Coach Herman Boone Portrayed in ‘Remember The Titans'
'Remember the Titans' has to be one of the best football movies ever. It brings back so many memories, especially if you played high school football in that era.
We all heard, in that era, 'water makes you weak', while they pumped us full of salt tablets. Not sure that turned out well for us later in life?
Helmets have advanced light years from what we wore. Odd that very few of us had to deal with concussions and so forth back then. However I do remember those ammonia sticks they would stick under our noses to take away the cobwebs of a big hit. Believe me we hit with our helmets and whatever else it took to make a tackle or break a tackle or dislodge the ball from a ball carrier or pass receiver.
Coach Herman Boone asked his players to be perfect. Being perfect is not what's on the scoreboard, it's be perfect, being accountable to your teammates, coaches and to yourself. It's the mental approach to every practice, to every play during a game. Willingness to play every play like it was the last thing you were going to do, for your teammates, coaches and for yourself.
“Do your job,” as Alabama Coach Nick Sabin, NFL Patriot Coach Bill Belichick say constantly as did Coach Boone
Coach Boone led the T.C. Williams High School Titans, a racially integrated high school football team in Virginia, to a State Championship in his first season as head coach, inspiring the 2000 movie “Remember the Titans,” to a State Championship in 1971. Denzel Washington, did an awesome job portraying him., as Danzel does in all his movie roles.
In 1971, Alexandria’s three public high schools were merged into T.C. Williams High School, and Mr. Boone was hired by the school board to be the head coach of the football team, the Titans.
Coach Boone's leadership style included insisting on discipline and mutual respect, attributes embodied by Mr. Washington in “Remember the Titans.”
Herman Boone was born on Oct. 28, 1935, in Rocky Mount, N.C., about 60 miles east of Raleigh. After graduating from North Carolina Central University, where he received both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in physical education, he began coaching high school football, at first in Blackstone, Va.
In 1961 he moved to Williamson, N.C., and became head coach at the all-black E.J. Hayes High School there. But after the Williamson school board told him in 1969 that under a new desegregation plan he would be demoted to assistant coach, he resigned, according to the '71 Original Titans Foundation.
That year, he became an assistant coach at T.C. Williams. When the Alexandria schools merged in 1971, he was named head coach, chosen over a white coach, Bill Yoast, who had more experience. But Coach Boone and Coach Yoast worked together to lead the team to its first state championship that year. Coach Yoast was 94 when he passed away.
After the schools were combined, people who would not have otherwise interacted came together for games and school events.
Race was not an issue for the teammates once they got to know one another.
The T.C. Williams Titans won the state championship in 1971, 1984 and 1987.
Coach Boone stopped coaching in 1979, according to Aly Khan Johnson, who was an assistant coach for Coach Boone at the time. He continued to teach physical education at the school and later coached golf.
Coach Boone’s wife of 57 years, Carol Boone, died at 83. His survivors include two daughters, Sharon Henderson and Monica Merritt, as well as 10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Donna Dulany, died in 2014.
Mr. Boone’s daughter Ms. Henderson said she did not watch “Remember the Titans” very often. But when it was released in September 2000, she said, “it was very surreal.”
“It helped us to appreciate the things our father was doing while he was at work,” she said.
