Old Alabama saying: "What goes around, comes around."
You know, there were times when I was truly impressed with Fulmer's evident sense of propriety. But then it sort of got out of hand, once he started donning the Sherlock Holmes cap.
Now that it is all over and done with (I guess), I am reminded of that time, years ago, when for some reason the Tennessee football coach, Johnny Majors, had to take time off, and they elevated this noble former player who was an assistant coach, Phillip Fullmer, whom the players were said to love. The next thing you knew, Johnny Majors had lost his very job to this beloved upstart.
Since then, I have heard Johnny Majors interviewed on the radio, and he obviously never got over the way Fulmer moved in on his job.
This is a true story. During World War II, a pastor of one of the most prominent Baptist churches in Alabama took time off from that pastorate to become a chaplain in the war. Another preacher, who had been a Baptist professor and pastor, was called to be the interim pastor of this temporarily vacated pastorate. As related to me by a historian of this church, the interim pastor, as the war wore on for months and then years, obviously began to think that he might be able to unseat the pastor who was off as a chaplain in the war. When the chaplain received word from one of his deacons back home what was afoot, he resigned his chaplain's commission, rushed home to Alabama, shooed the interim pastor away from the church, and resumed his job as pastor. Afterward, the man who had tried to turn the interim pastorate into a permanent job but was rebuffed became pastor of a prominent pastorate in another southern state, and then was again professor at two Baptist schools, finally retiring when he was in his eighties. All was well that ended well.
But that wasn't the way it was with Phillip Fulmer.
