Dr. Don Salls, a Bay Minette resident who once wore a University of Alabama football jersey before trading it for an Army uniform, is celebrating his 100th birthday this week as the oldest living football alumnus of the Crimson Tide.
Salls turned 100 on June 24, and the University of Alabama marked the milestone with a public celebration at the Paul W. Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa. Museum Executive Director Ken Gaddy said the public was invited to join Salls’ family and friends for cake and a birthday card for well-wishers to sign.
Salls now lives at the William F. Green State Veterans Home in Bay Minette, where residents and staff know him simply as Dr. Salls, a nod to the doctorate he earned decades after his playing days ended. He gets around with the help of a walker but still moves at a steady clip and remains one of the most active residents at the home.
“He’s just an amazing man,” said Dave Roberts, the veterans home’s activities director. “He’s a ray of sunshine around here.”
Salls was born and raised in White Plains, New York, far from the Alabama football fields where he would eventually make his name. He starred as a 5-foot-8, 169-pound quarterback for White Plains High School, earning most valuable player honors on a team that was a perennial county champion. That performance opened the door to college scholarship offers from across the country, but a connection between his high school coach and an Alabama assistant coach steered him toward Tuscaloosa.
The transition from the New York suburbs to the Deep South was not an easy one. Salls has long recalled the culture shock of his early days on campus, including his unfamiliarity with the smell of onion grass and nearby paper mills that clung to him after games. He nearly went home, he has said, but his scholarship kept him rooted in Tuscaloosa long enough to adjust.
Playing for head coach Frank Thomas, himself a former Notre Dame player who understood the challenges of a smaller-framed athlete, Salls suited up at fullback and linebacker for Alabama teams that included a national championship squad and appearances in two bowl games. His scholarship structure allowed him to carry a lighter course load each semester, giving him more time to balance football with his studies.
In 1942, Salls left college football behind for the battlefields of Europe, commissioned as a U.S. Army second lieutenant after his time in ROTC. He was sent to lead an infantry platoon in France as Allied forces pushed toward Germany, despite having no direct combat experience of his own. He has credited an experienced platoon sergeant, who had already seen fighting in Africa, Italy and Sicily, with guiding the unit safely through roughly 60 days and nights of combat, including harrowing night patrols in near-total darkness.
Salls was eventually wounded by gunfire to the hand, an injury that led doctors in France to discover he had also suffered several fractured vertebrae and fractured transverse processes, likely from the physical toll of combat. The injuries ended his time on the front lines, and he spent the remainder of the war training new troops in physical fitness.
Returning to civilian life after the war, Salls built a long career in education and athletics at Jacksonville State Teachers College, now Jacksonville State University, where he served as head of the physical education department and head football coach from 1946 to 1964. He led the program to three bowl appearances and seven conference titles, compiling a winning record that reportedly still stands at the school today. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Alabama and, after years of summer study, a doctorate in education from New York University, teaching at Jacksonville State until his retirement in 1981 and remaining a professor emeritus there since.
Salls has attributed part of his longevity to a lifelong commitment to physical fitness. In the early 1960s he developed an isometric exercise routine known as XSXIM, short for “Ten Static Exercises in One Minute,” which drew attention from Reader’s Digest and other national publications at the time. At age 76, he wrote a book titled “Living and Loving To Be 100,” reflecting on the very milestone he has now reached. Longevity runs in his family as well, with both of his siblings living into their 90s.
Family has remained central to Salls’ life in his later years. He married his wife, Diane, in 1988 after the two met in 1986 at a party in Eutaw. Diane, a Jackson, Mississippi native who is more than two decades younger than her husband, visits him several times a week from their home in Fairhope. Those who know the couple describe a marriage built on humor, devotion and an enduring sense of gratitude, with Salls crediting his faith and his family as guiding forces throughout his century of life.
Reflecting on a hundred years that spanned the Great Depression, World War II and the digital age, Salls has said his approach has always come down to a few simple constants: a drive to improve and succeed, a commitment to being a good husband and father, and the sense of duty he carried through his military service. As Baldwin County and the University of Alabama community celebrate his 100th birthday, those who know him say his energy and optimism show no signs of slowing down.