Daddy raised me War Eagle 🦅

Ashley Walker
Dec 4
2 min read

Daddy raised me War Eagle.

Every Saturday, the doors of his yellow-and-white ’70 Dodge stood open like a country cathedral, Jim Fyffe shouting “Auburn!” across the pasture while we mended bobwire and slung feed.

Nine years older, David sat sixteen books high on my hero shelf. He’d roll home in his ’74 Caprice and drop the week’s treasures on my bed:

• plastic Alabama cups,

• pom-pom shakers,

• game programs still warm with stadium breath.

I’d wash up in the old wash house, devour a bacon-and-bologna sandwich, and take my place at the supper table. The ABC Wide World of Sports shield flashed—black circle, red slash, twin globes—and then Keith Jackson’s voice swept in like a sermon:

“WHOA, NELLIE!”

And little by little, one bedroom gift at a time, David turned my heart Crimson.

1985: I left Curry College, walked on at Alabama, and someone placed Daniel Moore’s The Top of the Line in my hands—#95/2500—Major leaping the Sugar Bowl goal line like a man carried by angels.

Christmas Day, 1986—Sun Bowl, El Paso.

There I was on the sideline, heart pounding like a Sunday altar call. The ABC cameras swept past, and then Cornelius “Biscuit” Bennett—fresh off eleven tackles and a sack that buried the quarterback’s hopes—stopped right beside me.

Plastic Alabama cup in my fist.

Shoulder-to-shoulder.

Both of us grinning.

Click.

My own Mom-and-apple-pie Keith Jackson moment—on national TV.

2024 gala: Major signs the bottom of my framed print.

2026: Steadman steps up and adds his name.

Both nights, that same print hangs over my fireplace, and beside it the sideline photo—Biscuit and me under the bright ABC lights, God’s favor shining stronger still.

Not bad for a kid who grew up floating on cotton trailers along the Coosa River, tucked into the foothills of the Appalachians— a boy who never could’ve dreamed the roads God would one day let him walk.

It truly is amazing how the Lord shapes our lives, thread by thread, moment by moment, memory by memory.

Roll Tide, David.

I kept up.

And I got my picture with the man who dropped the quarterback once—and everything else eleven times.