Faithful, Loyal, Firm and True

Alabama, listen, mother,
To our vows of love,
To thyself and to each other,
Faithful friends we’ll prove.

Faithful, loyal, firm and true
Heart bound to heart will beat
Year by year, the ages through,
Until in Heaven we meet.

College days are swiftly fleeting,
Soon we’ll leave their halls,
Ne’er to join another meeting
‘Neath their hallowed walls.

Faithful, loyal, firm and true
Heart bound to heart will beat
Year by year, the ages through,
Until in Heaven we meet.

So, farewell, dear Alma Mater.
May thy name, we pray,
Be rev’renced ever, pure and stainless
As it is today.

I learned the words to the University of Alabama’s Alma Mater during my Sophomore year of college. Our Crimsonette coach insisted on it; she didn’t want us to just stand smiling on the football field at Bryant Denny Stadium when the Million Dollar Band played it.

“As students of the University, and one day graduates, it’s your duty to know the alma mater, and you should sing it proudly,” she told us.

I already knew the words of the chorus, but I thought having to memorize the rest of the stanzas was beyond hokey and a waste of time. In fact, the whole idea of Homecoming really irked me: the spotlight shifted off the current Crimsonettes and us getting to twirl and put on a show, and instead was focused on the Alumni Band, who, in my opinion, could barely muster a crowd-rousing “Yea Alabama”, much less march in a straight line across the football field. The Alumni Band performance was a waste of a perfectly good pregame show that I could be front and center on the football field.

But on a late September afternoon during my second year at Alabama, the Crimsonettes sat around our tree at the band field, and we practiced the words of the Alma Mater. I not only heard the full song for the first time that day, but I fully understood the words for the first time, too.

It was the second stanza that really took hold of my chest and squeezed tightly: “College days are swiftly fleeting, soon we’ll leave their halls,” I sang, as I looked at the sweet and pretty faces of these girls who had fast become my best friends.

My voice trailed off as I realized the truth in the words; maybe the reason these days felt so magical to me was because they were fleeting, and swiftly. Walking across the Quad to class, studying in the library until I fell asleep slumped on the table, sweating and laughing and twirling at band practice every day for four months straight, eating and talking with my boyfriend and our friends at every lunch and dinner during the week at Burke dining hall, living down the hall from my sister and friends in Harris Hall…it had never occurred to me that all of this would come to an end one day.

Now, several years after graduating and leaving the college days behind, the memories of my Alma Mater are kept pure and stainless in my heart. And on this Homecoming, as I exuberantly march with the Alumni Band in a perfectly un-straight line to a wobbly but loving rendition of “Yea Alabama”, I just can’t keep the hot tears from brimming over and spilling shamelessly down my cheeks.