Hoppe's Difficult Struggles, Murder Trial Related In Book By His Wife

HUNTSVILLE, AL. -- Growing up in Chattanooga, you knew Bobby Hoppe's name.

"One of the best ever," you'd hear.

Then, in more of a whisper, "You know, he killed a guy once."

Those whispers followed Hoppe to his grave in 2008.

Hoppe was a star at Chattanooga's Central High and a standout on Auburn's 1957 national championship at right halfback.

"He was the fastest guy for the first five yards I have ever seen,"   recalled Auburn teammate Jackie Burkett. "I played with Lennie Moore up at Baltimore and Bob Hayes at Dallas. The first five yards, Hoppe was the fastest human being I've ever seen."

But, in what has become almost a cliche in writing about Hoppe, he wasn't fast enough to outrun his demons.

"Bobby could not rid himself of the dark curtain that hung heavy over his mind and soul; sheltering a secret he shared with no one," writes his wife, Dr. Sherry L. Hoppe.

Dr. Hoppe recently published "A Matter of Conscience" that tells the story of her late husband - his football career, the killing in which he was involved in 1957, the trial that re-opened the case and the wounds 31 years later.

It's a fascinating look at an already complex man who grew up in difficult circumstances, with an abusive, alcoholic father, and found his joy on the football field. As much as carrying the ball, he loved the contact as a defender or blocker.

"He was mean and he was good," Burkett said. "He would knock your block off."

But he was an enigma. Said former Auburn quarterback Lloyd Nix, "I was with him three years and I didn't feel like I knew him. He was a distant person."

He created even more distance, his life even more complex, as the 1957 championship season opened.

As a native Chattanoogan reading "A Matter Of Conscience," I was reminded how small a town it can be.

I first met Hoppe when I refereed high school football games he coached. My daughter baby-sat the children of the Episcopal priest at his side throughout the trial. I've known the detective who reopened the case since elementary school.

I ate countless meals at Nikki's, where Hoppe hung out, up at one end of Bell Avenue, a road where one life ended and one changed forever in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 20, 1957.

Donald Hudson was a thug and a moonshine runner. He had dated Bobby Hoppe's sister. As Hoppe was returning home from a date, Hudson pulled alongside him and brandished a gun. Hoppe reached to the back seat of his own car, retrieved a shotgun and fired. Hudson was killed.

The case was never pursued fervently by police. Hoppe was never arrested.

Three decades later, Georgia Hudson, Donald Hudson's mother, attended a Friends and Families of Murder Victims group and met Detective Richard Heck.

Heck looked into Hudson's unsolved murder. He and others pieced together enough of a case to bring Hoppe to trial in 1988.

By this time, Hoppe was a pillar of the community. He had become a high school coach, a leader in his church, the adoptive father of a son serving in the Navy, married to a prominent educator.

Hoppe confessed to the killing, calling it self-defense. The state could only pursue first-degree murder, that the killing was premeditated. An emotional trial, with the famed Bobby Lee Cook on Hoppe's defense team, resulted in a deadlocked jury. The district attorney announced there would be no retrial.

One of the best ever did what the whispers suggested. But the court system, 31 years later, had finally assured him he'd be a free man.

Bobby Hoppe could stop running.

Contact Mark McCarter at [email protected]