In only a few days you'll learn what many have suspected their whole life, that about 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 20, 1957 one of the greatest football players to ever play in Chattanooga shot and killed a whiskey runner named Don Hudson.
You're going to also learn that now, some two years since Bobby Hoppe died of a sudden heart attack at age 73, his wife has finally exorcized him from the demons he carried all his life.
Sherry Hoppe, who served as the president of Austin Peay University for seven years during the 37 she spent by Bobby's side, has just written a book that tells, completely and graphically, the truth about the "scarlet letter" Bobby wore every day and was forced to see reflected in the eyes of almost every person who came in contact with him.
The book is certain to be a blockbuster among those who watched Hoppe become a high school All-American under the legendary Red Etter at Chattanooga Central and then be an All-SEC halfback under the more-fabled Shug Jordan at Auburn on the Tigers' 1957 national-championship team.
It will be introduced with a book signing this Thursday (6 p.m. until 8) at Rock Point Bookstore at Fourth and Broad Streets in Chattanooga.
The book is titled, "A Matter of Conscience: The Redemption of a Hometown Hero, Bobby Hoppe" and Sherry collaborated with Dennie Burke, a solid writer, in presenting her almost biographical view of a sensational murder trial that was held 31 years after that fateful night. The book has been published by Wakestone Press.
Those who read its pages will be startled by its forthright account of that trial in 1988, where a genius of a lawyer from North Georgia, Bobby Lee Cook, guided it to a hung jury. They will also revel in an equally-intriguing love story where, at long last, Sherry Hoppe sets her man free.
Sherry, who married the then-37-year-old Bobby when she was a 24-year-old teacher at Chattanooga Valley High School, said that just before they were married he told her quietly, "I never murdered anybody." She also tells of the cold night in 1987, as they walked through the December chill, that he said, "I killed Don Hudson."
"There is definitely a difference in cold-blooded murder and killing someone in self-defense," she reasoned at the time, but in the 20 years that followed with Bobby, she tells how that truism was strengthened by a love and devotion she believes will last until "The Twelveth of Never," also the couple's favorite song.
Bobby's heart-wrenching revelation to his wife came 30 years after he shot a gun at point-blank range through the open window of his Chevrolet into the open window of Hudson's 1948 Desoto. Sherry states it was clearly self-defense, that Hudson's gun was quickly found by investigating police, and that Bobby didn't know his shotgun had found its mark until he got a phone call after sun-up.
Somehow enduring a Sunday morning breakfast with his mother, he immediately drove back to Auburn that day and stopped at the First Baptist Church, seeking a pastor. The man Bobby had come to see, his chosen confessor, was away so Hoppe instead blurted what had happened to an assistant, a man who would call Chattanooga police officers over a quarter of a century later and cause authorities to reopen the case.
That's where I come in because, as the executive sports editor of the newspaper at the time, I was startled one morning to see the dashing Bobby Lee Cook at my door. (The TV show "Matlock" was fashioned after him.) He told me that day Hoppe would soon be arraigned and that a huge trial would occur. I told him I would stand as a character witness for Bobby and help any way I could.
Bobby and I had gotten to know one another when he was a football coach at first Chattanooga Valley and later Calhoun. He was a quiet and gentle man around me, but I had heard the legend all my life and, like hundreds of others, I always wondered when I was around him. I guess he saw that in my eyes, too.
The reason was because he was such a magnificent persona. In his senior year at Central he scored 110 points, averaging an unthinkable 9.8 yards per carry. At Auburn Coach Jordan told me he was the hardest hitter he'd ever coached and, while he played fairly, Shug said that when Hoppe was the point man of the "vee" on a kickoff, the first opponent he met usually didn't play anymore that day.
The stories are endless. Many are in Sherry's book and some of the best are not. But the one that is far and away the most compelling is of the many years of torment that the legendary football hero was forced to endure until he died suddenly on April 7, 2008.
She tells of his intensely private nature, his adoration for his dogs, the history of World War II, and his deep conviction after reading countless hundreds of books on religion.
Over morning coffee this week I asked Sherry if Bobby had ever felt he was "forgiven" and she nodded, telling me quietly of a trip he had taken to Israel and spent a day gazing at the deep blue of the Sea of Galilee. "He felt God had heard his prayer. He had no doubt he was saved."
Sherry actually began writing the book before Bobby's death. She said that before the 1988 trial he saw "everything in black and white, but then he began to mellow, noticing the grays. I wanted to tell what really happened, what it was like to live such a life. Bobby finally told me, 'Okay, you can write it but I don't know if I'll ever let you publish it."
About six months after he was buried, Sherry started writing on the book again and now, as it comes forth this week, you'll see that, at long last, Bobby Hoppe has finally been set free of his demons indeed.
royexum@aol.com
Bobby Hoppe in his Auburn days