In no rush, Auburn first-year head coach Hugh Freeze tiptoed down Donahue Drive the afternoon of Sept. 2, making a concerted effort to high-five as many Tigers fans as he could.

For many fans, it was their first-time laying eyes on Auburn’s new head coach.

For Freeze, it was his first-time experiencing Auburn’s Tiger Walk – a uniquely Auburn tradition that dates back to the 1960s, when students would approach players for autographs ahead of games.

Freeze called the spectacle “absolutely incredible” as thousands of Auburn fans – many wearing white as the Tigers’ season opener vs. UMass was a “white out” – flocked to the southwest side of Jordan-Hare Stadium and lined the sidewalks.

“So thankful for our crowd,” Freeze said after the win. “Tiger Walk was incredible.”

For offensive lineman Gunner Britton, who transferred in from Western Kentucky prior to the 2023 season, that first Tiger Walk of the season was one he won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

“I got emotional during Tiger Walk because for me – and I even told my parents – I’ve never had so many people cheer for me,” Britton said. “I’m walking down there and I’m high-fiving all these people and all these people are coming up to me, I’m like, man, this is college football. This is what I signed up for.”

But this isn’t a story about Freeze or Britton.

This is a story about a married couple that resides in Lawrenceville, Ga. And without them, Tiger Walk would look awfully different.

Handmade and humble beginnings

Ron and Cindy Terry’s home in Lawrenceville has a guest bedroom. And stowed away under the guest bed are old, retired “Tiger Walk” banners – the prototypes, if you will, of the banner that Auburn’s players now walk under during Tiger Walk.

The first banner made its appearance in 1993.

Terry Bowden had just been hired to lead the Tigers’ football program and was set to fill the massive shoes left open by Pat Dye, who stepped down as Auburn’s athletic director and head football coach after being caught up in an NCAA investigation alleging Auburn players had been on the receiving end of illegal benefits.

Going from the beloved Dye to the unproven Bowden left folks on The Plains feeling a bit uneasy.

“We said, ‘What can we do, legally, to boost morale at Auburn?’,” Cindy Terry said in an interview with AL.com, referring to a conversation she remembers having with her husband and their friends after Bowden’s hiring. “We were sitting there just talking and said there’s got to be something we can do that won’t get us in trouble. At that time, you could not feed a player or anything. They said you can’t even give them a Coke.”

The idea that came out of the brainstorming session? A banner.

Dick Glenn, a friend of the Terrys and a member of the operation, ordered a banner out of a shop in Enterprise, where he lived.

But there was one small hang-up. Because Auburn had no knowledge of the plan, the Terrys didn’t have any rights to the Tigers’ trademarks.

As a result, Cindy Terry was left to her own devices: crayons.

“Some of them do look ridiculous,” Cindy Terry admits. “I mean, I’m not an artist.”

Nonetheless, though initially “ridiculous-looking” the plan came to fruition and Auburn’s players took to it quickly.

The Terrys would be tailgating in the parking lot of Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum when they’d see players walk by.

“Y’all wanna commit to this team?,” the Terrys would ask them. “Do you want to sign the banner? That’s your commitment.”

Former Auburn running back Stephen Davis, linebacker Takeo Spikes and offensive lineman Willie Anderson are all names Cindy Terry mentioned when talking about players who signed some of the first banners.

All the while, the Terrys – for the most part – stayed in the shadows of it all.

“We just put it up. We didn’t say anything to anybody,” Cindy Terry said. “We just put it up and the players went through it. They’d find their name and high-five the banner. It really took off.”

Eventually, as the tradition began to cement itself – both ahead of home games and away games – the Terrys were tracked down by the university.

Simply put, Cindy Terry’s artistry wasn’t cutting it anymore.

“Auburn never knew who it was until they had a marketing director who said, ‘We really need our trademarks on that thing. Too many people take pictures and it’s getting out and people assume it’s us and it just looks amateurish.’,” Cindy Terry said.

So Auburn gave the Terrys authorization to use the team’s trademarks.

That made it easier for the Terrys to craft new banners, which they did anytime something significant happened.

Coaching changes and national championships meant new banners.

When the Tigers’ football team adopted “Hard Fighting Soldier” as its locker room anthem in 2004, the Terrys made a banner for that, too.

“They earned their banner,” Cindy Terry said, referring to the 2004 Tigers. “We put it on the banner, the band picked up the song and played it and I said, ‘My gosh, I’ve never seen a whole university come together over a team like that.’ It was wonderful.”

At one point, Auburn reached out to the Terrys about auctioning off the retired banners.

But the couple politely declined.

“It’s not a money maker. That’s not what it is,” Cindy Terry said. “If you had a museum and you wanted to do that, that’s one thing.”

So for the time being, the banners stay stored beneath the bed in their guest bedroom.

The banner hits the road

When the Terrys arrived in California for the Tigers’ visit to the Cal Golden Bears on Sept. 9, they first had to make a pit stop to a home improvement store. It was a hack they’d learned through the years of hauling around the banner.

“Because you have poles, if you go to an airport, the poles have they can’t go with luggage, so you have to go to the extra-large and then they question you,” Cindy Terry. “That’s extra time, extra money.”

So now, if the Terrys are on the road and it requires a flight, they’ll often go buy the pieces of PVC pipe and connecting elbows they need after they land at their destination. It’s an expense that totals around $50, Cindy Terry says.

After the game against Cal, which saw a sizeable turnout at Tiger Walk despite being nearly 2,500 miles away, the Terrys left their supplies with the hotel maintenance staff. Surely, they could find use for a couple of pieces of PVC pipe, Cindy Terry thought.

And with the SEC expending to include Oklahoma and Texas, it’s likely the Terrys will be booking more flights and making more visits to home improvement stores.

“You’re talking airfare, seriously, to get there,” Cindy Terry said. “So I’m not real happy with all the expansion, but that’s out of my control. Whatever y’all schedule, we will find a way to do it.”

And to date, since that first game in 1993, the Terrys have found a way to do it in all but one game.

In 2002, Auburn had a scheduled date with the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The Terrys, who were raising their four young daughters at the time, couldn’t pack everyone up and fly from Lawrenceville to LA, so the banner was absent from that Tiger Walk.

But it hasn’t missed a game since.

“Away games have been really, really exciting,” Cindy Terry said.

However, the production is easier in some places than it is in others.

“Texas A&M is very friendly,” Cindy Terry said. “Their traditions are as silly and unique as Auburn’s. Like they’re saying ‘Howdy’ and we’re saying ‘War Eagle’ and we just get each other. So really enjoy them.”

Some places – Arkansas especially – don’t have the room outside the stadium to facilitate a full-blown Tiger Walk. Because of Arkansas’ bus system, which hauls fans to the stadium on gamedays, it’s hard to safely pull off the entire production.

Meanwhile, trips to Baton Rouge when Auburn visits the LSU Tigers have been a bit of a roller coaster.

One year, LSU fans were standing by to help the Terrys set up the banner. Another year, the Terrys were told Tiger Walk was taking place at one gate, when it was really happening at another. The mix-up left the Terrys running around the stadium with the banner already constructed on the poles. This year, the Terrys and the banner were a bit isolated from the rest of Auburn’s fans, who were barricaded away.

“They took our usual space and just cut it down,” Cindy Terry said of this year’s trip to LSU. “And opposing teams would do that to try to not let us get to our team.”

Few experiences have been as rough as a handful of trips to Tennessee and Georgia, however.

At Tennessee, a mother of one of Auburn’s players told Cindy Terry that she thought one of the nearby police officers might arrest her.

Despite clearing the production with the police department the night prior, an event planner who worked for the university called the banner a “monstrosity” and told the Terrys they couldn’t put it up.

But the Terrys did anyways. And then-head coach Tommy Tuberville made sure the players still had a proper Tiger Walk.

“He stopped the bus at the top of the hill and had his players walk through anyway,” Cindy Terry said. “We were on the side, but you could definitely see that banner.”

Now, trips to Athens when the Tigers go to see the Bulldogs. Those can be something else.

Since the Terrys live in Lawrenceville, Athens is just a short drive away, meaning it’s easy for them to arrive early and claim their parking spot. Often, the Terrys will set up shop just outside of Sanford Stadium, though that means being surrounded by Georgia fans once the sun comes up.

Once upon a time, the Terrys would put the banner up and walk the banner to the stadium, collecting Auburn fans along the way and making it look more like an Auburn parade — until one incident changed that.

“This is like a film going off in my head,” Cindy Terry said, recalling one of Auburn’s trips to Georgia. “The tailgaters… the parents were out here and they would send their kids up to us to bang on the banner and try to bring it down. And so we stopped doing that.”

Now, the Terrys keep the banner rolled up and deconstructed until they get to the where Tiger Walk will take place.

Tiger Walking to the biggest stages

The day was Dec. 10, 2010.

The place was New York City.

The occasion was the 76th Heisman Trophy Ceremony, featuring finalist and former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton.

“Yes, we were there. We were there for all of that,” Cindy Terry said with a smile. “Talk about security? My goodness, that’s security.”

Instead of suspending the Tiger Walk banner between PVC pipes as they typically do, the Terrys were forced to settle with holding it against the barricades, which lined the walking path the finalists took into Best Buy Theater.

The Terrys did the same when former Auburn running back Trey Mason was a finalist in 2013.

“When Cam walked up and when Trey walked up, they saw it and then all the Auburn fans were behind it with shakers and they were shocked. They were absolutely blown away,” Cindy Terry said. “Me too. I said, ‘Oh wow, we did it.’ You never know. You never know if you’re gonna be able to do it or not.”

Those same years – 2010 and 2013, the Terrys hauled the Tiger Walk banner to Auburn’s national championship games.

“Again, security is really, really tight,” Cindy Terry said of hauling the banner to the national championship sites.

In 2010, that meant a trip to Glendale, Arizona, where the Tigers saw the Oregon Ducks in a game Auburn won 22-19 to finish the season undefeated.

Three years later, the Terrys and the banner headed back out west – this time to Pasadena, Calif., where the Tigers would take on the Florida State Seminoles in a game Auburn lost 34-31.

“Rose Bowl, at that one, we had a sheriff saying it was a national security issue,” Cindy Terry said, adding that they’d asked to speak to whomever was deeming it such an issue. “Nobody ever came back, so we kept the banner there. They did see it and they did walk under it.”

Keeping another “uniquely Auburn” tradition alive

It’s been 30 years since the Terrys first brainstormed their idea to bring a banner to Tiger Walk.

Ever since, it’s been added to Auburn’s book of traditions, meaning the banner isn’t going anywhere anytime soon – if ever.

That said, the Terrys know it won’t be them hauling the banner around forever.

And that bids the question: Who’s going to take over the tradition?

“No, there’s not,” Cindy Terry said when asked if there was a plan in place for when she and her husband decide to hang it up. “I have shown some of my friends, so they know how to do it, but doing it on a seasonal basis? I haven’t found anybody that wants to do it.”

Though the Terrys have four daughters, growing up hauling around the banner was enough of the experience for them, so they’re not interested in the responsibility – because it’s just that: a responsibility.

Taking over means finding a parking spot near the stadium at every away game. It also means finding a way to every away game to begin with. And as we all know, things like gas and airfare aren’t getting cheaper with time.

Even overseeing the banner during home games comes at an expense, Cindy Terry says.

Because the banner has become so iconic, Auburn fans ask for pictures with it. So the Terrys break it down from its high poles and let fans get whatever photos they want. Some families have taken their Christmas photos in front of it, Cindy Terry says.

“Then we gotta get the banner up (to the car) and then make it to the games,” Cindy Terry said. “I can’t tell you how many times we missed that Eagle Flight.”

Nevertheless, the Terrys will have plenty of advice for whoever steps up and commits to carrying on the tradition.

“PVC pipe will break. If you let it crash, it will pop it. If it’s cold, it can pop,” Cindy Terry said. “So take a backpack full of extra supplies, extra elbows and duct tape.

“Lots of duct tape.”