Woodlawn Read online

  Above all else, his mother wanted him to avoid being tackled—­and Tony wasn’t about to disobey his momma.

  “My mom didn’t want me to play football in the beginning,” Nathan said. “Eventually, I and everyone else brought her to where she was comfortable with it. She told my coach to put me as far away from the ball as possible.”

  From the start, Coach Gerelds recognized that Nathan could be a very special player. For Nathan to reach his full potential, though, Gerelds knew he had to win the trust of his parents. Winning over William “Pops” Nathan II would be easy because the man had never met a stranger. But Louise Nathan was a big, vocal, strong-willed woman who believed her son was better suited to play less violent sports.

  Tony’s father grew up near Dayton in Marengo County, Alabama. Tony’s grandfather was a farmer, and Pops and his six brothers and one sister grew up picking cotton on the family’s farm. Tony’s father, called “Pops” by his children, loved sports from an early age. His all-black high school didn’t have a gymnasium, so he played basketball on a sand court and baseball in the cotton fields. As an annual Fourth of July holiday tradition, Pops and his brothers challenged a team of neighborhood kids in a baseball game. Pops’s father taught his sons to place cotton in front of the bases and home plate; the soft, fluffy white clouds helped them slide into the bases more easily.

  After graduating from high school, Pops served two years in the Army. He left the military in 1955 and was headed to Chicago, where he accepted a job as a welder. But while visiting one of his brothers in Birmingham, Pops figured out he didn’t want to live in a place that was so cold during the winter, so he decided to stay in Birmingham and took a job forming and pouring concrete.

  Shortly before moving to Birmingham, Pops met Louise Williams, whose sister was dating one of his brothers. Louise was only fifteen years old, but Pops won over her parents, who agreed to let the couple marry. They were married on Christmas Day 1955. Nearly sixty years later, Pops likes to joke that he chose Christmas Day as their wedding date so it would be easier for him to remember his anniversary. He paid five dollars for a marriage license and gave the preacher four dollars for conducting the ceremony. Pops took his young wife to Birmingham, where they moved into a small, sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment with a refrigerator, two-eye stovetop, and a bed. After seeing the apartment for the first time, Louise asked her husband, “You brought me to this?”

  “Yes,” Pops told her. “But it will get better as we grow.”

  Before too long, their expanding family would need a bigger place. A son, Tony Curtis Nathan, was born on December 14, 1956. Their daughter, Diane, was born two years later, and then came two more boys, Vince and Cedric. When Tony was about eleven years old, his parents adopted Louise’s younger sister, Erma Gean. Erma Gean was only two years older than Tony, and although she was his aunt, it didn’t take her long to fit right in with the other kids.

  The Nathan family moved into a bigger home in Zion City near the city’s airport and then to the Center Point neighborhood. By then, Pops was working the graveyard shift at Conner Steel, one of the biggest plants in Birmingham’s booming steel industry. Louise was a homemaker and cared for the couple’s five children. She taught herself how to sew and became a seamstress to make extra money by sewing for others. She also saved money by making her children’s clothes. Tony liked to joke that his clothes were originals and no one else could buy them. His mother even made him a mint green tuxedo for his senior prom and a matching dress for his date.

  “She was the boss,” Tony said. “She was spunky. She was a big-boned woman with a big frame and didn’t play. She was a disciplinarian and got her point across.”

  The Nathan children were required to complete daily chores, and there were consequences if they didn’t. Tony and his siblings were expected to attend church and Sunday school every week. If they were too sick or too tired to go to church, they couldn’t do anything else that day. Tony spent most of his childhood days playing basketball, baseball, and football with other kids from his neighborhood. They swam in nearby Village Creek, which was only about waist-deep and separated his neighborhood from an all-white subdivision. Tony rarely went to the creek alone.

  “If you were caught in the creek, you were stoned,” Tony said. “If the white cats caught us in the water, they would run us out of there. If we caught the white cats in there, we ran them out. It wasn’t that we hated anybody, that’s just the way it was. That was the norm and that’s what you did.”

  When school was out, Tony and his siblings spent most of their summer break working on their grandfather’s farm near Union Town, Alabama. There, under the scorching sun, they were taught the valuable lesson that nothing comes easy. For eight hours a day, Tony and his brothers and sisters picked cotton, hoed weeds, and tended to animals. His grandfather William Nathan awoke every morning at four. By the time his grandchildren were up, he had already completed his chores. Tony picked cotton and worked in the field until noon, and then his aunt brought them lunch. Then they’d go back to filling sacks of cotton until sunset.

  “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life at the time,” Tony said. “But I knew what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to pick cotton anymore. It was hard work and really made me respect my grandfather.”

  It was on his mother’s father’s farm that Tony learned how to run. Erma Gean, who was still living with his maternal grandparents, chased Tony through the fruit trees and across the cotton fields. By the time Erma Gean was done with Tony, his legs were usually tired and aching.

  For the most part, Tony’s parents sheltered him and his siblings from the racial violence in Birmingham during the 1960s and early 1970s. Even though civil rights protests, marches, and bombings were happening all around them, the violence was rarely discussed in their home. In fact, the only time it was mentioned was after one of the children saw the violence on the TV news. After watching TV one day, Tony asked his father, “Why does this stuff happen?”

  “If I knew why, I would fix it,” Pops told him. “But who knows how long it would take to fix? People don’t like other people because they look different. Some people just have hatred in their hearts.”

  Pops and Louise tried to teach their children the Golden Rule, which was taught by Jesus in Luke 6:31: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” Both of Tony’s parents had a deep conviction of the truth and reality of the Gospel as taught in the New Testament of the Bible. They knew God loved them through Jesus Christ. Therefore, they didn’t need everyone else to love them. Louise attended a few civil rights meetings, where she listened to Dr. Martin Luther King share his biblical stance of nonviolent protest and turning the other cheek to the injustice that African Americans faced in the South. She tried to teach her children to live above the hatred as well. Even though there were plenty of times Tony and his brothers and sisters may have wanted to shout, scream, or punch people for the way they were treated, they were taught to find a peaceful solution.

  “My father taught me to walk away,” Tony said. “He told me not to turn my back to them, but to walk away. He told me not to start anything, but if I had to finish it, to finish it. My mom was big on that one—don’t ever start a fight, but if you have to finish it, you better finish it.”

  It was a valuable lesson for Tony as he prepared to enroll at Woodlawn High in September 1971. By then, Woodlawn was desegregated and African American students were being bused in from Tony’s neighborhood. His aunt Erma Gean, who was a junior when Tony started his freshman year, was among the first black students to attend Woodlawn. She wanted to attend all-black Hayes High School but was required to transfer to Woodlawn during forced integration. She wasn’t happy about attending a new school, especially one where she wasn’t welcome.

  Erma Gean was tough, but her experience at Woodlawn High was far more volatile than what her younger nieces and nephews would face at their new school. Like Tony’s mother, Erma Gean was strong-willed and big-
boned. Most people who crossed paths with Erma Gean were afraid of her, as she was a little slower to adopt Dr. King’s principles of restraint. But her reputation helped pave the way for the younger ones who followed her. When Tony enrolled at Woodlawn High as a freshman, most of the students left him alone because they knew he was Erma Gean’s nephew. It didn’t hurt that he also was one of the best athletes in the school.

  “Nobody in the neighborhood messed with Gean, and because of Gean, nobody messed with me,” Tony said. “She was a great person, but she wasn’t going to take much from anybody. She’d let it go for a while, but then she’d get physical. During the first few weeks after busing began, my mother had to go to the school quite a few times because of problems with Gean.”

  After growing up in an all-black neighborhood and attending a segregated grammar school, Tony came face-to-face with racism for the first time at Woodlawn High. Even though Woodlawn was integrated, seating in the classes was still segregated. The white students sat on one side of the classroom and the blacks on the other, with an empty row between them. As racial tension continued to increase at the beginning of the 1971–72 school year, police officers with dogs patrolled the hallways. For a while, white students were released first to go to their next classes, while black students waited for them to clear the hallways.

  “People would look at you like they were amazed you were there,” Tony said. “It was like learning on the job. You’d meet people and they’d show you how you needed to deal with them. You could look at them, read their demeanor, and hear what they say. Then you’d know how to deal with them.”

  Sports became his refuge from the racial problems that plagued Woodlawn High. Shortly before school started, Tony reluctantly tried out for the football team because a few friends from his neighborhood decided to play. Tony had never played football on an organized team. His only exposure to the sport had been in backyard games with other kids from the neighborhood. The boys played in the Nathans’ yard so much that his father eventually gave up trying to grow a lawn. When Tony asked his mother if he could join Woodlawn’s freshman team, she reluctantly gave him permission to play with one caveat—he had to be as far away from the football as possible.

  It didn’t take Tony’s teammates and coaches long to figure out that he might become a pretty special football player. Denny Ragland, a freshman quarterback at Woodlawn in 1971, remembers a group of black basketball players showing up to watch the football B-team practice one day. “Why are you out here?” Ragland asked one of them. “Why do you care about B-team football?”

  The boy pointed at Tony, who was playing free safety, which was literally as far away from the football—and the action—as he could possibly be.

  “He’s not going to play football,” the boy said. “He’s already an All-American basketball player.”

  Indeed, Tony’s first love was basketball. His father was a big baseball fan and tried to steer his son toward that sport. Pops was a big fan of the Atlanta Braves and especially outfielder Hank Aaron. Pops took his sons to Atlanta at least once every summer to watch the Braves play. Tony played baseball at Woodlawn High—Colonels defensive coordinator Jerry Stearns recalled him being the only player to ever hit a home run over the old scoreboard at Rickwood Field—but it was never his favorite sport.

  “Basketball was more exciting to me,” Tony said. “There was a lot more movement by a lot more people. It also didn’t help that I hadn’t learned how to hit a curveball.”

  Tony was a naturally gifted athlete, and it didn’t take him long to become a star on Woodlawn High’s football team. He was the best player on the B-team and was ready to move up to the varsity squad as a sophomore. However, when preseason camp started in August 1972, Tony noticed that most of his African American friends weren’t out there with him. They’d either quit or been cut from the team. Tony imagined them being back in his neighborhood, playing basketball or swimming in Village Creek without him. So Tony jogged off the practice field and went home. When he walked through the front door of his house, his mother was waiting for him.

  “Why aren’t you at football practice?” she asked.

  “I quit the team,” he said.

  “You did what?” she asked.

  “Well, I quit playing football,” he said.

  “Today? Why?” she asked.

  “Well, uh . . .”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “That ain’t happening. I’ve never known a Nathan to quit, and you’re not going to be the first. Go get in the car.”

  “Where are we going?” Tony asked her.

  “You’re going back to the school,” she said.

  Louise Nathan found Gerelds and the other coaches in their offices. She instructed Tony to apologize to Gerelds for missing practice. Then Tony asked his coach if he would allow him back on the team.

  “You do what you need to do with him as far as punishment,” Louise said. “He’s yours—but keep him as far away from the football as possible.”

  During the next few weeks of preseason practice, Gerelds and Stearns decided Tony was their best option to play free safety on the varsity team. Because Tony refused to run with the ball or even play on offense, Jimmy Williams, another assistant coach, gave him a not-so-coveted nickname. Williams had already nicknamed another player “Chicken Little” because he was so afraid of getting hit. Tony was much bigger and stronger, but he didn’t like contact, either.

  “Tony, you’ve got to stay on the field, son,” Williams told him. “You can’t run for the sideline every time you touch the ball. We’ve already got a ‘Chicken Little.’ I guess you’re going to be ‘Chicken Big.’ ”

  The Colonels opened the ’72 season against Robert E. Lee High School at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama. The Cramton Bowl was one of the state’s most historic stadiums. With a seating capacity of 24,000, the Cramton Bowl had hosted University of Alabama games in the past, as well as the annual Blue-Gray Football Classic, a college all-star game. On September 23, 1927, the Cramton Bowl was the site of the very first football game played under the lights in the South.

  Robert E. Lee High was one of the state’s powerhouses in football. The Generals won back-to-back Class 4A state championships in 1969 and 1970. They went 12–0 in 1969, including a 28–13 victory over Woodlawn High in the first round of the state playoffs, and then 13–0 in 1970. The Generals won 27 games in a row until tying Jeff Davis High School in a 14–14 stalemate on September 17, 1971. The Generals produced many future college stars, including tailbacks Ralph Stokes (Alabama) and Paul Spivey (Alabama), guard John Rogers (Alabama), tackle Herb Broom (Auburn), and defensive end Lee Gross (Auburn). The Generals slipped to a 7–2–1 record in 1971, but they were still bringing back a team that was much bigger, faster, and stronger than the Colonels.

  When Gerelds led his team out of the locker room at the Cramton Bowl on September 1, 1972, he noticed that the Generals were already on the field for pregame warm-ups. Gerelds didn’t want his players to notice how much bigger the Generals were, so he marched his team around the stands to the other side of the field. That way, the Colonels wouldn’t see what was about to hit them.

  Shortly after the game started, the Generals took a 3–0 lead on a 37-yard field goal. The Colonels answered on their next possession, tying the score at 3–3 on Raymond “Buzzy” Walsh’s 22-yard field goal. It was the only scoring until midway through the fourth quarter. With Nathan playing free safety, Woodlawn’s defense shut down Robert E. Lee’s vaunted running game. The Generals had averaged more than 300 rushing yards per game the previous season, but the Colonels held them to only 96 rushing yards in the game. Woodlawn’s defense also intercepted three passes and picked up two fumbles.

  With about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, Lee attempted to run an option play to the right. The Colonels forced a fumble, and Nathan came out of nowhere to scoop up the ball and return it 38 yards for a touchdown. Walsh’s point-after kick gave Woodlawn a 10–3 lead. The Colonels intercep
ted two passes in the final minutes to secure an unlikely 10–3 victory.

  Sometime around ten o’clock that night, the telephone started ringing off the hook at the Nathan home. Louise didn’t attend the game because the brakes on her car weren’t working properly. Pops skipped the game to go coon hunting, which was how he spent most of his weekends during the fall. After learning from friends what her son had done that night, Louise vowed never to miss another one of Tony’s games and she never did.

  On Labor Day 1972, The Birmingham News ran the headline “Jury Still Out on How Good Colonels Are.” After upsetting the mighty Generals in the opener, Gerelds knew his team was going to be better than maybe even he believed. But he wasn’t sure it was quite ready to compete for a city championship.

  “I don’t know,” Gerelds told the newspaper. “We’ll have to wait and see. I’ll say this: I believe our defense is for real. I knew when the season started we were capable of being a better ball club. Most of our good players are back from last year. We’re bigger, and stronger, and quicker.”

  The next week, Woodlawn High played undefeated Hayes High School at Lawson Field in Birmingham. The Colonels jumped on the Pacesetters early, scoring 22 points in the first quarter. Quarterback Jimmy Hammock scored on a 63-yard run and then threw a 60-yard touchdown to tailback Curtis Dixon. Fullback Lloyd Alford closed the scoring with a two-yard plunge. Woodlawn High’s offense didn’t do much the rest of the game, but its defense shut down Hayes High for a 22–6 victory.

  After a 2–0 start, the Colonels were No. 11 in Class 4A in the state rankings. The next week, Woodlawn shut out Vestavia Hills 14–0 in a game that was closer than expected. The Colonels stumbled on offense, throwing two interceptions and losing two fumbles, but their defense held the Rebels to 151 yards and forced four turnovers.

  Gerelds was more than satisfied with his defense after three games, especially end Kirk Price and linebacker Bubba Holland. Woodlawn had allowed a total of nine points in three games and was one of only four unbeaten teams left in Birmingham. If the Colonels didn’t get better on offense, though, Gerelds knew his team wouldn’t stay undefeated for long.