Poisoned Trees Bring Truce to a Civil War in Alabama Football
By MIKE TIERNEY
The attempted killing of two trees that are occasionally draped with toilet paper might have been considered a blip on the police blotter.
But when those two 130-year-old live oaks shade an intersection known as Toomer’s Corner in Auburn, Ala. — considered sacred ground among the Auburn University faithful — and are poisoned, apparently in the name of the University of Alabama football icon Bear Bryant, the normal order of business is upended.
The accused, a former Texas state trooper, had trouble acquiring a lawyer. Two court-appointed lawyers and a privately retained lawyer asked to be taken off the case before a fourth came forward and seems to have stuck.
And now a truce of sorts, once unfathomable, has emerged between the universities’ supporters, normally divided like Hatfields and McCoys. The newfound peace was embodied by Alabama loyalists who collected money to assist Auburn’s long-shot restoration efforts for the critically ill oaks.
The trigger for these oddities is Harvey A. Updyke, 62 — a k a Al from Dadeville, as he identified himself when calling a popular sports talk radio show with what apparently was a confession on Jan. 27.
Taking grudge-holding to new depths, Updyke/Al claimed on the call to have infected the landmark trees with a deadly dose of the herbicide Spike 80DF in retribution for Auburn devotees’ supposed toilet-papering of the oak trees in celebration of Bryant’s death 28 years ago. (The toilet paper ritual is customarily confined to Tigers football victories.) Spike 80DF has been confirmed as the chemical used.
Updyke’s allegiance to the Crimson Tide is evident on his own family tree. A daughter is named Crimson, a son Bear.
Updyke’s first court-appointed lawyer, Philip Tyler, withdrew. He cited his part-time professorship at Auburn and other personal and professional ties.
Jerry Hauser’s name came up — and, just as quickly, came down because his wife is head of the Auburn communications and journalism department.
Next up, however briefly, was Jerry Blevins. He attributed his pullout to an irreconcilable conflict with Updyke, although Blevins did graduate from the Auburn campus in Montgomery. Blevins declined to elaborate.
Before accepting a client, “lawyers at a professional level have to consider any legal bias or prejudice,” said Tony McLain, general counsel to the Alabama State Bar. Otherwise, he explained, a defendant might have grounds for an appeal if convicted.
Into the breach stepped Glennon Threatt Jr. of Birmingham, whose only stated connection to Auburn was an athlete niece who went there in the late 1990s.
“It is an extraordinary case, and it was clear he needed somebody with certain experiences,” said Threatt, mentioning his track record in dealing with the news media on high-profile trials.
In an interview, Threatt, who waived his fee, contended that the case was hardly cut-and-dried; Updyke’s account to the police on his involvement differed from what he disclosed over the air. He suggested Updyke might have been prone to braggadocio.
“If a person commits a criminal act, they don’t want to be discovered,” he said. “The last thing you would do is call a radio show.”
Updyke takes some 20 prescription medicines daily for various chronic ailments, Threatt said, adding, “He has a history of emotional and psychological problems that could have contributed to perhaps poor judgment in any act and certainly from calling the show.”
Threatt, an Alabama native with degrees from Princeton and Howard University School of Law, takes offense at some portrayals of Updyke, one of which compared him to Ernest T. Bass from “The Andy Griffith Show.”
“He is not ignorant, not a redneck,” Threatt said. “He is not some sort of Andy Griffith-type of character who would be hanging out at Floyd’s barbershop. I resent those types of stereotypes.”
Threatt is accustomed to representing unsympathetic clients. One was convicted of killing three police officers. More recently, he defended the disgraced Birmingham mayor, Larry Langford, who was found guilty of accepting bribes.
Asked about harsh feedback since volunteering for the case, Threatt said: “Well, my barber is a die-hard Auburn fan. I called him because I wanted to know if I needed a new barber.”
It will be nothing like the murder trial during which he was spit on, Threatt said.
Well versed in the Auburn-Alabama rivalry and its attendant rancor, Threatt said he might request a change of location if a trial ensues. At the same time, he said that Lee County, home to the city of Auburn, could deliver impartial jurors.
The prosecution should not assume that a jury impaneled with Crimson Tide fans would necessarily go soft on the defendant, based on the work of the Facebook group Tide for Toomer’s.
Five Alabama graduates started the page to raise donations for and awareness of the trees.
“We thought what had been done was absolutely reprehensible,” Gina Smith of Montgomery said.
Smith and her co-creators expected a thousand or so “friends” who might pledge a few hundred dollars. “We had no idea,” she said.
With the campaign set to wind down Thursday, the supporter count surpassed 60,000 this week, and contributions are approaching $50,000.
Smith, who also holds a master’s degree from Auburn, is not naïve enough to predict continued détente. “I don’t think fans will lock arms and sing ‘Kumbaya’ at the Iron Bowl this year,” she said.
Still, Smith expects a renewed sense of sportsmanship that she hopes will extend to the more rabid followers in each camp.
“There is a silent majority of very rational fans who keep the rivalry in perspective,” she said.
Those fans are largely white-collar professionals, said Wayne Flynt, distinguished professor emeritus of history at Auburn. “Decent, good people who never took the rivalry as serious because they’ve got a life after football,” he said.
Flynt, editor in chief of the online Encyclopedia of Alabama, characterized the more obsessed as primarily working-class “pickup-truck alumni” who matriculated to neither university and whose lives are a struggle.
“Football is all they have to live for,” Flynt said, citing the occasional shooting or stabbing after past Iron Bowl games.
Antipathy between Auburn and Alabama alumni dates to an era of pronounced socioeconomic and cultural differences, he said. Many of those contrasting traits, but not all, no longer apply. “Auburn used to be called the cow college,” he said.
The armistice is no surprise to Flynt, who believes the nasty rhetoric could remain at a murmur as long as the football teams beat each other regularly. His theory: the dominance of one over an extended period can raise the temperature on the losing side to a boiling point.
With the Tide and the Tigers each winning the past two seasons on the way to national championships, perhaps peace, if short-term, is on the horizon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/sport ... uburn.html 
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