Imagine if you were taking a nap…

By By Leada Gore, Editor
As a native Alabamian, I’ve had my share of experience with our state’s unique nature. Only in Alabama, for example, would you have a monument dedicated to an agricultural pest (Enterprise’s Boll Weevil Monument) and cemeteries devoted to honoring hunting dogs (including the Coon Dog Cemetery in Tuscumbia). However, in all my years, I’ve never heard of the Hodges Meteorite.
That is, until last week.
A group of academics and writers have recently joined together to publish an encyclopedia of all things Alabama. Included in the entries is one on the Hodges Meteorite.
Here’s how the story goes:
On Nov. 30, 1954, Ann E. Hodges was napping on the couch in her Sylacauga home when a rock, later identified to be a meteorite, crashed through her ceiling. She was hit in the hip by the grapefruit-sized rock, becoming one of the few people in world history to have been struck by a meteorite.
The meteorite strike caused quite a sensation. Reporters swarmed to Hodges’ lawn, wanting to interview the woman now sporting a meteorite bruise on her hip. Soon, her landlady got in on the act, claming that since she owned the house and was responsible for the damage to the roof, she was the rightful owner of the meteorite as well.
The case ended up in court, but not before Hodges’ story ended up in national newspapers and magazines and she was featured on the television quiz show, “I’ve Got a Secret.”
After a while, the uproar over the meteorite and its victim quieted. The rock was later donated to the Alabama Museum of Natural History in Tuscaloosa where it remains on permanent display. Another piece of the same meteorite, also found in Sylacauga but with less destructive results, is on display at the Smithsonian.
Hodges died in 1972, forever linked with the rock that fell out of the sky and hit her while she was taking a nap. She is buried behind Charity Baptist Church in Hazel Green.
Late in her life, she blamed the meteorite stike for disrupting her life and ending her marriage. All she was trying to do, after all, was take a nap.
In a state filled with all sorts of odd things, surely the story of Ann Hodges deserves greater recognition, perhaps a statue in her honor.
Maybe Sylacauga could see fit to build a stone couch featuring a napping lady and a rock in its town square. Seems something like that would put any town on the map.