alafarmnews

Bubba Trotman knows
farming, football and fall
by Alvin Benn

October and football just seem to go together. So does farming and fall.

Traditional gridiron rivalries are played out on golden Saturday afternoons in autumn. At the same time, farmers are picking cotton planted in the spring while pumpkin patches are being picked clean for pies and lanterns.

Bubba Trotman knows all about farming and football. He got his hands dirty on a Pike County farm as a teenager when he wasn’t fending off clumps of dirt flying toward his face as a speedy halfback for Troy High School.

In those days, Trotman and his buddies wore leather helmets without protective face bars. Missing teeth became badges of courage for some players with altered smiles.

Bubba Trotman stands near a portrait of himself in a room filled with photographic memories of his long career in cattle.

Trotman was such a good football player that college beckoned almost as soon as he entered high school. His decision to play college ball came in an unusual setting.

“I was recruited in a peanut field,” said Trotman, 78. “Wilbur Hutsell (Auburn’s track coach at the time) was helping football coach Carl Voyles find players for the 1944 season and he found me.”

Bubba Trotman kneels in a lineman’s pose for the Alabama Polytechnic Institute Tigers in 1944. His team later became the Auburn Tigers.

As Trotman surveyed his dad’s peanut crop that summer, Hutsell walked up with an interesting proposition.

“He said ‘I understand you play a little football,’” Trotman recalled. “I’m offering you a scholarship right now to play for Auburn.”

In those days, Auburn was known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute, but everybody just referred to it as Auburn because of the town where the college was located.

For Trotman, football seemed like a great way to gain an education and find a career at the same time. He loved farming and knew it was an occupation that wasn’t going anywhere when he finished his post-secondary education.

He had just finished his junior year in high school when Hutsell extended his offer. Instead of becoming a senior, he went to summer school, picked up the credits he needed and then took off for Auburn.

When Trotman arrived on campus, he realized he was a

boy playing a man’s game. At 5-feet-9 inches tall and only 172 pounds, he looked up in awe at some of Auburn’s top players.

One was Tex Warrington of Delaware. Warrington had just returned from World War II service in the Marine Corps. He was 25 years old, stood 6-feet-3 inches tall and weighed 225 pounds. He towered over Trotman.

“We didn’t have a great team that year because most of us were freshmen,” Trotman said. “Auburn didn’t have a team in 1943 because of the war and we were just getting back into the sport in ’44.”

He played two years for Auburn. While he wasn’t a superstar by any stretch of the imagination, he had one glittering moment.

Bubba Trotman wore N. 30 at Auburn, but didn't look anything like the one he has framed at his house south of Montgomery.

“I was playing linebacker and intercepted a pass against Howard College,” he said. “We were playing at Cramton Bowl in Montgomery and I ran it back about 20 yards.”

Bubba Trotman likes to say he “bleeds orange and blue.”

Just as he had done in high school when he didn’t finish his senior year, Trotman dropped out of Auburn after his sophomore year. Although the war was over, he served in the Army as well as the Merchant Marines. Afterwards, in his mind, it was time to put fun and games away and get back to work on his family’s farm in Pike County.

“I had three wonderful years with my father as my teacher,” Trotman said. “I never regretted not having finished Auburn, but I am proud to say I attended Auburn.”

John Trotman was known as “Big Bubba” and his son became “Little Bubba.” The senior Trotman had dropped out of school after the 8th grade to help support his four sisters.

“Little Bubba” learned about compassion as well as conservation techniques from his father. He’ll never forget seeing the despondent looks on the faces of sharecroppers who came in at the end of the season.

“When they’d have a bad year, my dad would tell them ‘you just go back and don’t worry because next year you’ll have a better crop,’” Trotman said. “I couldn’t have gone back to Auburn and gotten a better education than what I received from my father. He provided my degree.”

Trotman may not have picked up his agriculture degree from Auburn, but he didn’t do too badly for himself. He carved out a reputation as one of America’s leading cattlemen and was no stranger to the White House.

In 1972, he was named president of the National Cattlemen’s Association. His list of accomplishments in the cattle industry, banking and in his community take up a whole page.

Alabama may be Trotman’s home, but he’s also had a national impact on the cattle industry during his long career.

“Whenever I’m on a trip and tell people I’m

In 1973, at the height of the U.S. beef boycott, Bubba Trotman of Montgomery held many press conferences during his tenure as president of the National Cattlemen’s Association.

from Alabama, 9 times out of 10 they’ll say to me ‘Do you know Bubba Trotman?’” says Billy Powell, president of the Alabama Cattlemen’s Association. “He is one of Alabama’s greatest ambassadors.”

A charter member of the Alabama Livestock Hall of Fame, Trotman lives in a big house just south of Montgomery. It’s a sign of his success and he can look back on a productive life with a lot more ups than downs.

One vivid memory leads them all. It happened in 1934 when his mule-trading father had hit rock bottom, as did most people around the country at that time.

Trotman was only 5 at the time, but he’ll never forget the day the bankers took away Francis, his Shetland pony.

He still has a photo of himself with Francis in happier days. Young Bubba had no idea what was going on, of course, and when the dark clouds of the Depression covered the family farm, he didn’t know what would happen when his dad couldn’t pay his debts.

“The bankers gathered up all they could at our farm,” he said. “They just wrapped their arms around everything that wasn’t tied down. They couldn’t take our house because it was in my mother’s name. Then, they took Francis. I never saw him again.”

John Trotman still owed the bank $8,000 after the repossession ended, but he refused to quit. He got a $5,000 loan from a friend and borrowed $2,000 from his life insurance policy. He came up with the rest of the money that was owed and managed to save the family farm.

“Cotton was selling for 3 cents a pound, when you made your bales,” Trotman said. “Somehow we managed to survive. Everybody was poor in the South in those days, but nobody knew it. I guess it’s because most of us lived on farms and could feed ourselves.”

When Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, one of his first decisions would stick with Trotman forever.

“He closed all the banks in the country for one day,” he said, with a big smile. “I always liked President Roosevelt because of that.”

Trotman’s hard work as a cattlemen has been rewarding in many ways. He and his wife, Ellen, brought four sons into the world—Randy, John, Charlie and Woody.

One huge room of his house is devoted to memories—dozens of photographs of Trotman and family members, along with plenty of Auburn items, of course.

Charlie Trotman did his dad proud on the gridiron 25 years ago. He was a quarterback for the Auburn Tigers for four years.

On one wall is a large framed Auburn football jersey with a big “30” in the middle. It’s got bright orange and blue colors—something his 1944 Auburn jersey didn’t have. It was blandly grayish.

The older he gets, the more Trotman seems to relish memories of his younger days at Auburn, especially when he reported for fall football practice on the Plains.

“We wore black, high-top shoes,” he said. “We practiced in 100 degree temperatures three times a day and without water. We also came to practice in full pads, not in shorts and T-shirts like they do today during the first few days.”

Football and farming have made lasting impressions on Trotman because of what they taught him—hard work, responsibility and dedication.

Tim Wood, who manages the Central Alabama Farmers Cooperative in Selma and played with Charlie Trotman for the Auburn Tigers, remembers his first meeting with “Mr. Bubba” as he called him.

“I was a sophomore at Auburn and I remember seeing this very distinguished man who wore a white cowboy hat,” Wood said. “His wife was standing by his side. As he spoke to you, you thought you were the most important person to him at the time.”

Wood got to know Trotman even more when he became involved in various agricultural organizations in the state.

“His commitment to agriculture and his willingness to serve on many state boards was an example that I could try to follow,” Wood said. “His expertise and knowledge of our industry as well as his tremendous insight into the issues that we have to face on a daily basis in agriculture have contributed greatly to my education after college.”

Trotman never forgets a name or a face when he greets people and Wood won’t forget his first conversation with him.

“He has a ‘gentle spirit’ that lets you know ‘you are in the presence of one of the icons in the state who has helped mold our industry,’” Wood said.

That kind of praise isn’t unusual for Bubba Trotman, a widower who also is a cancer survivor. Now in his twilight years, he has a lot for which to be thankful.

One of his prized possessions is a black and white photograph taken at the White House. He is seated at a huge table—not far from President Richard Nixon. President of the National Cattlemen’s Association at the time, he must think of the day the bank took Francis away whenever he looks at that photo.

His dad died before his son had a chance to show what he could do in the cattle business.

Even so, “Little Bubba” has a feeling “Big Bubba” must know his boy did pretty well for himself.

Alvin Benn is a freelance writer from Selma.