New Release
The Golden Years: Bibb Graves Center
One of two of the last standing memories of Graves Center, the Graves Cottage on Samford Avenue has stood the test of time.
Built around 1920, it is a landmark that is well preserved and the only survivior of the thirty cottages where atheletes and coaches of bygone times lived their college lives.
Vince Dooley, Erskine Russell, Joel Eaves and Larry Chapman were a few that were both student athletes and championship coaches at the highest levels. The other landmark is the amphitheater as shown on the front cover. Most everyone who has matriculated at API or Auburn University has sat around the amphitheater for orientation classes. On football game days, hundreds of tailgaters still enjoy the amphitheater. Most people don’t know their history.
Bibb Graves Center history
Alabama Polytechnic Institute built the Graves Center – actually a complex of thirty cottages, an amphitheatre, a large dining hall, and a brass bust of New Deal era governor Bibb Graves – piecemeal throughout the 1930s. The complex of 30 Greek Revival style white cottages were originally intended by the Agricultural Extension Service to accommodate agriculturalists in town for conventions, but served a variety of functions, including housing Auburn’s football team. The dining hall served as the university cafeteria and also served as a venue for dances, costume parties, and commencement exercises.
The university relocated the brass bust of Bibb Graves to the Auburn University Special Collections and Archives on the bottom floor of Ralph Brown Draughon Library. Today, two remnants of the Graves Center remain on campus. The first is the amphitheatre, which was originally constructed from granite setts that once paved Commerce Street in downtown Montgomery. Graves Amphitheatre is located at the corner of Duncan Drive and Graves Drive on Auburn University’s campus. One of the Greek Revival cottages still stands approximately four hundred feet west of the intersection of Duncan Drive and West Samford Avenue.
The Amphitheater at the Graves Center has been enjoyed for decades by tailgaters on Auburn University game days.
All Back Two-Thirds
Peter Pinson, recent happy-go-lucky graduate from a well-known southern institution, was testing the waters of the various military organizations for the best fit.
The lure of “Join the Navy and See the World” was strong, and the tiebreaker for the decision was based on the locations of the bases and the Navy’s more exciting weaponry—
aircraft carriers, submarines, cruisers, and seal teams. Peter envisions a traditional Navy career but things are never as they seem, of course, and he finds himself in some zany situations, including getting off on the wrong foot by a side trip to Germany, and inadvertently finding himself the appointed Lobster Control Officer.
All Back Two-Thirds is the first novel from author James N. Dozier, who served six years in the U. S. Navy, earned the Navy Pilot Wings, and landed on the U.S.S. Intrepid which was decommissioned in 1974 and is now berthed on the Hudson River as the centerpiece of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
Ensign Pinson Goes to Flight School
Peter Pinson continues to get himself into situations beyond his control. He has successfully garnered a transfer off the USS Neptune by qualifying for a position in the Navy Flight Training School in Pensacola, Florida.
Just as his misadventure in arriving at the Neptune on schedule, he encounters difficulty in arriving in Pensacola on time. The Navy thinks he has expired in an airplane crash, but Pinson as usual has found a way to not only survive, but to renew a friendship with an old friend in posh surrounds. Peter has extreme reservations about learning to fly high performance airplanes and landing on aircraft carriers. Having no flight experience, he is awed by the qualifications of the other pilot candidates, most of which have previous piloting experience. In orientation, the instructors delight in advancing data about how many students wash out. Peter harbors the notion that he might be assigned to Hawaii if he should drop out of the program.
