A kinesiology coincidence, nearly 90 years in the making

Two teenagers starting at Auburn at the same time, choosing the same major, joining the same learning community and enrolling in practically all the same classes?

Normally, Robin Martin, director of academic advising for the School of Kinesiology, wouldn’t have thought a thing of it.

But when one of those teenagers was her daughter, Reagan, and the other was Lola Smith?

Chills — nearly 90 years in the making.

In the beginning

Neal Lewis and Hollis Smith first met around 1938 as teenagers attending a Future Farmers of America convention on the Alabama Polytechnic Institute campus.

Without FFA, “I wouldn’t know anything about Auburn,” Neal would always say.

Hollis grew up one of 12 children in a farming family and became heavily involved in FFA, serving as state vice president from 1939-40. In addition to farming, he also knew a thing or two about cutting hair, a skill he’d later put to use at Auburn, earning 50 cents a haircut, plus tips, to help cover his expenses.

Neal also came from an agricultural background, and their shared involvement in FFA kept the two connected.

Neal eventually enrolled at API. He planned to graduate in four years.

World War II changed that.

He was headed back to Auburn after visiting home on Dec. 7, 1941, when news of the attack on Pearl Harbor came over the car radio. Knowing he would likely be drafted, Neal left school and returned home to farm. He married his high school sweetheart, Eloise, in 1942 before spending much of the next three years serving in the Pacific.

Hollis also served in the Army during World War II before eventually making his way back to Auburn.

Years after the two teenagers first crossed paths through FFA, fate put them back together.

This time, across the hall.

Meet the neighbors

Back in Auburn in the mid-1940s, Neal and Eloise rented a tiny apartment above a service station in the Farmville community.

The service station is no longer there. But a historical marker is.

Years earlier, the spot had been home to The Bottle, a 64-foot-tall wooden replica of a bright orange Nehi soda bottle. Built in 1924, the roadside attraction housed a grocery store and another service station before burning to the ground in 1936.

By the time Neal and Eloise arrived, a much more traditional building had taken its place. Downstairs were gas pumps. Upstairs were two small apartments with a shared bathroom.

Living across the hall from Neal and Eloise?

Neal’s old FFA friend and his wife — Hollis and Sue Smith.

The couples became close friends and stayed that way.

Even after moving to different parts of Alabama, the friendship stuck. For nearly 50 years, the Smiths and Lewises spent Fourth of July holidays together at the lake.

It was the world Robin Martin grew up in.

“We were just family,” she said.

There were Auburn football games, tailgates and generations of children who grew up thinking of one another as cousins.

Eventually, that included Neal and Hollis’ great-granddaughters: Reagan Martin, Robin’s daughter, and Lola Smith.

The girls played together when the Smith family came to Auburn for football weekends. Lola remembers Legos. Reagan remembers thinking the Smiths were her cousins.

“I always remember growing up thinking we were family,” Reagan said.

Then life happened.

New jobs. Moving vans. The families lived in different places. Reagan and Lola got older and barely saw each other.

Nearly 10 years passed.

This fall, Auburn apparently decided that was long enough.

Same school. Same major. Same everything.

Reagan always expected to end up at Auburn.

“I always knew I was going to end up here,” Reagan said. “I’ve known since I was little.”

Lola’s college choice felt less fixed. But her interest in physical therapy led her toward exercise science — and Auburn.

She applied. She enrolled. She declared.

Then the coincidences started piling up.

The same major. The same learning community. Practically all the same classes.

And the same observant academic adviser — Robin.

“They’re starting at the same time. They’re doing the same program. They’re having the same advisor, the same learning community and the same classes,” Robin said. “It was just like, whoa — welcome back.”

For Lola, having someone familiar beside her made the transition to college easier.

“When I saw Reagan was starting, same as me, I wasn’t as nervous going into it [college life],” Lola said.

Robin was the first to notice the family history seeming to repeat itself. But the surprising reunion wasn’t the only thing that started feeling familiar.

Kinesiology genealogy

Turns out, Reagan isn’t the first person in her family to find a home in kinesiology at Auburn. Nor the second. Nor the third.

Her grandparents, Susan and Perry Hinds, met while both pursuing physical education degrees at Auburn.

Susan was a member of Auburn’s first volleyball team, coached by faculty adviser Sandra Newkirk. Perry later earned his master’s in physical education while working as a graduate teaching assistant and taught in the same department that would eventually become the School of Kinesiology.

Robin followed in their footsteps.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in health promotion and her master’s degree in physical education from the same department.

Her adviser?

Sandra Newkirk.

By then, Newkirk was far more than an adviser. She had become one of Susan and Perry’s closest friends, and Robin remembers her as a second mother. The relationship ran so deep that Robin named her daughter Reagan Sandra Martin after her.

Who was hired to replace Newkirk when she retired from Auburn after 40 years?

Robin.

Now, Robin directs advising for the School of Kinesiology, where she gets to do something Newkirk once did for her: help guide the next generation through the exercise science program, including her daughter and Lola.

Another thread in the knot?

Reagan has also declared agricultural education as a second degree — the same discipline in which Neal earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at API before spending 37 years working in agricultural education across Alabama.

Neither Reagan nor Lola knows exactly where the next four years will take her. They have classes to take and careers to figure out. Lola is interested in physical or occupational therapy. Reagan is still exploring.

The final chapters of their Auburn stories have yet to be written.

But for Robin, watching the plot unfold has been special.

“It wasn’t planned; it just happened, and it’s so cool to watch,” she said.

First, it was two teenagers meeting at an FFA convention. Then two young couples living across the hall. Now, it’s their great-granddaughters finding their way back to each other in Auburn classrooms.

“The Auburn Family is a real thing,” Robin said. “Auburn is a special place. It just has a way of bringing people together.”