Who Saved the Auburn Oaks?

In 2007 when Gary Keever, retired professor in the department horticulture, started growing live oaks from seeds, he had no idea how important they would become after the original Auburn Oaks at Toomer’s Corner were poisoned.

The earliest picture Keever found of the oaks at Toomer’s Corner dates to 1937. He found a picture recently behind the counter at Toomer’s Drugs of the celebration following the 1938 Orange Bowl that Auburn won.

“The Toomer’s Oaks are in that picture, and they are very small trees,” said Keever.

Students sat outside the telegraph office, now Toomer’s Drugs, during away games. Office workers strung white tape across telegraph lines to tell what was happening in the game.

“The very first sign of rolling Toomer’s Corner was in the 1970s and students eventually migrated to the live oaks on the corner,” said Keever.

Sports bring the most attention to the trees, but Auburn Oaks are also a tradition and passion of the Auburn spirit in any important event that affects the student’s lives.

“Alumni stop by the trees during home football games and say they got engaged here at the oaks. It was evident that these trees meant a lot more to the alumni than what I realized,” Keever said.

After Auburn won the national championship in 2011, Harvey Updyke called into The Paul Finebaum Show and said Auburn fans would not be enjoying the trees any longer because he had poisoned them.

“Immediately the next day a chemical representative met us onsite to take samples and then we sent them to a lab at Mississippi State,” Keever said.

Keever said they got the results back and the trees were positive for the chemical Updyke used.

This herbicide is extremely potent and long lived. He said it could have stayed in the soil for 7 years, if not longer, if not handled correctly.

“This was the go-to herbicide used if you wanted to kill plants. It could have moved anywhere throughout the soil. Questions were even raised about the safety of walking on campus,” Keever said.

After the poisoning, a team of faculty from campus concluded that the trees were too far gone to save. They came up with a plan to stop the herbicide from spreading deeper.

“There was a press conference on Samford lawn, and we announced the trees had been poisoned and that someone had been arrested,” Keever said.

The poisoned trees died, but the tradition of rolling Toomer’s Corner did not. Before the trees were removed in 2013, the Auburn family rolled them one last time at “The Final Rolling.”

“We threw cases and cases of toilet paper into the crowd. They were rolling the trees, and it was so deep that I got a picture of someone buried in the toilet paper. It was an event for the ages,” said Keever.

After the final rolling of the poisoned oaks at Toomer’s Corner, the University proceeded with the removal of the trees.

“It was a very somber mood. All you could hear was equipment running, and there were a lot of people there,” said Heath Hoffman, Associate Director of Ag Research/Extension Center.

The President’s office formed a committee to decide the future of Toomer’s Corner. Keever said they surveyed people in the Auburn community and the option of planting another large tree rose to the top.

Since then, two sets of trees planted. The first round of trees in 2013 did not last. The university then got two more trees and Auburn Horticulture alumni planted them.

The trees are still standing at the corner today; however, they are not able to be rolled.

Hoffman said they took cuttings off the poisoned trees and made clones of them. He said they continue growing the cuttings and research ways to improve their growth.

Cuttings from the original oaks are grown and sold at the Paterson Greenhouse Complex on campus where Hoffman works.

“We were mailing most of them because they were so short, but now when you go look at them, you can’t mail them anymore. There is even an Auburn Oak planted on the Capital grounds,” said Keever.

There is still a demand to purchase the cuttings. Hoffman said you can purchase an Auburn Oak for $125 plus tax. More information can be found using this link https://agriculture.auburn.edu/auburn-oaks/.

“The most fun part to me is getting to meet all the people that buy them. People plant Auburn Oaks in memory of loved ones and call me every year to update me on how their tree is doing,” Hoffman said.

“The personal side is really the fun part. It’s because it all links back to Auburn and the feeling of belonging in the Auburn family,” Keever said.