AuburnFamilyNews.com: It’s Pronounced Jordan: Remembering Auburn’s 7-fingered, polio-stricken star quarterback of yore

Saturday, August 24, 2019

It’s Pronounced Jordan: Remembering Auburn’s 7-fingered, polio-stricken star quarterback of yore

It didn’t take long for the administration to put something out—no swimming classes, no softball or tennis practice, definitely no ROTC drills. Strenuous activity was thought to heighten the chance of contracting it.

Dr. Brown, the student medical officer, said it was just a better safe than sorry thing for a couple of weeks. But that didn’t do much to help calm the fears.

It wasn’t that there had been a whole of lot of cases on campus or anything in 1951. Two hundred fifty people had come down with it that year; only two were Auburn students.

It’s just who it was…

The starting quarterback. The Phillips High phenom. The hero whose extra points had upset Bama two years earlier.

It was as if the virus had looked around and asked itself “who would make the most tragic polio victim in Auburn…”

Here’s Kess Fabian remembering his friend Bill Tucker.

 



from The War Eagle Reader https://www.thewareaglereader.com/2019/08/its-pronounced-jordan-remembering-auburns-7-fingered-polio-stricken-star-quarterback-of-yore/

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