I’ll let Ben, he of the Cannonball Rull tip, set the stage:
This is a pic of my wife (Martha Sherrill ’06) when we were living in Alaska. I met her in Kansas, dragged her back to the Plains, and made her an honest woman and a Dye Hard (she still refers to the 80s as when Uncle Pat coached). She then took me to Alaska. This pic was taken last year in front of our cabin outside Fairbanks, which is 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Yes, it gets cold there. We had about two solid weeks of -50 and three hours of daylight, which was usually overcast. I taught in the English Dept at UAF, and there was another lecturer in the department who did her undergrad at Auburn in the 80s. My wife worked on Fort Wainwright and met a lot of army wives from the south. There were a lot of LSU grads and even a former cheerleader at Florida, but no Bamers. God truly does love Alaska.
War Eagle to the Future, too.
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Send it to us at photos@thewareaglereader.com.
From my Army experience…..the bammers don’t produce a large number of ROTC grads compared to the other universities across the state that host ROTC departments. In my Army days, I met more officers from Alabama A&M, AUM, and UNA then bammer. In fact I can only recall one from bammer.
Yeah, I can second Huntsvegas. Its not just limited to ROTC either. I’m a Marine Officer (out now, but no such thing as a “former Marine”, you know) and I don’t believe I EVER met a Marine Officer that was a bammer. I even did a little work with the Officer Recruiting Station in Tuscaloosa when I was a 2ndLt, and out of the dozens of people we put in the Marines, we didn’t have a single commitment from a bammer.
By contrast, when I went to OCS, there were 3 other AU students in my platoon, and 2 others elsewhere in the company. I knew and served with several AU grads at each place I was stationed. Oh yeah, and the man who was Commandant when I first joined (Gen. Mundy) is an alumnus of our fine university. The only bammer connection I can think of is that Gen. H.M. “Howlin Mad” Smith held a law degree from UA. I don’t think that counts though…
I don’t know what it is about bammer. They just don’t have much of a military tradition.