File photo / Bobby Hoppe is considered one of Chattanooga Central High’s all-time best football players, after averaging 300 yards per game as a junior in the 1953 season. He went from Central to Auburn and later played with the NFL San Francisco 49ers and Washington Redskins.Bobby Hoppe was a star football player at Chattanooga Central, where he led the team to state titles in 1951, 1952 and 1953, and later at Auburn University, where he was a storied running back on the 1957 championship team.
He was also a man that carried a secret for much of his adult life, and that story will be told in the latest SEC Storied documentary “The Trials of Bobby Hoppe,” set to premiere at 7 p.m. Thursday on SEC Network.
According to her book, “A Matter of Conscience: Redemption of a Hometown Hero, Bobby Hoppe,” Hoppe’s wife Sherry Hoppe wrote that her late husband was tormented for years after killing a man in self-defense in 1957 during the summer between his junior and senior years at Auburn.
She said in 2011 while promoting her book to a local civic group that on July 20, 1957, Hoppe drove down a steep, winding road in North Chattanooga when a car with its headlights on suddenly appeared behind him. He said later that he thought it was friends playing a prank, but as the driver pulled alongside and pointed a pistol at his head, Hoppe realized it was his sister’s ex-boyfriend, a known whiskey runner. A shot was fired, the car fell back and Hoppe fled for his life.
The man, Don Hudson, reportedly gave chase and Hoppe eventually shot and killed him, though he wasn’t indicted for the killing until 1987, when a Chattanooga grand jury indicted Hoppe in the shooting. It was one of America’s first cold-case trials.