Can we get a ROLL TIDE!?

Roll Tide Roll!

From our Digital Collections,
http://acumen.lib.ua.edu/u0001_2008003_0000111

Homecoming Memories

Here are just a few of many, many images relating to the Homecoming tradition at The University of Alabama. Images from the 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s! What is your favorite Homecoming memory!?

Roll Tide!

Football! Football! Football!: Images from early 20th century Corollas

From the 1903 Corolla

From The 1909 Corolla

From The 1901 Corolla

From The 1906 Corolla

Provenance Times Two: An Early Gift and the Origins of Crimson and White (o Rosso e Bianco)

One of the many projects we are working on at the Hoole Special Collections Library centers around our foreign language rare books. Right now we're spending some time with the Italian rare books in our collection. One thing we find is that no matter the origin or provenance of any particular item, it's always cool to look at any book and see where it can take you. Sometimes it's far beyond the actual content of the book where you can find the most interesting stories.

Giovanni Domenico Romagnosi

For example, we have in the Hoole Library's Rare Books collection a book on criminal law entitled Genesi del Diritto Penale (or the Origins of Penal Law), written by Giovanni Domenico Romagnosi and published in Milan in 1823. There is a faint inscription on inside of the front cover - "University of Alabama. Presented by -- Ex Libris J. Walker Fearn, N.O. 26 June 1885."

Inscription on the inside of the front cover

It is said that Romagnosi conceived the Genesi del Diritto Penale in Piacenza, completed the work by 1787 and first published it in Pavia in 1791. It was enlarged with the 5th and 6th parts in the 1823 edition published in Milan, and this is the edition that the Hoole Library holds (and one of only three in WorldCat!). The concepts, theories and reflections on the natural and metaphysical origins of the right to punish that the author exposed remain to this day important in legal scholarship. His theories and ideas were even more broadly explored in this 3rd edition.



While the book itself is interesting and important, it was fascinating to discover through a little sleuthing how and from whom we acquired this book.

The inscription above shows us that it had belonged to and was given to The University of Alabama by John Williams Walker Fearn, a lawyer and diplomat. Fearn was born on January 13, 1832 in Huntsville, Alabama, and named for his grandfather, John W. Walker. Walker was was an important person in early Alabama history -- he was President of the Convention which framed the constitution preceding Alabama’s statehood and was the very first Senator for the State of Alabama.

His grandson and namesake, the owner of this book, did not attend The University of Alabama, but graduated from Yale University in 1851. He studied law in France and in 1853 was admitted to the Mobile bar. Soon after, in 1854 he was entrusted with several diplomatic missions in Europe in behalf of the government of the Confederate states. During the Civil War he attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, serving on the staff of General Preston. After the war, he practiced law in New Orleans until 1885, when he was appointed Minister to Greece.

So what does this rare Italian law book have to do with Crimson and White? Those colors are everywhere -- crimson representing school spirit, pride, and of course, brings to mind that ubiquitous name for The University of Alabama, The Crimson Tide!

It just happens to be that the very year that John Williams Walker Fearn was appointed to serve as Minister to Greece, his daughter, Mary Fearn served as a sponsor for a drill competition held in New Orleans. 1885 was also the very same year that he inscribed and gave this book to The University of Alabama.

UA was a very different place in 1885 -- a military school, in fact. And The University of Alabama Company E cadets were in the competition. The story goes that Mary Fearn asked the UA cadets what their colors were so that she could plan her own outfit for the day. When they responded that they had no official colors but wore black caps, gray coats and white trousers for competition. She was purported to have responded that black is too funereal, and gray was too neutral. So she picked crimson, white and gray for her outfit.

It's exciting to point out that The University of Alabama won this competition! And it's very cool to ponder about this very book may have travelled back with the cadets from New Orleans to Tuscaloosa. Perhaps it was a token of his esteem to the winning team, or given in honor of his daughter, the team's sponsor in New Orleans.

The rest, as they say, is history. Beginning in 1892, the football team always wore white uniforms with crimson stockings and large “U of A" in crimson on their sweaters. Other athletic teams at The University followed suit. Within a year, in spring 1893, the annual dance was decorated in crimson and white, and our student newspaper (the oldest student newspaper in the Southeast!) was named the Crimson-White.

The 1892 University of Alabama Football Team

Mary Fearn joined her family in Europe where she met and later married an Imperial Russian Prince, one Sergei Mikhailovitch Volkonsky. (Серге́й Миха́йлович Волко́нский). He was an interesting man, extremely influential in the Russian theatre and one of the the first Russian proponents of eurhythmics, pupil and friend of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and creator of an original system of actor's training that included both expressive gesture and expressive speech.

So if anyone asks where Crimson and White came from, tell them they were chosen by a Princess. And how did we find that out? Provenance!

Roll Tide Roll!

The University of Alabama's football team is ranked #1 in both the AP and the USA Today Coaches Poll. This detail from a 1930s UA publication has newfound significance on this Monday in November. Congratulations to Coach Saban and the Crimson Tide!

Announcing.... John "Blank" Doe

This seemingly mundane piece of paper is anything but dull. It is an image of the dummy press release drafted to announce the newly appointed head football coach and director of athletics at The University of Alabama. Scheduled to be named on Saturday, November 30, 1957 at 4:50 pm, there is no question that certain people knew who that name was, but the need to keep things under wraps until the right time is all part of the process -- just as it is done today.

That John "Blank" Doe was none other than Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, who took over as head football coach for the 1958 season. Bryant coached at The University of Alabama for twenty-five years, winning six national championships (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978 and 1979) and thirteen SEC championships. Coach Bryant's win over Auburn (which was coached by one of his former assistant coaches, Pat Dye) in November 1981 was his 315th win as a head coach, made him the winningest college football coach of all time. 

Paul W. Bryant first came to The University of Alabama as a scholarship player in 1931. He played on the 1934 National Championship team. When asked why he took the head coaching position at The University of Alabama, he famously replied, "Momma called. And when Momma calls, you just have to come runnin'."

With the 2008 football season just 15 days away, it's a great time to reflect on some of the history of one of the most celebrated college football programs in the country.  Roll Tide!!!

The Archer, the Thief and UA's 1938 Rose Bowl Team

This very cool picture from our collections features The University of Alabama's football team in 1938 -- after their defeat in the Rose Bowl. In the photograph are two men who stand out a little bit -- with elaborate costumes. Who are they? Well, they are Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, stars of the 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood.


The University of Alabama football team were no slouches -- but it was never clear (to me, anyway) exactly why they ended up on this particular movie set, with these particular actors -- until just this week when the connection came in the form of a television show on sharp shooters on the History Channel. The probable connection? Howard Hill!



Who? While he may not be a household name in every household, Howard Hill certainly was a man who had his share of the limelight. Hill, known by many as the "World's Greatest Archer" (and "Ol' One Shot") was born November 13, 1899 in Wilsonville, Alabama. He won 196 consecutive field archery tournaments between 1926 and 1942, and also won the International field meet in 1942.

Hill was a Hollywood stuntman and consultant, working with actors and on movie sets from the late 1930s through the 1950s. Among his many credits include that of archery instructor and stuntman for The Adventures of Robin Hood!



In fact, Hill and Robin Hood title character star Errol Flynn were longtime friends -- here they are fishing together aboard Flynn's yacht.



According to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, (he was inducted in 1971) Howard Hill "took more than 2,000 game animals and 1,000 reptiles and fish in 12 countries.... and was the first man to kill a bull elephant with a bow and arrow." Cover details featured here are from books from the Hoole Alabama Collection, Hunting the Hard Way, and Wild Adventure. Both recount Hill's encounters with wild animals around the world as well as a broad range of advise and information for the budding archer or archery enthusiast-- he not only was an archery superstar, but also designed and made all of his own equipment. 


Hill's legacy lives on in fiction through DC Comics' Green Arrow series. In the comic, Oliver Queen (aka "The Emerald Archer") refers to Howard Hill as his childhood hero, and it eventually ends up that Hill bestows upon Queen the legendary bow that he used on the set of The Adventures of Robin Hood. When Queen dies, his son Conner Hawke takes over the family business -- fighting crime with Hill's legendary Robin Hood bow -- it's fiction meets fact meets fiction!

So it seems -- the Archer (Hill) and the Thief (Robin Hood/Errol Flynn) and the 1938 Rose Bowl team come together here - connected through Hill and with all probability someone knowing someone from back home in Alabama -- but not from school. Howard Hill not only was a heck of an archer, but he also played baseball for that other big school on the other side of the state -- Auburn University.  

A-Day 2008: UA Athletics and Terry Saban help raise funds for University Libraries

This cool image from 1968 Corolla - the '68 Corolla is available online as part of UA Libraries' Digital Collections (and part of the Corolla Digital Initiative and of course analog versions of all Corollas are available at the Hoole Library

Celebrate A-Day and give to a great cause! UA Athletics and Coach Saban's wife, Terry will help raise funds in order benefit academics for all UA students by taking donations for the University Libraries at the A-Day Game tomorrow, Saturday April 12, 2008. Terry Saban, UA students, faculty, staff, and student-athletes, including members of the UA men’s basketball team, will be collecting donations for the University Libraries at each gate at Bryant-Denny Stadium and in the Walk of Champions area before the A-Day Game and inside the stadium throughout the first half. Volunteers collecting donations will be wearing green shirts with the message “Athletics & Academics Support UA Libraries” printed on them.

“By helping raise money for the Libraries we are helping the entire University,” said Mal Moore, director of UA Intercollegiate Athletics. “Our Libraries must remain in the forefront with new resources and services and 21st-century technology,” said Terry Saban, wife of UA head football coach Nick Saban. “The University’s libraries provide critical services and resources that our students need to excel academically. We want our libraries to be just as good and nationally recognized as our athletic programs.”

“The money raised for the University Libraries on A-Day will be invested solely in what we know students need,” said Louis A. Pitschmann, dean of UA Libraries. “Although the Libraries continue to invest heavily in books, we need to acquire more and also to provide students with the online databases they need to remain competitive academically. Students at the Capstone are using libraries more than ever before, more than 1.3 million times last year.”

On A-Day, donations can also be made at the Bruno, McLure, Rodgers and Gorgas Libraries. Donations will be accepted in cash and check form. Donors who wish to give via credit card can go online to participate at www.lib.ua.edu , then must click on the “Make a Gift” link. For more information, contact Cheryl Altemara at 205-348-1416 or caltemar@ua.edu.