By WENDY HODGE Once upon a time, a young man from the Carolinas moved to Auburn and attended The Alabama Polytechnic Institute. He spotted a girl waiting for a bus and offered her a ride to campus. She accepted, and they spent the next 70 years together. During that...

By WENDY HODGE When last we met, the mood at Carver Elementary was tense. Our two hall monitors, Steve and Andy, were not exactly everybody’s favorite people. Steve handled it the way he handled everything — with an easy smile and a fake laugh. Things just rolled off...

By WENDY HODGE When last we met, it was early December 1974. Mrs. Taylor’s second-grade class was the victim of an unknown vandal. Our teacher gathered us all together to sit criss-cross applesauce on the carpet at the front of the room so that she could fill us in on...

By WENDY HODGE In the fall of 1974, there was no shortage of major events to fill the evening news — the oil crisis had recently ended, President Nixon had resigned in disgrace, The Exorcist was terrifying moviegoers everywhere, and Mrs. Taylor’s second grade class at...