02/09/09

Family & Friends

College Football

My Favorite Things

THE SHORT VERSION

I was born Ernie Milton Williams, Jr., in Brighton, Alabama, July 1, 1942.

My mother, Wilma Lena Edwards, began working as a telephone operator in Selma, Alabama, when she was 13.

My father, Ernie, Sr. (not "Ernest"), received a second-grade education because his father needed him to work on the farm. When Granddaddy became ill, Daddy put in a crop (corn and cotton, I think) by himself and saved the already-poor family from financial ruin. He plowed two mules a day, one from before sunup until noon, another from after "dinner" (as the noon meal was called) until after dark. The next year he lied that he was 18 so he could be hired at the Woodward Iron Company, where he worked until he retired.

I attended Brighton Junior High School, Bessemer High School, the University of Alabama (one year), Auburn University (B.A.), and the Florida State University (M.A., Ph.D.), including a year at the FSU International Program in Florence, Italy. I was a post-doctoral fellow, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, at the University of California, Berkeley.

I have taught at Columbus College, in Georgia (now Columbus State University), Florida State University, Florida A & M University, Hillsborough Community College, St. Petersburg Junior College, Pasco-Hernando Community College, and Saint Leo University (since 1978). I was "Humanities Scholar in Residence" for two summers at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center at Warren Wilson College in West Virginia, and was a research assistant one summer at Cornell University.

I have three daughters, Elizabeth Peige Fuller-Rosales (Germany), Elisabeth Grace Williams (Rochester, NY), and Ann-Marie Williams (whereabouts unknown). I have two wonderful granddaughters, Sofia Gabriela and Eva Isabella.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Elisabeth, my youngest.

Robert Levine, my best friend and coauthor, and his fiancé, Pamela Henderson.

Dr. Eugene F. Kaelin, my major professor and mentor, and his wife, Pierrette.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Growing up in Alabama, there was no significant alternative to being a fan of college football. Other states may prefer various forms of "round ball," but, back home, we were all in love with the prolate spheroid. College football was, and is, a major passion. It's not unheard of to go to church on a Sunday morning and hear Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant quoted from the pulpit. In my family, we were all University of Alabama fans. Roll Tide!

When I finished high school I went to Alabama, joined a fraternity, learned to drink beer (PBR), took some serious middle-of-the-night road trips, and flunked out of school at the end of the academic year. Uh . . . Roll Tide?

If the tide was rolling, it wasn't rolling in my direction. I took a vacation from academics and worked on the "labor gang" at the Woodward Iron Company (WICO) -- mostly running a 90-pound jackhammer and lifting and throwing 40-pound ingots of pig iron all day.

 Working at WICO provided me with a great appreciation for studying. After an appropriate layoff, I enrolled at Auburn University. War Eagle!

Just In case my joy for learning should flag, I kept a reminder on my desk of my days on the labor gang -- a miniature ingot of pig iron. ("Let's see . . . studying or manual labor . . . studying or manual labor . . . gee, so hard to choose.") War Damn Eagle!

Going to graduate school at the Florida State University in Tallahassee was a dream come true for a small-town boy from central Alabama. Living in Florida seemed like being on a permanent vacation, and when I compared it with the land of my upbringing, home of George Wallace, Bull Connor, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Selma-to Montgomery-Walk, and the Ku Klux Klan, I declared Tallahassee "a bastion of liberalism." That says a lot about my frame of reference and exposes me for the redneck I was -- and sometimes still am. The apple doesn't fall far from the kudzu.

But I had no interest in football while I was at FSU. The program wasn't very good, and I had decided that football was "violent and anti-intellectual." No 'Noles for me, thanks.

So after 1965, when I left Auburn, I paid no attention to football. Then, in 1998, a Tallahassee friend, Kip Carpenter, and his wife, Joan, invited me to the FSU -- UF game. From somewhere deep in my corn-bred DNA, I rediscovered my roots and my passion for the game. My roots apparently have a profound interest in certain sorts of violence and know at some deep, instinctual level that intellectualism is overrated. So Go 'Noles! Like no kidding! (And War Eagle! And Roll Tide! too.)

Now I have 'Noles' season tickets. Recently, and again with the encouragement (more like insistence) of my friend Kip, I began going to (at least) one "away game" each year.

Celebrate the success of your rival.

When you then defeat him,

you conquer a mighty adversary.

And, should he prevail, you succumb to a champion.

Take pride in the strength of your rival.

      At Syracuse University, 2004                 It is by his strength that your own shall be measured.

                                                                                              -- after Friedrich Nietzsche

That bit of philosophy is why I pretty regularly root for all the SEC teams. Yes, even the Gators. And for all the ACC teams. Yes, even the 'Canes (although sometimes that's a stretch).

With Kip Carpenter and Ormond Loomis in Tallahassee, 2004

"A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS"