A Question of Honor
My brothers, my sisters,
I ask your indulgence for one more missive. It may seem to ramble and, well, it does. But there is a point to this ramble, and it is intended for an audience of three: Ray L. Watts, M.D., Brian L. Mackin, and Barbara Humphreys.
My father died not long ago. A few of you knew him, most did not. My father was a Winter Soldier: at the height of the Vietnam War, he refused to take part in actions he viewed as illegal and immoral, and he resigned his commission.
When they make movies about this sort of thing, at this point the music rises in the background and our hero squares his shoulders, stares into the sunset and marches resolutely into the future. Real life was not that way. The USAF made it its mission to break my father.
For years afterwards, my father drifted from job to job. He would last for a few months, and then eventually the phone call from somewhere in the Pentagon would come. And he would be unemployed again, and we would be uprooted and moving on. At times he took jobs off the books, where the Air Force could not find him. He hung drywall and he picked tobacco. I was only a child then, but I learned to pick tobacco too. I learned the difference between “appetite” and “hunger.” I learned to eat Government Cheese: solid bright-orange slabs of a plastic-like substance that came in long white cardboard cartons. I learned to drink powdered milk.
Eventually, my mother could take no more, and she wrote to my father’s former CO. The phone calls stopped. In fact, another government agency soon found my father and gave him real work. I grew up with a bitter, deeply personal hatred for all those who abuse the public trust to pursue petty, personal vendettas.
Years later, we come to Ray L. Watts, Brian L. Mackin and Barbara Humphrey. We cannot all be heroic, that’s why heroes are special. But when we face a decision of honor, we can pay the price that honor demands. Each of you faces a decision of honor. And so far, each of you has shown yourself far less of a man than my father.
Ray Watts, M.D.
Ray Watts, perhaps we should question how it is that you came to be President of UAB. What discussions did you have, if any, and with whom, regarding the post of president before the hiring committee began meeting? What, if anything, was the hiring committee told regarding the expected outcome of the “search”? What promises, if any, did you exchange and with whom before accepting the post of president?
The School of Medicine’s precipitous decline came on your watch as dean. Are we now to believe that you can fix that, if only you can have more money? Yes, we are all aware that the decline came during and after the 2008 Depression, under the poorly-considered austerity policies of two presidential administrations. Yet these same conditions applied to every other medical school in the United States as well. UAB’s decline is relative to these other schools – they suffered less than did UAB. Why is that? Could it be due to weak leadership?
You have the opportunity to end this crisis with a simple statement, with an act of leadership. Here, I’ll even write it for you:
Dear UAB Supporters and Alumni,
There has been a great deal of concern expressed recently regarding the future of UAB as an undergraduate institution, including its athletic programs. Let me assure you that I intend to see UAB reach its full potential as the comprehensive university envisioned by Joseph Volker, and intend to see its athletics reach the heights of excellence in football, basketball and other sports envisioned by Gene Bartow. Volker and Bartow taught us to dream, and I will work with relentless determination to make those dreams reality. UAB and its football team are here to stay. Thank you for your support.
Ray L. Watts, M.D.
President, University of Alabama at Birmingham
That’s all you need, and you have my permission to cut and paste it (not that the Birmingham News seems to need my permission, but as a gentleman I know you’d prefer to have it).
Will be you forced into early retirement if you issue the above? Probably. You might even have to seek work as a neurologist again. And your potential employers might get a few phone calls. Still, I’m pretty sure you’ll never have to break open a carton of Government Cheese.
Brian Mackin
Brian, we went to UAB together a very long time ago. You always were kind of soft, but you were never stupid. You know how this game is played and for the moment, you may well need to remain silent. But the time will come when your silence buys nothing; if UAB football is destroyed your position becomes redundant and that’s $309,000 that Ray Watts likely sees as better spent on beakers and test tubes. You know as well as I that anyone who’ll break a formal oath will ignore a private promise without a second thought.
Let me remind you, and all those who read this, of something that may have been overlooked recently: UAB is one of less than 18 NCAA Division One programs to have never been on probation. Never. That speaks well to your stewardship of Gene Bartow’s dream, far more than the championships won on your watch.
It also should help to explain why I, and so many of my brothers and sisters, are infuriated at these events or rumors of events. Filth-ridden, disgusting criminal programs like Penn State, North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Miami and Florida State commit or excuse heinous crimes and unspeakable corruption yet they continue to have Division One athletics and, in fact, they are under absolutely no threat of losing their athletics programs. UAB has remained a shining example of doing it the Right Way and is about to lose its program. While others strutted and bragged and made mockery of the entire concept of higher education, UAB followed the rules. Yet the Wrong Way prospers while the Right Way is punished. Your legacy, Brian, a legacy of honor, is on the verge of destruction.
I find myself needing to repeat that: North Carolina has raised a giant middle finger to every tenet of the student-athlete ethos, to every shred of the thousand-year-old traditions of the university. UAB has never trespassed the rules of the NCAA. One of these programs is on the brink of extinction.
Brian, I would hope you have let it be known that, whatever happens on November 30th, you will speak the truth about how it came to pass. Loudly, forcefully and with full documentation. I truly wish you the best of luck.
Barbara Humphrey
Barbara Humphrey, you are a UAB graduate and were a UAB athlete. Your son is one of the football players left in limbo by the actions of Ray Watts and the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. You hold a seat on that very same Board of Trustees, and to date you have been utterly silent. You have the opportunity, and the destiny, to act as the enraged Mother of Dragons, protecting the hundreds of sons and daughters who will be denied the opportunities provided to you and your children.
I understand your dilemma: your husband is an employee, a well-compensated employee, of the Board’s former president pro-tem. An arrangement that, though probably not strictly illegal, is most definitely unseemly. I understand the stakes: if you speak, Bobby will be dismissed within minutes. And you will learn about those phone calls just as my parents once did. Your patron will turn on you and he will do his utmost to break you. And it will happen out of the spotlight, back in the dark and dirty corridors of power. No one will protect you, and no one will even know the price you will pay.
Even so, I am calling on you personally, Barbara Humphrey: speak against this injustice. Mackin cannot and Watts will not. Take on the mantle of Mother of Dragons, and fight with us to end this insanity. You know better and yet you are letting this happen. Every day that passes with your silence is another day of shame. You accepted your seat on the Board knowing that this issue would likely arise sooner rather than later; no one put you in this position except Barbara Humphrey. It is time you fulfilled your oath.
My father found some peace in his last years, but spent the decades before that as a bitter and angry man. I wish I could say he taught me many things, but this would not be true. He was quiet and withdrawn, drinking heavily at times. He paid the price of honor, and so did his family. But I look into the mirror every morning with a level gaze and I can say with utter surety that I have never, ever been ashamed of my father.
I pray that your own children will one day say the same of each of you.
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