I’m not sure she ever knew what “War Eagle” meant or stood for. Granted, she did participate in the two-day marathon-like Camp War Eagle the summer before my freshman year at Auburn, but like many, never truly grasped what she was saying or typing when she was commenting on a post or texting me.
At least I don’t think she did.
It never stopped her, though. From the time texting became the thing to do, it was inevitable that I would receive a text from her during a massive Auburn game or after a monumental win that just said, “War Eagle!” Sometimes, it was concluded with a “HEY,” reinforcing my notion that she never understood it but knew it was important to me, even more deeply.
Most of the time, I would text back. Sometimes, I would get too busy covering a game or be in a post-game press conference that I forgot. I wish those few times I forgot I had a chance to redo.
She was my mother, Sue Stultz.
Out of everything, Auburn brought my mom and myself closer together
If you pay attention to my work at all, you might have noticed that it’s been a few weeks since I published anything on this site. Truthfully, my parents’ house in my hometown in Kentucky has been a running episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” since March, ultimately ending with my mother’s passing on June 19th due to a longtime illness. It’s been rough, as I figured it would be when you lose a parent. Weeks seem to go by in an instant, but a day sometimes feels like it lasts a month.
And, if you know me, you know that I was the outlier in my family: becoming an Auburn fan despite growing up deep in Big Blue Nation and in a house full of Kentucky graduates. Weekends (and many weeknights) were spent in Lexington at Rupp Arena and Commonwealth Stadium (sorry, it will never be Kroger Field to me) growing up. It was a family ritual.
But I’m stubborn. A part of that is being the youngest by five years. Somehow, Auburn found a large piece of my heart and has never left. It wasn’t a coincidence that, after hearing I had been accepted to Auburn University during the summer of 1998, there just happened to be an application to Kentucky sitting on the kitchen table soon after.
It would have made sense, and it definitely made sense to my mom, who didn’t want her youngest kid to go nine hours away for school. But I was determined and eventually won out, although it was more of my parents giving in than me winning a debate.
So, when Camp War Eagle came, my parents were indoctrinated into everything Auburn in a short amount of time.
All these years later, the concept of War Eagle was everything she knew. Luckily, I was able to keep her off the message boards (especially The Bunker) and out of reading my mentions on Twitter so the lurkers and trolls wouldn’t get her down. Granted, I talked my dad into doing the same thing.
I might not have a point about all of this. Maybe it is my grief coming out in the one way I know how to express it: by writing about it. But maybe the point is that, through everything, no matter how foreign or illogical it seemed, my mom always supported me, and because I loved Auburn, she loved Auburn.
That’s how I choose to remember her. Not by the final decade-or-so of her life when she struggled through so many things, but from those moments when my phone would ding, I would look down, and it was a message from her saying she just saw me on television, or that Auburn was off to a good start or, in the case after the 2013 Iron Bowl, if I was still alive. I think both my parents were worried that night.
It will be different when Auburn wins a big game on the gridiron this season, or when a woman who talked about her banana jump as a cheerleader back in the day asks if Suni Lee is still competing (she is!), because those messages won’t come anymore. At least from her.
Those are the little things I will miss the most.
War Eagle, mom! Love and miss you.
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