A house divided can still stand

Debby Shepherd still remembers riding to church in that green Dodge Charger.  

It was 1972, the night of the famous 17-16 Iron Bowl. 

She was an Alabama fan, and Hal Shepherd was an Auburn fan. 

“I can vividly remember still sitting there, not with him, and then at the last minute [Auburn] blocked two punts and beat us,” Debby said. “Auburn rarely beat Alabama at that point of time. Right? Wouldn’t you say that is true?” 

Hal shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that.” 

He was at that game, too. He called her afterward, but he didn’t mention Auburn’s victory. He just asked if he could take her to church the next morning. Debby said she thought that was very nice of him to not rub it in, so she agreed. 

“The next morning when he picked me up, his car was totally decorated — painted all over orange and blue, ‘Auburn beat Bama! 17-16!’” Debby said. “I thought I’d die when I walked out of my house, and that is so him. He’s so subtle.” 

Flash forward to now, and Hal and Debby have been married for 40 years. They have three children — one Auburn fan and two Alabama fans — and they find a way to make football season work in their household. 

Hal refuses to cheer for Alabama, even when they aren’t playing Auburn, and Debby feels the same way about Auburn. For that reason, they don’t watch or go to the games together. 

Hal wakes up on Saturday morning and dresses head-to-toe in Auburn fan gear, not forgetting his lucky socks and boxers. From there, he usually leaves to watch the game with his brother or friends who are also Auburn fans. 

If they are together in the house, Hal said they have to watch on different TVs. He will go up to his office so he can watch the game without Debby’s Alabama friends around. 

“Of course, I’m cheering for whoever it is that Alabama is playing,” Hal said. “I don’t care who it is.” 

It wasn’t always like that, though. The first nine years of their marriage, when the Auburn-Alabama game was still played at Legion Field, Hal and Debby went to the games together. Those nine years, Alabama consecutively beat Auburn. 

“As long as Auburn is in ‘their place’ as the second-rate cow college, then the world is all good, but if Auburn is equal to or better than Alabama, the world is not good,” Hal said. 

At those games the couple would sit together and try to be polite to one another, but one of them was always stuck in the opposing team’s fan section. It wasn’t even fun, Debby said, because they couldn’t cheer or be excited out of consideration for each other. 

 “We would go out there, pretend that we were nice and sit together,” Hal said, giving Debby the eye. “Then after she bit me….” 

“I didn’t bite you,” Debby said. “I hit you with the umbrella.” 

That was the last game they went to together. From then on, they would split up early in the day and enjoy it without upsetting the other. To this day, it’s just the best way. 

“We have mellowed in our age a little bit, but see every time there is a little spurt of hope — like when you have the seasons where [Auburn] wins in the last three seconds — it gets bad all over again,” Debby said.