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Acknowledgments When writing this memoir, I probed my own memory as the primary source, supplemented by many interviews and oral histories with friends, family, and acquaintances, half a century of extensive correspondence, and an exhaustive clipping file. Not entirely convinced of the invincibility of my own memory, even augmented by a daily journal that I kept intermittently, I asked many participants in these events to read the entire manuscript or at least chapters relevant to their own experience. I thank them for extending to me the greatest gift of friendship: honest, frank, candid criticism. I followed most of their suggestions . Sometimes I trusted my journal more than their memory (though I uniformly trusted their records more than my memory). They also suggested many excellent changes in style, organization, and prose, which improved the narrative. For the sake of common courtesy and professional honesty, I acknowledge the following friends for the kindness of reading the entire manuscript and thoughtfully criticizing it: my former Samford student and dear friend for nearly five decades Carolyn Johnston, Elie Wiesel Professor of Humanities at Eckerd College, Saint Petersburg, Florida; two of the finest interpreters of the South during the past four decades, historian James C. Cobb, Spalding Distinguished Professor, University of Georgia, and sociologist John Shelton Reed, William Rand Kenan Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. For refreshing my memory about the education reform movement, I salute A+ Education Partnership cofounders Caroline Novak and Bill Smith, as well as the organization’s longtime director Cathy Gassenheimer. For family history, I relied tremendously on my father (James Homer Flynt) and mother (Mae Ellis Moore Flynt), my aunt Lillie Mae Beason, and my cousin George Beason. My literary craftsmanship profited not only from two of the finest fiction writers of the late twentieth century, Nelle Harper Lee and Mary Ward Brown of Monroeville and Hamburg, Alabama, respectively, but also from the deft editorial skills of my talented writer/editor son, Sean. I also thank him for constantly reassuring me that I was not as bad an absentee father as I once believed myself to be. The staff and editors of the University of Alabama Press add value to everything they publish, and this memoir is no exception. 400 acknowledgments The chapters on Auburn University received the closest and most meticulous scrutiny, partly because they are the most complex, deeply painful, and disputed parts of this memoir. Many Auburn readers tempered, corrected, and qualified my narrative: Dwayne Cox, university archivist who will soon complete the most authoritative history of Auburn University ever written; five former chairs of the university senate—Gerald Johnson, Barry Burkhart, Larry Gerber, Gary Mullen, and Jim Bradley; former academic vice president and W. Kelly Moseley Professor of Science and Humanities emeritus Taylor Littleton ; trustees Bob Harris and John Denson. I especially owe all of these readers a debt too large to ever repay for their detailed critique and their willingness to return to unpleasant times and memories. Finally, I thank Peggy Mason, my friend, unflappable typist, and hieroglyphic interpreter, who does not despair at the scribblings of fountain pen on legal pad that disputes the prevailing technological world and confirms how deeply an unreformed rebel against modernity I really am. I realize that no memoir, nor any work of history for that matter, is flawless . When telling our own stories, we craft events to our own purposes however committed we are to accuracy and objectivity. I do not doubt that many of the people I criticize in this book would tell the story differently, and I urge them to do so. But in the final analysis, this is the way I remember my own life. I cannot say how others remember theirs. As the younger set says these days, the memoir is what it is, my story. ...

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