s Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl accepted an invitation to attend a musical in Opelika, Ala., he and his wife, Brandy, knew little about what they were going to see. All they had heard about the world premiere of “We’ll Meet Again” was that it was about patriotism and the Holocaust, two things that mean a great deal to the couple.

“We went kind of on a whim,” Pearl said. “But that night we were treated to something we really weren’t expecting. We laughed and we cried. We enjoyed the music and the dancing. We were filled with great pride and happiness about the greatest country in the world that we love so dearly.”

The Pearls were so impressed with the show that they met with the playwright and director afterward to offer encouragement and support to see if the show could continue after that night.

“Brandy and I were deeply affected by this production,” Pearl said. “We think it is so important for other people to see it that we have partnered with the show to organize a tour.”

“We’ll Meet Again” is an upbeat, yet powerful musical set in World War II. It tells the life story of Henry Stern who, at just five years old, along with his parents and older sister, escaped Nazi Germany to move to Opelika where he lived the rest of his life.

The show was developed in part by the world-famous Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Va. after receiving high praise at the Appalachian Festival of Plays & Playwrights in 2019. After COVID halted the full production in 2020, the show finally premiered at the Historic Savannah Theatre in Savannah, Ga. for two weeks before the one-night performance at the Opelika Center for the Performing Arts.

With the Pearls leading the way, and the same cast and crew from the original performances on board, “We’ll Meet Again” will travel to towns across the Southeast during the month of September.

“We want as many middle and high school students as possible to see the performance during the day, and as many families and adults as possible to attend in the evenings,” Pearl said. “Our young people today are not being taught enough about how good this country is; this production will make them proud to be an American. The 1940s music and dancing, as well as the story, will inspire them—and anybody who sees the show.”

Tricia Skelton ’95 and Kate Gholston, teachers at Opelika Middle School, developed a Holocaust-related curriculum years ago that is taught to students in the Opelika City Schools system. They have put their lessons and activities together in an easy-to-follow format to be used by teachers in the secondary schools in the cities where the show will be performed.

Last year when Auburn Men’s Basketball Coach Bruce Pearl accepted an invitation to attend a musical in Opelika, Ala., he and his wife, Brandy, knew little about what they were going to see. All they had heard about the world premiere of “We’ll Meet Again” was that it was about patriotism and the Holocaust, two things that mean a great deal to the couple.

“We went kind of on a whim,” Pearl said. “But that night we were treated to something we really weren’t expecting. We laughed and we cried. We enjoyed the music and the dancing. We were filled with great pride and happiness about the greatest country in the world that we love so dearly.”

The Pearls were so impressed with the show that they met with the playwright and director afterward to offer encouragement and support to see if the show could continue after that night.

“Brandy and I were deeply affected by this production,” Pearl said. “We think it is so important for other people to see it that we have partnered with the show to organize a tour.”

“We’ll Meet Again” is an upbeat, yet powerful musical set in World War II. It tells the life story of Henry Stern who, at just five years old, along with his parents and older sister, escaped Nazi Germany to move to Opelika where he lived the rest of his life.

The show was developed in part by the world-famous Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Va. after receiving high praise at the Appalachian Festival of Plays & Playwrights in 2019. After COVID halted the full production in 2020, the show finally premiered at the Historic Savannah Theatre in Savannah, Ga. for two weeks before the one-night performance at the Opelika Center for the Performing Arts.

With the Pearls leading the way, and the same cast and crew from the original performances on board, “We’ll Meet Again” will travel to towns across the Southeast during the month of September.

“We want as many middle and high school students as possible to see the performance during the day, and as many families and adults as possible to attend in the evenings,” Pearl said. “Our young people today are not being taught enough about how good this country is; this production will make them proud to be an American. The 1940s music and dancing, as well as the story, will inspire them—and anybody who sees the show.”

Tricia Skelton ’95 and Kate Gholston, teachers at Opelika Middle School, developed a Holocaust-related curriculum years ago that is taught to students in the Opelika City Schools system. They have put their lessons and activities together in an easy-to-follow format to be used by teachers in the secondary schools in the cities where the show will be performed.

“There are universal lessons in this production,” said Farrell Seymore ’97, superintendent of Opelika City Schools. “It’s a message of hope. It’s humorous. It’s funny, but it’s also very meaningful and touching. I think every student throughout the Southeast—throughout America—can learn lessons from the Stern family and from the community that received them. This is a universal story that should be heard.”

Heinz Julius Stern was born to Arnold and Hedwig Stern on Sept. 4, 1931. The Sterns lived in Westheim, Westfalen, Germany—the only Jewish family in a small town. Heinz’s great-uncle, Julius Hagedorn, a highly respected owner of a department store in Opelika, and his wife, Amelia, visited the Sterns in 1936 and tried desperately to persuade them to go to America.

A year later, after selling all their belongings, the Sterns were finally ready to go. Before leaving, family members gathered at the family farm to say goodbye and to take one last photo.  From there, the four Sterns traveled to Hamburg, Germany and, along with 330 other passengers, boarded the S.S. Washington, the last ship of Jews to legally leave the country. During their trip to the United States, the children “adopted” American names and Heinz became Henry.

The family settled in in Opelika. Stern (and his sister, Lora) attended Opelika schools. He played football and basketball in high school and graduated from Clift High School (Opelika High School) in 1950. Following graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy from 1951 to 1954 and later enrolled in Alabama Polytechnic University (now Auburn University), where he walked on the basketball team and studied business administration. Stern was a partner in a department store in downtown before being named president of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce, where he spent the rest of his career. 

During all his years in America, neither Stern nor any other family members knew the whereabouts of relatives left behind in Germany. After the war, a college friend of Stern’s went to Germany to teach and took the Stern name with him to see what he could find. The news was devastating. Stern’s maternal grandmother, paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins had all been deported to concentration camps and were murdered by the Nazis. The surviving family members were sent to ghettos and spent the remainder of their lives picking up the shattered pieces.

All his adult life—for more than 50 years—Stern desperately searched for someone from his family who had survived and was still alive. Then, in the wee hours of Nov. 21, 2004, Stern got a break. A friend emailed a link to a website that tracks Holocaust victims and their families. After literally thousands of failures over the years, Stern, who never gave up hope, typed in his grandmother’s name and for the first time something came up: a Fred Hertz in Durham, N.C.

Stern waited until daylight and called the stranger. He introduced himself and told Hertz he had spent years searching for surviving family. He asked if he could email a family photograph taken in 1937, just minutes before the Sterns boarded the ship to set sail to America to see if, by chance, Hertz recognized or could identify anyone in the picture. A short time later, the phone rang. It was Hertz.

“Henry, I’m in this picture,” Hertz said.“I’m the boy on the back row.”

“There are universal lessons in this production,” said Farrell Seymore ’97, superintendent of Opelika City Schools. “It’s a message of hope. It’s humorous. It’s funny, but it’s also very meaningful and touching. I think every student throughout the Southeast—throughout America—can learn lessons from the Stern family and from the community that received them. This is a universal story that should be heard.”

Heinz Julius Stern was born to Arnold and Hedwig Stern on Sept. 4, 1931. The Sterns lived in Westheim, Westfalen, Germany—the only Jewish family in a small town. Heinz’s great-uncle, Julius Hagedorn, a highly respected owner of a department store in Opelika, and his wife, Amelia, visited the Sterns in 1936 and tried desperately to persuade them to go to America.

A year later, after selling all their belongings, the Sterns were finally ready to go. Before leaving, family members gathered at the family farm to say goodbye and to take one last photo.  From there, the four Sterns traveled to Hamburg, Germany and, along with 330 other passengers, boarded the S.S. Washington, the last ship of Jews to legally leave the country. During their trip to the United States, the children “adopted” American names and Heinz became Henry.

The family settled in in Opelika. Stern (and his sister, Lora) attended Opelika schools. He played football and basketball in high school and graduated from Clift High School (Opelika High School) in 1950. Following graduation, he served in the U.S. Navy from 1951 to 1954 and later enrolled in Alabama Polytechnic University (now Auburn University), where he walked on the basketball team and studied business administration. Stern was a partner in a department store in downtown before being named president of the Opelika Chamber of Commerce, where he spent the rest of his career. 

During all his years in America, neither Stern nor any other family members knew the whereabouts of relatives left behind in Germany. After the war, a college friend of Stern’s went to Germany to teach and took the Stern name with him to see what he could find. The news was devastating. Stern’s maternal grandmother, paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins had all been deported to concentration camps and were murdered by the Nazis. The surviving family members were sent to ghettos and spent the remainder of their lives picking up the shattered pieces.

All his adult life—for more than 50 years—Stern desperately searched for someone from his family who had survived and was still alive. Then, in the wee hours of Nov. 21, 2004, Stern got a break. A friend emailed a link to a website that tracks Holocaust victims and their families. After literally thousands of failures over the years, Stern, who never gave up hope, typed in his grandmother’s name and for the first time something came up: a Fred Hertz in Durham, N.C.

Stern waited until daylight and called the stranger. He introduced himself and told Hertz he had spent years searching for surviving family. He asked if he could email a family photograph taken in 1937, just minutes before the Sterns boarded the ship to set sail to America to see if, by chance, Hertz recognized or could identify anyone in the picture. A short time later, the phone rang. It was Hertz.

“Henry, I’m in this picture,” Hertz said.“I’m the boy on the back row.”

The boys were first cousins who had thought for more than 60 years that the other was dead. They emailed and spoke daily by telephone.

Two months later, the cousins and their families would finally meet face to face for the first time since that summer day in 1937. With television cameras rolling, the men embraced in a tearful reunion in the driveway of the Hertz home in Durham. To this family, it was much more than a reunion. It was a miracle.

Hertz passed away in early 2008 and Stern died in 2014, but now, thanks to the musical production of “We’ll Meet Again,” their story lives on.

So how did this story about a boy in Opelika, Ala. make its way to the stage?

In 2007, Anna Asbury Carlson ’15 was given an assignment in her 11th grade history class at Opelika High School. “We had to write a paper on any event in history,” Carlson said. “’Big Henry’ was a dear friend of my grandparents—he grew up right next to my grandmother—so I was very familiar with his life. I knew all about him finding Fred, so I wrote his story.”

Stern loved the paper and gave printed copies to everybody he thought would read it. Through family friends, Carlson’s paper made its way to Jim Harris in Lincoln, Neb. An attorney, actor, vocalist and playwright with Opelika ties, Harris had always wanted to write a WWII musical but didn’t have a good story line—until he read Stern’s story for the first time.

“It was such a touching story, and it really brought home a connection to Henry Stern as a person,” Harris said. “I thought by using Henry’s story as the nucleus of the play I could personalize the events of that momentous era in a way that was understandable and relatable.”

The play is indeed powerful, understandable, entertaining and relatable, but to Pearl, Stern’s story is more than that. To Pearl, it’s very personal.

“‘We’ll Meet Again’ had a tremendous impact on me because Henry’s story is also my story,” Pearl said. “My grandfather, my Papa, was able to escape to the United States when he was 11 years old, bringing his three younger siblings with him. Like much of Henry’s family, and much of Papa’s family—my family—didn’t make it. But the focus of this story is not all about the horrible things that happened. ‘We’ll Meet Again’ is more about the fact that this family came to America, were successful and their family lived on. As has mine.”

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Rain in our hearts

Rain in our hearts

by | Jan 23, 2023 | Alumni Spotlight, Armed Forces, Explore World

Military | War Eagle
Sent off in the prime of life, the men of Alpha Company faced some of the heaviest combat of the Vietnam War, many never to return. Two Auburn alumni recall the life—and death—they encountered along the way.

Adapted from “Rain In Our Hearts” by Gary D. Ford and James Allen Logue.

Capt. John Wilson leaving ChuLai, Vietnam to take command of Alpha Company, 4/31st, 196th LIB Americal Division.

In the photograph, snapped in searing noon heat, Capt. John Agnew Wilson ’77 leads Alpha Company into Hiêp Dúc, a village in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. He stands erect, head held high, but he’s as thirsty, famished and fatigued as his men behind him. They include commander of 1st Platoon, 1st Lt. Michael Keeble ’67, who shares two, strong bonds with Wilson. Both are Alabamians. Both are Auburn men.

Since April 30, 1970, Alpha Company, 4/31, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, had fought day and night against elements of 2nd North Vietnamese Army (NVA) Division, and now, May 14, had gone four days without rations. Canteens were almost empty. Several soldiers were sick or wounded or both. One man had a fever of 105 degrees.

As they reached the village at midday, nearly all dropped in the gift of shade and slept where they fell. They awoke upon sensing, even before hearing, the high, beating heart of helicopter rotors. Re-supply choppers descended with manna: food, water, mail and ammunition. Alpha feasted and shared their C-rations with villagers.

One infantryman from New Jersey, James Allen Logue, a professional photographer before he was drafted, carried his rifle as well as a 35mm camera and snapped that photo of Wilson leading Alpha, one of some 2500 images he captured of his Vietnam War. Many now illustrate “Rain In Our Hearts: Alpha Company in the Vietnam War.” The volume won first place among military works in the 2020 Indie Awards, from a national organization of independent publishers, including academic presses.

“Rain In Our Hearts” began in 2012 in Florida when I interviewed Logue for an oral history. What of the men of Alpha, we wondered? Would they speak of that dangerous year and lend “voice” to Logue’s photographs for a book about one infantry company in one year of the Vietnam War? Most we called said yes, so we kissed our wives goodbye, roamed across America, and gathered not only “war stories” but also life stories from those who served with Logue in 1969-1970. In all, we interviewed 70, including widows, mothers and siblings of Alpha men killed in the conflict.

The survivors came home to a country that ignored, even reviled them. Like most Vietnam veterans, few, for decades, spoke of the war. So it wasn’t unexpected when, as the red light of my recorder blinked “on,” these men, now gray and grandfathers, began with these words: “I’ve never talked about Vietnam.”

Out tumbled memories that still shake them awake at night. They cried. They also laughed. And they marveled at a time of youth now long gone. A veteran in Colorado gazed out in morning sunshine and said, “We were so young. We were so very young.”

“I’ve never talked about Vietnam.”

So were Wilson and Keeble. Keeble was an Auburn freshman in 1962 when the student population was 8,954, and ROTC for men was mandatory. An excellent athlete, Keeble played freshman basketball and starred for four years on the golf team. To earn tuition, he worked summers in cotton mills in his native Valley, Ala.

Keeble stepped on campus when men wore crew cuts and co-eds sported white socks and saddle oxfords. While he fought in Vietnam, however, change was roiling America and Auburn: the war, civil rights, women’s rights, longer hair, higher hemlines and new visions of adulthood. In spring of 1970 The Auburn Plainsman covered local anti-war protests. It also reported as waning a traditional phenomenon among co-eds: “Senior Panic.” For many women, the Cinderella vision of college was snagging an engagement ring before graduation. By 1970, however, most Auburn women were considering careers before marriage and children.

Wilson wished he were at Auburn. Raised by a widowed mother in Grove Hill, he yearned to play football for coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan, but “wasn’t quite big enough.” Instead he attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery before enlisting. A captain when he reached Vietnam, he was bent on a military career.

Capt. John A. Wilson ’77 addresses the men of Alpha Company in a jungle clearing.

On Wilson’s first day as Alpha commander in December 1969, Logue snapped a panorama of men gathered around Wilson in a clearing in “the bush.” Typical of infantry companies in the conflict, they were black, white and brown, from small towns, cities, farms and suburbs. Most were in their twenties. Most were single.

There were farmers, mechanics, a printer, three cowboys, a cooper, a baker, a candy maker. Nearly all were high school graduates. Many had attended college. Some held bachelor’s degrees, a few their master’s. Two entered doctoral programs when they came home.

That day Wilson told his company a little about himself, spoke of his expectations of them and concluded: “I have one job: to get all of you, and me, back home, safely.”

“I have one job: to get all of you, and me, back home, safely.”

He likely thought of those words that afternoon in Hiêp Dúc when orders came: advance east. In the low light of a bamboo structure, Logue snapped a shadowy, somber image of Wilson with his platoon lieutenants around him, including Keeble. All knew the enemy prowled nearby. All knew it might be a bloody afternoon.

So the men “rucked up” and marched east, fed and rested, but wary. Villagers had disappeared, as usual, upon sensing the enemy near. One boy stood at a roadside, somber and silent, his arms crossed, watching Alpha depart. Logue snapped his photograph.

“He knew,” veterans recalled when seeing the image. It came with a sudden fury in a hard rain. Alpha fought back against greater odds, and stopped cold one last enemy attack. Keeble was in the midst of the fighting when a spent AK-47 round slammed into the right side of his face. “Like a sledgehammer,” he recalls. Now he chuckles at one thought as his life seemingly ebbed away: “‘I haven’t been to church in 10 years and it’s too late now.’ Well, 20 seconds go by and I’m alive.”

Medevacs whisked away the wounded. Keeble’s recovery began at a battalion aid station, then in a field hospital, and on to post-operative care in Tokyo and months of rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was promoted to captain, and for his actions on May 14, 1970, earned a Silver Star and Purple Heart.

From Walter Reed, Keeble stepped into a corporate career with Delta Air Lines, and in his free time indulged his passion for golf at great courses around the world.

L to R: Unknown, Lt. Pettit, Capt. John Wilson, SSG Perry Steman, Lt. Mike Keeble

By late May of 1970, Wilson had completed his combat tour, having earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. He largely had kept his promise of getting all of Alpha “home safely.” Yet, he lost a farmer with a fiancée back home in Indiana, a Minnesotan who in two months was to marry his beloved on a beach in Hawaii, a beloved medic from Wisconsin that everyone called “Mouse” and several others.

“I have a little boy,” were the last words of a sergeant with a wife back home in North Carolina, and their infant son he’d never seen. And in the May 14 battle, a young man from Michigan, Sgt. Donald Kuzilla, died in a ditch in the rain, 17 days before his 20th birthday.

After Vietnam, Wilson and his wife found both joy and despair when he reported to Fort Carson, Colo. There, long wanting children, they adopted an infant daughter. There, too, his military career ended with an acronym, RIF: Reduction in Force. As the war wound down, Wilson, with thousands of others, got “Riffed.”

“I was 28 and having to start life again. That was a dark time,” he recalls.

“I think about them every day.”

Light returned in classrooms. He graduated from Huntingdon, and then at Auburn University at Montgomery earned M.S. and M.Ed. degrees for his second life of service. At predominantly African American Carver Junior High School in Montgomery, he was among the school’s first “three or four” Caucasian teachers. He also served as principal, and on weekends again wore olive drab as a company commander in the Alabama National Guard. “I had a ball,” he says of both academic and guard service.

Then his life took a third turn. Long a lay speaker in the United Methodist Church, he completed seminary and served two decades as a pastor.

Keeble, with 40-yard-line season tickets, drove down to Auburn each autumn and, in more recent years, found delight in the growth of the campus and town.

“I’m more of a city man, but I could live in Auburn now,” he said. Near Equality, Ala., Wilson and his wife, June, for years treasured life beside Lake Martin, where John often ended a day stalking bass and bream from his pier. As sunsets fired the water, he saw again all those young faces gathered around him that December day in 1969. “I think about them every day,” he said.

Now, Auburn has lost both of these distinguished alumni. John Agnew Wilson died Feb. 10, 2022. Michael Joe Keeble passed one month later, on March 21, 2022. Both Auburn men were laid to rest with military honors.

Read More Alumni Stories

80 Years of Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Auburn’s Turning Point

80 Years of Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Auburn’s Turning Point

by | Nov 29, 2021 | Alumni Stories, Armed Forces, Magazine Articles Archived

Auburn History | Class of 1940s | Military

An alumnus’ life mirrors the changes that Auburn—and the nation—underwent because of WWII

Pearl Harbor at Langdon Hall

Students gathered outside on the steps of Langdon Hall to hear the emergency
news broadcast of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

ALABAMA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE (API) on Dec. 6, 1941 was much the same as it had been for decades—season after season of football games, dances and generations-old student traditions—but on the following morning, the Plains’ rural tranquility would change forever.

Just weeks before Christmas break, students crowded the steps of Langdon Hall, listening to the newsflash that rocked the nation: the Empire of Japan had launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After resisting involvement in the conflict that was slowly engulfing the rest of the world, the U.S. was now unquestionably at war.

The five years that immediately followed that day would be a watershed moment in the history of Auburn University, profoundly altering everything from the size of the student body to the curriculum and athletic program. David Gardiner ’41 was one of many Auburn alumni who fought in the war, and whose life would be profoundly changed by it.

Gardiner was born into poverty in Farley, Ala., the second of six children. He was 11 when the Great Depression began, and 15 when his father died. As the eldest son, he helped raise his younger brothers and sisters and kept his family afloat.

“You go through things like that, you learn hard work,” said Cliff Gardiner, associate dean for the college of science and mathematics at Augusta University and David’s second son. “You learn lessons of durability and resilience, and not complaining—my father was never a complainer.”

David Gardiner entered API as an agriculture major, intending to graduate and return to his family farm. In his spare time, he played baseball but, conspicuously, also participated in API’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at a time when enlistment was not compulsory. News of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Europe had undoubtedly reached Auburn by then, but Gardiner signed up anyway.

“He knew the world was at war, and he chose to enroll in ROTC,” said Cliff. “Given the patriotism of the time, he may have done it because he believed that was his duty. He understood duty extremely well.”

Gardiner was deployed to Hawaii as a member of an antiaircraft barrage balloon unit, a relatively easy assignment. That changed in 1944. As a second lieutenant in the Army, Gardiner was appointed commander of an anti-aircraft battery and sent across the Pacific to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese. The Filipino people suffered horrific atrocities after falling under enemy occupation in 1942, and welcomed the allied Filipino-U.S. forces as liberators.

“I know that his unit got credit for at least one kill of a Japanese bomber,” recalled Cliff. “But I’m sure that his men were probably under attack multiple times. He never talked about that, except for the triumph of getting credit for a kill shot.”

Cliff still has the 40-millimeter shell casing his father brought back, the same kind used to shoot down enemy aircraft.

After the Philippines, Gardiner went ashore at the Battle of Okinawa and remained there until Japan formally surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945. For his service he was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Philippines Liberation Ribbon. But none of that mattered to him. In fact, said his son, he never heard his father mention any service medals. “I got to come home,” he told his son. “That’s what [victory] meant to me.”

 At the time, President Luther Duncan estimated that around 800 veterans would enroll at Auburn through the G.I. Bill. Instead, 1,575 registered in the winter quarter of 1946 alone. At its peak in 1948-49, more than 9,000 veterans were attending Auburn. Because Auburn was segregated at the time, the GI Bill did not fix diversity issues, but the veterans’ arrival would transform everything from student housing and class schedules to campus dining and dress codes. The influx of battle-tested adult men would reshape collegiate athletics across the country.

For alumni like Clarence “Pappy” Boynton ’48, who came to Auburn as a veteran, the war had created a new generation of students. “It gave me added responsibility and a new sense of purpose,” said Boynton, now 101. “The military regimen instilled me with discipline, the value of depending on your fellow servicemen, family and friends and an ever-greater commitment to my country while at war.”

In the years that followed the war, Gardiner became a cotton marketing specialist for the USDA and eventually retired in 1983 as superintendent of the Cotton Division for Georgia. Though he lived to the ripe age of 102, he never spoke out for armed conflict. And to Cliff ’s surprise, he never judged the young people who protested against serving.

Seventy-four years after the war ended, on his 100th birthday, Gardiner was interviewed by television reporters at the Georgia War Veterans Home in Augusta, Ga. where he lived. They asked him what he thought of the conflict all these years later.

 “War is a waste of time,” Gardiner sighed.
“People should learn to get along.”