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  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Bobby Bowden

  Preface by Todd Gerelds

  1. Bombingham

  2. Integration

  3. The Coach

  4. The Evangelist

  5. The Revival

  6. The Chaplain

  7. “Chicken Big”

  8. 1973 Season

  9. 1974 Season

  10. Tony vs. Jeff

  11. The Voice

  12. Champions

  Epilogue

  Photographs

  About Todd Gerelds

  FOREWORD

  by Bobby Bowden

  I grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama. The backyard of my family’s home was adjacent to Woodlawn High School’s football field. I can still remember hearing the sounds of the marching band and the boys practicing football over the fence from our backyard. On some days, my daddy pulled out a ladder, and he and I would climb on the roof of our garage to watch Woodlawn’s football team practice. My daddy loved watching football, and I loved watching it with him. Those autumn days on the roof of the garage with my father are some of my favorite memories.

  In the 1940s, Woodlawn High School was the team to beat in the city of Birmingham. In fact, the Colonels were one of the best teams in the state nearly every season. Woodlawn High won three consecutive state championships from 1941 to 1943, winning 27 games in a row in the process. I loved watching Harry Gilmer, who was Woodlawn’s star tailback and would become an All-American at the University of Alabama. He was one of the first players to throw a jump pass, and I loved going into our backyard and trying to emulate it.

  In January 1943, I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, which was considered a very serious illness back then. Doctors told my mother that I had an enlarged heart. They ordered me to stay in bed, and I ended up being bedridden for nearly a year. I missed going to school and playing baseball and football with my friends. Every Friday night during the fall, I’d turn on my radio and listen to Woodlawn’s football games. It was a brief escape from my illness. At least I could listen to the Colonels and imagine that I was still playing football for a few hours every week.

  After spending nearly a year in a bed, I was given clearance by my doctors to return to school. I enrolled at Woodlawn High School in January 1944, but my doctors still wouldn’t let me play sports. I was devastated. I joined the Woodlawn High School marching band and performed in the orchestra, but music didn’t replace my love for sports. Fortunately, my mother took me to another doctor for a second opinion during my junior year in 1946. He gave me clearance to play sports again. I still remember weeping in his office because I was so happy.

  I was able to play football during two seasons at Woodlawn High School. When I was a senior, I was named co-captain of my team, which was a big honor for me. We played in front of crowds of nearly twenty thousand fans at Legion Field, which felt like big-time football to me. I loved playing for Woodlawn High coach Kenny Morgan, who taught me a lot about what it meant to be a man and a leader. I graduated from Woodlawn High School in 1948 and attended Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham, where I played baseball and football.

  Despite my illness, I wouldn’t have traded my childhood for anything. I loved attending Woodlawn High School, where we started every school day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer. Boy, they wouldn’t let you do that today, would they? I met my wife, Ann, at Woodlawn High School, and we still get back to Birmingham for our class reunions as often as we can. Some of our closest friends were our classmates at Woodlawn High School. We’ve always considered Birmingham our home.

  After I coached football at South Georgia College, West Virginia University, and then Florida State University, I visited Woodlawn High School on a few occasions to recruit some of its players. During the 1970s, I was fortunate to meet Tandy Gerelds, who coached the Colonels from 1971 to 1975. I knew Tandy was a great football coach. I liked to keep up with Woodlawn High School’s progress, and I knew they were winning a lot of games in the early 1970s.

  I also knew that Tandy was a man of faith and that he shared many of the same beliefs I have. When I was sick as a child, my mother told me to pray to God and ask Him to heal me. I remember my mother holding me in her arms while I prayed. I made a pledge to God. I told Him that if He healed me and allowed me to play football again, I would serve Him for the rest of my life. He did, and I did . . .

  As a football coach for more than sixty years, I thought it was my duty to share the Word of God and be a witness to my players. I believed I had that responsibility as a Christian. Having read about Jesus in the Bible, I learned that we are saved through grace. I realized as a young man that if I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and surrendered my life to Him, then I would go to heaven. I learned that He died on the cross for me and for my sins. There is nothing you and I can do to repay Him for that sacrifice, so we accept Him as our Savior.

  I wanted the boys I coached to understand faith. More than anything, I wanted them to be good men, fathers, and husbands; and I wanted them to love their fellow teammates and fellow citizens—both black and white.

  I’m proud to know that Tandy Gerelds and his coaches felt the same way about their players. The civil rights struggle was one of the darkest chapters in America’s history, and Birmingham was one of the most intense battlegrounds. During the early 1970s, Woodlawn High School was plagued by racial strife after government-­mandated busing brought hundreds of African American students to its campus. It was the first time white and black students attended Woodlawn High together. It was a new experience, and the kids didn’t know how to relate to each other.

  And of course, the racial problems extended to Woodlawn High School’s football team. Tandy Gerelds and his coaches had to teach their players how to get along and play with each other. He had to teach his kids how to become a team and how to trust and love each other. Through the salvation of Jesus Christ, Tandy found the way to bring these boys together in 1973. What transpired over the next couple of seasons was nothing short of a miracle. That’s the legacy of Tandy Gerelds and Woodlawn High School.

  —Tallahassee, Florida, May 2015

  PREFACE

  by Todd Gerelds

  On a cold winter day, I looked out at the packed sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Tuscumbia, Alabama. People were literally standing in the aisles, against the walls, out into the lobby, and out the front door. I was eulogizing my father, Tandy Gerelds. He had died a week earlier on January 10, 2003, after battling cancer for nearly six months.

  My family and I were living in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, when I received the tearful call from my mother. I had seen my dad just about a week earlier when we’d gone home for an extended visit over the Christmas holidays. We left my parents’ home on January 2, and Dad died eight days later.

  At his funeral, I had the privilege and honor of talking about him to hundreds of people. I saw people from the little town of Tuscumbia. I saw people from the even smaller town called Belmont, Mississippi. I also recognized a bunch of folks from the large city of Birmingham, Alabama. My dad wasn’t a movie star or politician, and he wasn’t a best-selling novelist or a famous singer. To me, he was Dad. To the roomful of people, he was best known by another name—“Coach.”

  Why were so many people drawn to pay their respects to Coach Gerelds? He won a lot of football games and even a state championship. Was that it? Nope.
Was he charming and amazingly handsome? Well, my mom would say so; but being that I look a lot like him, I promise you it wasn’t his looks. Actually, “charming” may be the last word anyone would use to describe my dad (again other than Mom). So what was it? That is what I wanted to share with these people who had come to the church to comfort my mom and our family.

  I told his friends, former players, and former students that when a room in a church sanctuary in a little town in rural North Alabama fills up with people to honor someone, it’s because of one thing—love. I shared with them that Dad truly loved people. A few chuckles could be heard above sniffles and sobs when I said he didn’t always come off as very sweet. But if you were fortunate enough to know the man, there was no doubt about his love for people. He was a man who spoke truth in love. He told people what they needed to hear, not necessarily what they wanted to hear.

  The people who knew Dad the best know that he didn’t start as a man who loved people. Someone changed him and transformed him into a great coach and a great man. Late in his life, he told me, “I’d love to be more like you with people. But, I just don’t like people that much.” I laugh as I write this because it gives you a glimpse of the personality and natural demeanor my dad possessed. He was not a naturally gregarious, backslapping, buddy-buddy type of man. Yet, he deeply loved people. I’m not saying he always liked people, but he always loved them well—loving requires something of a person.

  So when did this naturally hard, tough, and kind of ornery guy begin to change into a man who loved so intensely that a church would overflow with people at his funeral?

  The change began at Woodlawn High School during the early 1970s.

  When I was a little boy running around the Woodlawn High campus, the magnitude of what was happening in Birmingham during the 1960s and 1970s was lost on me. I wasn’t old enough to understand that a civil rights war was being fought in the churches, streets, and schools of Alabama—including Woodlawn. All I knew at the time was that there was a big net filled with foam cushions at the Woodlawn High track, and there was a gym and a weight room. I also knew my dad was a football coach and that his team was named the Woodlawn Colonels.

  To me, the players he coached were larger than life. They were always nice to me, and I loved being around them . . . They even called me “Little Coach.” When Woodlawn High won its games on Thursday and Friday nights, Dad would let me go into the locker room afterward and celebrate with the players and coaches. Then I’d pile onto the bus with the players and ride back to the school.

  As I child, I didn’t know that things hadn’t always been this way. I didn’t know that not too long ago, there was tension between blacks and whites and that they did not play together as a team, but rather tried to impede each other’s success. By the time I was hanging out with the team, they actually loved each other. The players had different numbers; they played different positions; they even looked different. Some were black and some were white; some were big and some not so big—even though they all seemed pretty big to me at the time. But these differences didn’t matter. They all wore green and gold, and they were a team.

  Over the years, Dad shared with me more and more of what had transpired at Woodlawn High School, from the start of his coaching career until the day he decided to leave the sideline. I learned that what happened during two magical seasons in 1973 and 1974 could only be described as miraculous. What God did to transform the hearts and minds of students, athletes, parents, coaches, administrators, teachers, and a community of people was truly astonishing.

  The early 1970s in America produced a generation of hippies, who were disillusioned with the ruling establishment. In the short span of their lives up to that point, they’d witnessed a U.S. president assassinated and their country mired in a confusing war that never seemed to end in a faraway country. As they made it through their high school years, they watched another U.S. president leave office in disgrace after a scandal, and witnessed the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, who was truly making a difference in the world for good. The world around them seemed out of control.

  The God of the universe is the constant in a world of flux. There are times in history when it seems that the human heart is starved for Truth. Our souls ache to be filled with something—or Someone—real. In the 1970s, the “Jesus Freaks” movement was our country’s answer to disillusionment. Today, our fascination with “reality television,” YouTube, and social media betrays the longings of our hearts that aren’t dissimilar to what the youth of 1973 were experiencing. We crave connection. We crave reality. My prayer is that as you read this book, you will realize that the God of the universe is real and that He can enter any and every circumstance and do miraculous things. I also hope that you will be encouraged by the certainty that He is the One your heart longs to connect with and that He is eager to connect with you.

  Tandy Gerelds was my dad and a beloved coach. He was a regular guy. Yet the profundity of his life has impressed me more and more as I meet people who knew him. It seems that not a week passes without meeting someone who played for Dad, coached against Dad, or had some sort of connection where God had used my dad in their life.

  Dad taught me so much. He taught me about the value of hard work, as I watched his teams work hard every season. He taught me about loyalty, because he always expected his players to be there for one another. He taught me about toughness, as he coached his players to be tough and disciplined. He also taught me about defeat. He taught his team to “leave it all on the field” and let the results take care of themselves. He encouraged us all to walk off the field with our heads held high if we had given our all. And he taught me about truth. He spoke the truth, and he expected complete honesty from others.

  Most of all, my dad taught me about love. From the night he met Jesus in Birmingham in 1973 until the night he coached his last game at tiny Belmont High School in 2002, I believe that the boys on his teams played harder because they knew he loved them.

  The gravity of moments in our lives is often lost at the time. Years of joys, pains, victories, defeats, and living life are what bring us perspective. Today, forty years removed from those childhood moments, their gravity and impact have become clearer to me. What happened at Woodlawn High School in the early 1970s was real. What happened at Woodlawn High was miraculous. What happened at Woodlawn High was true connection and true love. As the years have passed by since Dad died, the impact of his life has become clearer. I realize only now that a regular life touched by the God of the universe has an impact on eternity.

  This book is the culmination of much research and many published interviews. In addition to telling the story of my father, Tandy Gerelds, this book also tells stories of the men and women, boys and girls who had a part during the tumultuous 1960s and ’70s in the highly segregated city of Birmingham. It tells about the spiritual transformation of my father and of the whole Woodlawn football team, and it tells about the beginning of healing between individuals and throughout a city.

  As you’ll see in the characters and events in this book, God takes the mundane and makes it spectacular. This is the story of Woodlawn High School. It is the story of Tandy Gerelds. And it’s the story of how God transforms hearts and heals longtime wounds. My prayer is that this story will be the story of your life as well.

  Grace and Peace,

  Birmingham, Alabama, May 2015

  CHAPTER ONE

  BOMBINGHAM

  Just twelve years before the eventful football game at Legion Field in 1974, no one was cheering for two integrated football teams—and certainly not at Woodlawn High. But on the morning of September 2, 1965, six students quietly enrolled for the first day of classes at Woodlawn High School. They were the first African Americans to ever attend classes at the historically lily-white school, which was among the last of the city’s public schools to integrate blacks into its student body.

  Among these students was a teenager named Cynthia Holder and her two cousins and their three
neighbors. Cynthia, who was fifteen years old at the time, was about to begin her junior year, after spending the previous two school years at Phillips High School. At the beginning of the summer, her cousin and best friend, Rita Eileen King, told Cynthia that she and her brother Cedric were going to integrate Woodlawn High, along with three other students from their church—Myrtice Chamblin, Lily Humphries, and Leon Humphries.

  “Rita and I grew up like sisters and were very close,” said Holder, who is now Cynthia Holder Davis Thompson and lives in Birmingham. “The other kids and their pastor decided they wanted to integrate Woodlawn High School. Whatever Rita wanted to do, I was going to be a part of.”

  Jesse Dansby, the pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Birmingham, spent the next few months preparing the six teenagers for what they might face at Woodlawn High. He gave them Scripture to read, including Psalm 37:1–9, which Cynthia read from her Bible every morning for strength:

  Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

  Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

  Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this:

  He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun.

  Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.

  Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.

  For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

  “He gave the Scripture to us to get our minds right and to prepare for what we were going to face,” Holder said. “We had to be groomed to go. I think Reverend Dansby and our parents did a good job of letting us know what to expect and how to act.”