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Michael Franklin Allison
Birmingham, AL
Civil Engineering, 1977

After being away from Alabama for many years, I was recently able to attend an Auburn football game. In visiting the campus, my wife and I strolled by the engineering buildings and relived memories of our courtship there. Of interest was the sleek concrete canoe on display ...

It was the fall of 1976. I had been intrigued at our ASCE meetings by the prior class's commitment to an interesting project, the Concrete Canoe. They were, by our understanding, the first Civil Engineering Class from Auburn to build this curious structure, and competed in design and performance against other schools. Professor Carl Kurt had brought up the opportunity for the Class of '77 to carry on the effort a second time. Several of us volunteered, truly ignorant of what we were getting into. I was elected chairman of the 2nd annual Concrete Canoe Committee.

"Tar Baby", the prior year's canoe was on display in the lobby for several weeks, as long as the faculty could stand to look at it. Tar Baby closely resembled a big, black bathtub; with high angular sides and a thick coat of black paint - or was it really tar. We on the committee were advised to test a few cement mixtures using lightweight aggregate, and strength test them in the lab. Settling on a lightweight mix, we built a test section of canoe, then the real thing. How do you design and then build a canoe from concrete, and one requirement was that it float. None of us really knew, but we managed to draft some plans, get it built in the Wilmore Lab, and test drive it once in the lake at Chewacla State Park. We discovered that we made it a little small, the ends were not designed quite high enough so we had to be careful with it taking on water, but with some added flotation in the ends it did float. We painted it Orange and White, with some large AUBURN decals on the ends. It certainly looked sharp compared to "Tar Baby".

1977 Concrete Canoe Team: Front Row -Rocky Sullivan, Mike Allison, Willard Adams, unidentified, Stanley Clark; Second row: Don Cook, Denny Pate, Jimmy Taylor; Standing: Mark Markham

We were signed up for the competition at the University of NC at Charlotte. We had figure out how to transport it there; someone loaned us a trailer, and we set the canoe in the frame of the forms we used for the original concrete pouring. Once there, we were surprised to be among at least 40 schools that were proudly competing in design, appearance, weight, and the races. We quickly found that were infants in the event, but at least we were not in the lowest extreme - large hulking tubs that didn't stand a chance of even floating, much less racing (University of South Carolina comes to mind), but we all were entertained watching them launch, paddle, and sink. I was sure "Tar Baby" was in that category the year before. On the other extreme, there were nimble two-man kayak looking models, with Paddlers straight off the rowing team at schools like Carnegie-Mellon.

But for all our mediocrity, we found a great competitive challenge, one that we would not take lightly. All other schools in attendance quickly noticed our competitive desire and had to choose sides. We had no Idea until we got to the lake, but there they were - The University of Alabama had a Canoe in the Competition. Since our team was of course a gracious and outgoing group at the social gatherings the night before, many heretofore neutral schools, especially the host from UNCC, were pulling for us to defeat our foe.

All canoes, if they passed the float test, were entered in the two man sprint competition. As I recall, we advanced in the first round, and as we had hoped, were pitted against Alabama (and a couple of others) in the next round. We became engaged in a loud, boisterous cheering match on the bank, and the race was close, but I never will forget the cheers of those Alabama engineers turning to silence as Denny Pate and Jimmy Taylor paddled even, then passed them. Never mind that we did not advance to the next round, WE BEAT ALABAMA.

Bringing home no trophies, we were elated that at the next ASCE meeting when we got to tell the proud story of our triumph. The torch was passed to next year's committee, with a little more knowledge and experience. Now I see that sleek canoe displayed at Ramsey Hall (surely it won trophies); I can feel that our '77 class was a small building block toward future Classes' accomplishments. And oh yeah, our canoe had more use: at the annual ASCE picnic (the traditional gathering where seniors got thrown into a pond), our Canoe somehow found it's way to the party, and was used as a large cooler for the iced down beverages. It worked great, and our committee members left the party proud - and wet.