Hall of Famer Leah Rawls Atkins passes away: 'She loved Auburn'

AUBURN, Ala. – Whether she was winning waterskiing competitions, earning Auburn University degrees or being inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, Dr. Leah Rawls Atkins was accustomed to being first.

The first woman Alabama Sports Hall of Fame inductee and the first person to earn a doctorate in history from Auburn, Atkins passed away Friday, Oct. 4, at the age of 89.

"I traveled far on my improbable journey," Atkins told graduates at Auburn’s spring commencement in 2017. "To complete it, I had to work harder, use my time more efficiently, push myself constantly, learn to function with less sleep, go over notes and materials many times.”

The Leah Rawls Atkins Award, presented annually for excellence in academics and athletics to a student-athlete who models leadership, integrity and courage, is the highest honor an Auburn female student-athlete can receive.

“Having the award named for her was one of her most special things,” said her son, Jack, the youngest of four children of Leah and George Atkins, a former Auburn assistant football coach under Shug Jordan. “It was a big part of our family, and we got to share it every year. It’s an incredible legacy for her, a defining thing.

“It was front and center in our family’s life just about every year. She always felt like she was part of the athletic department. She loved Auburn more passionately than most could understand.”

A 1976 Alabama Sports Hall of Fame inductee, Atkins was Alabama’s first waterskiing world champion, winning in 1953 as an 18-year-old in Toronto, Canada, the first of numerous records and championships, both nationally and internationally.

“She was extremely competitive, extremely strong-minded,” Jack Atkins said. “She was like a 5-foot-2 bulldozer. She wasn’t intimidated by much and she was an extremely hard worker. She wasn’t scared of work. She always felt like she had to do a little bit more than everybody else.

“A lot of people tell me how brilliant she was, and she was smart, no doubt. But I think she outworked them, too. It’s a heck of a legacy of doing the work and preparation. Strive for excellence and be persistent. That’s how she lived her life.”

Born in Birmingham in 1935, Leah Marie Rawls fell in love with Auburn as a 7-year-old when she visited her cousin, a student at what was then known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute.

She enrolled in 1953 and married George, her husband of 60 years, the following year, eventually earning three Auburn degrees.  She taught history at Auburn as a graduate student and an instructor, and when her family moved to Birmingham, she taught at UAB for one term, and 12 years at Samford University. She served on the Auburn Alumni Board and was the founding director of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities at Pebble Hill in 1985.

“She didn’t really think of herself as a feminist as much as she felt it was fair for those doors to be open,” Jack Atkins said. “It was fair for women to have the same career opportunities as men. She felt she was an equal for sure. She was very proud of the doors she felt like she opened for women.”

When Auburn in 2017 celebrated two milestones that occurred 125 years earlier – the addition of female students, and the beginning of the school’s football program – Atkins shared her historical perspective on how both events enriched Auburn.

“It allowed the university to reflect better our culture,” Atkins said of Auburn enrolling women.  “When you have a male-only, almost military-type campus, it is just different. I think the young men who go to school in that atmosphere don’t have a real broad understanding when they move into a society where there are both men and women.

“If you have not really operated in a male-female society, you’re going to have a skewed idea about what the broader society in the nation is when you graduate from an all-male school.”

Football, said Atkins, was the way students and alumni expressed their love and connection to Auburn.

"That's where the tears were, and that's really where they increased their bond with the university,” she said.

Ever the instructor, Atkins pointed out that Auburn’s first football coach, Auburn Creed author George Petrie, taught many students who would go on to make their own mark in Auburn history, including the people for whom Auburn's stadium is named, Cliff Hare, a member of Petrie's 1892 team, and Jordan, Auburn's winningest coach.

"Coach Jordan learned his love of history through being a student of George Petrie," Atkins said. "When Coach Jordan was the football coach at Auburn, the athletic director was Jeff Beard, who also had George Petrie as his history professor. The president of the university was Ralph Draughon, who also was a George Petrie student. He had an enormous influence on them."

Atkins served on the Auburn Library Development Committee and authored many articles and books, including “Alabama: The History of a Deep South State” and “A Century of Women at Auburn, 1892-1992: Blossoms Amid the Deep Verdure.”

“One of the things that meant the most to her was the Auburn library,” Jack Atkins said. “She was always trying to do what was best for Auburn, not only today, but what was going to be best for Auburn in 20 or 30 years, and in laying foundations.”

At Auburn’s 2017 commencement, Atkins reminded graduates how to make the most of their Auburn degrees, advice she herself followed throughout her remarkable nine-decade journey.

"Stay close to Auburn," Atkins said. "Come back when you can. Join all those many Auburn people who have loved Auburn as you do, have appreciated their education and the special friends they made. Stay close simply because you love Auburn University, and it has given you the preparation for success and the best days of your life—so far!"

A Celebration of life will be held Monday October 14^th at 10:30am at The Chapel at Church of the Highlands- Grants Mill 4700 Highlands Way, Irondale, AL 35210. Please join the family for lunch after the service.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Auburn University Libraries at:

Auburn University Foundation
317 South College St.
Auburn, Alabama 36849
(334) 844-1427

augiving@auburn.edu

 

Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on X: @jeff_shearer