Legendary T.C. Williams High School football coaches Bill Yoast and Herman Boone have been selected as keynote speakers at Fire-Rescue International in New Orleans next month. The story of how the coaches transformed the newly consolidated Alexandria, Va., school's 1971 Titans football team into a model of racial and social integration was told in the 2000 film “Remember the Titans” starring Denzel Washington as Boone and Will Patton as Yoast. President Richard Nixon said at the time that “the team saved the city of Alexandria.”

FIRE CHIEF Editor Janet Wilmoth recently spoke with the coaches about how their team-building methods can relate to the fire service.

Coach Boone

Fire Chief: How accurate was the movie “Remember the Titans,” and Denzel Washington as your character?

Boone: The movie was very accurate. Obviously they had to Hollywoodize the movie, and they took some artistic liberties on a few things, but it was very accurate.

FC: How much control did you have over the character in the movie? What kind of input did you have?

Boone: Well I didn't have any input on the young characters as such, and there is not very much input you would have on Denzel. Denzel himself wanted that part, because, in fact, he is a coach and a good coach. He's coached his children since they began their athletic careers and he still coaches them. It's in his contract, wherever he's filming, that he doesn't film on Thursday, Friday and Saturday because he goes back to California to coach for his children.

FC: I'm sure a number of people thought the movie was just about football, but it was much more.

Boone: I think that is what made it so successful in the late stages of the movie because a tremendous amount of ladies, who thought at first it was about football, refused to go see it. They sent their husbands and their boyfriends and the children off and they went shopping. Then the family came back and said, “Mom you missed a great movie. It's not about football.” I'm getting e-mails from people all over the world.

FC: Coach, initially your character refused the post. Coach Yoast had a caring and sensitive reaction, yet further on in the movie, you seem to change. You took a harder line, and you appeared to be a little less sensitive to the others.

Boone: No, it's very true, and I did refuse the job at first, only because I had just gone through that myself. The superintendent at the school system in North Carolina that I had just come from had done that to me. One day after winning the state championship, he said they were going to integrate the schools next year and “with you assisting the young white coach, we can't help but win.” I knew exactly how this man [Yoast] felt.

You know, the superintendent tells me the town's not ready for a black coach. Well, good Lord, I'm not a ‘black’ coach, I'm a coach who happened to be born black.

They didn't ask me if I'd wanted the job, they told me that I had the job, and I just don't accept a position like that. I wake up in the morning on July 5 and here my picture is in the paper as having been selected over a man who deserved the job and who's paid his dues — over a man who has more seniority. I wouldn't say he's a better coach. No, his record was no better than mine and wasn't half good as mine, but that's beside the point. So, I told the superintendent I couldn't accept the job.

At the time, everybody in Alexandria who signed a contract to teach took on an extracurricular activity like coaching, drama or whatever. It was a stipulation in your contract that if you quit one, you quit both.

I'm the only breadwinner in the house. Now I've got to take a job against my better judgment, against my will and against everything that I've ever believed in, but I've got to do it for the benefit of my family.

As time went on, I found coaches not cooperating with me because they were coaches very loyal to Coach Yoast. I didn't have a choice of which coach I would have on my staff. So you know, I guess I had it and said enough is enough and that's it. Now there's no more democracy; it's a ‘John Brown’ dictatorship and I'm the dictator.

It became very obvious that I was sick and tired of the foolishness that they were doing against me, and it wasn't good for the program. It wasn't good for me, it was killing me and I just got sick and tired of it. I said, “I'm the dictator. I'm in control from the one-yard line going out to the one-yard line going in.” Just sit on the sidelines somewhere.

FC: The early '70s were pretty turbulent times. Where did you get your ideas for the team building?

Boone: Obviously, someone had to sit back and think about team building, understanding some pleasures of brotherhood, acceptance of one for what he is and not what he looks like. We were faced with a very turbulent situation. We had everybody who had a reason — they thought — to wake up every day to dislike somebody.

I knew that unless we got people just to respect each other, then we certainly wouldn't have a football team. And I sort of had a personal reason anyway, because I was the one that was going to be fired!

You know how I got them to talk to each other? I gave them a list of names of everybody on that team. I tried that and it worked. They talked to each other. Talking to each other is probably the greatest foundation of communications that you can ever have. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I felt that we had to get people to talk to each other. How would you know whether a guy is a good person unless you talk to him? You look at him? That's why we have so many shootings today, because people label kids in high school. You set standards on what is good looking and what is bad looking; you call them ugly. Either they're ugly because they're fat or black, they're ugly because they're white or yellow, because they've got slant eyes.

FC: What's here for the fire service?

Boone: One thing that the fire department cannot exist without is teamwork. Unless we accept the fact that we must have a unified football team, and that's exactly what a fire department is, a football team from position A to position B, and with a chief who has the knowledge and understanding of relationships and an understanding of people, to guide people and to make people feel worthy.

Let me tell you a little story. When I was six years old, do you know that the only thing in this world I wanted to be was a fireman? Do you know why I'm not a fireman today? Because the fire department that I tried my best to get into — and get on that truck and fly down that pole or just to have somebody take me by the hand and just show me — they ran me out of the fire department. They chased me away!

Are individual fire departments community-friendly? If so, why don't you build a room for the little Herman Boones where he can come in there and you can teach him the computer? You can teach him this and you can teach him that.

FC: Some departments have those programs, but probably not enough.

Boone: It has to be community-friendly — the community owns that fire truck, the community owns that building. Unless that house is friendly, no one wants to come in.

People think that firefighters sit around and sleep all day. They don't. They go out, they do inspections, stay in shape, they do a lot of things. But how much of it is community-friendly? Does every kid in that community know the firemen by their first name or the last name? How many Herman Boones walk past that fire station, wishing that someone would just come out there and take me up in there and let me slide down that pole?

FC: How different would your team have been if you'd had women involved?

Boone: Well, at the time I had two young ladies who were my managers who were just intrinsic parts of that football team. When we got ready to go to camp, and the principal told me I couldn't take them with me to camp, I raised holy hell. They were as much an integral part of that team as any football player was, but because we were going to camp, it was assumed that something immoral would happen to those girls. It's the perception that where there's a woman, there should be babies. You should be home cooking. Look, we live in a society of men and women and each person has his or her rightful place in this society. I truly believe that.

I'm not a women's-libber. I don't go off fighting, but I believe in the rights of women as much as men. I realize there are things that women cannot do physically. They just don't have the muscular strength to do, but they can try. Maybe I should fight for women to be a part of a football team, but I just don't want to see them get hurt. Because there are some idiots who would deliberately take a cheap shot at a girl just because she's a girl.

FC: Is there one point that you'd really like to get across?

Boone: If you are not community-friendly, stop and become community-friendly. It's the community that supports you; it's the community that depends on you. If a child wanders around a firehouse, take him in because it could be a Herman Boone who has always wanted to be in there. You have to become a team in an effort to function. A fire department is exactly like a football team. If one person on that team goes into a blazing fire — does not follow the rules and regulations of that particular play that you need to run to make a touchdown — then you're going to get your butt whipped. Everybody has to know the ball has to be snapped on time, everybody will have to start the blocking assignment, and the chief is the quarterback. If the chief can't hand the proper ball off at the proper time and the proper hold, the whole play isn't going to work.

Coach Yoast

Fire Chief: In your opinion, how accurate was “Remember the Titans”?

Yoast: It was pretty accurate, the facts were pretty much true; they dramatized some of the incidents. I don't remember some of the emotion that we went through, but as far as the factual part of it, that was pretty accurate.

Also, our championship game, we won it pretty handily, yet they dramatized that a little bit — makes it a little more fun to watch. You don't like to see a state championship where it's a blow-out. We won it like 26 to 0. But as far as the three schools coming together, I was at the all-white school and the other schools were pretty mixed. One of the schools — George Washington — they had just closed Parker Grave, which was a black high school in the city. All of the students went to GW, so that proved GW as being just about the only school in the city that had any blacks in it at all.

So, that part was true, with coming together, Herman got the job and I didn't, that's true. I had been in the city since 1960 and I was disappointed and upset — actually shocked when I didn't get the job, all that was true. The way we came together was pretty much as the movie depicted it.

FC: The '70s were a fairly turbulent time. Where did the ideas for the team building come from?

Yoast: We almost were forced to do that because when you bring three schools together that have been actually opponents and enemies, so to speak, over the years, and all of a sudden they were going to have to play together as teammates — no one liked that idea. The student body didn't like it, the players didn't like it and the administration didn't like it. So we had to bring them together. Coach Boone decided that we would take them to camp and almost force them to spend time together. By spending time together they became friends. It was almost like forced friendship at camp. They were playing together, had their meals together. It turned out that by the time we left camp, what the movie showed was the way it was.

FC: The movie emphasized what an honorable gentleman you were.

Yoast: Well, I considered leaving at one time because more than anything else I was shocked, then I was hurt, then I was angry and bitter. Although, I was offered several jobs in the area because it's a metropolitan area with a lot of high schools. My daughter came, and when she asked me, “Dad what are you going to do?” I said, “Well, Sugar, I'm not sure.” “Well,” she said, “You know if you don't stay, people are going to think you left just because you didn't want to work with Coach Boone.”

I loved the city; I loved the people, the players and the community. The administration had always been fair to me, and I didn't want to leave because of what was being offered me. I realized that if I left, it would be because I was bitter, and I just didn't want to do that. I'd been a head coach for 20 years and being the boss wasn't that important to me, plus I had 10 players coming back that were starters from the year before when we had won the championship. So I felt sort of committed to them and knowing Coach Boone, it was not as hard a decision for me to make as some people think. I just wanted to coach and stay with the kids.

FC: The impact that you had on the team, on the school and on the community certainly brought about changes. Did it have an impact on the state level?

Yoast: Coach Boone tells me, and I read it in the paper that President Nixon gave this football team credit for saving the city. I don't know that we went that far. I do know at the time there was a lot of hostility in Washington, D.C. It was just shortly after Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered and people were burning buildings, and I told Coach Boone and I told the press, I don't know if we saved the city, but I think we put out a few small fires. We planted the seed and I feel very strongly that we did that. I do think as I go back there today and meet with some of the groups there, I can certainly feel the difference. I do feel that we made a difference in the community as well as the school. I know the players themselves, and you would have to see them together to really appreciate what we see. We saw them coming from people who didn't want to be together; players who didn't want to be together; not really liking each other to now spending time with each other.

FC: You will be talking to the leaders of the fire and emergency services in August at Fire-Rescue International. What could the fire service learn and how could they benefit from the Titans experience?

Yoast: Well, I think the fire department, like the police department, is actually like a football team. We had to come together, almost as a family at camp. In a fire department, I think these people sort of live together and they've got to learn to trust each other, respect each other and that's what we set out to do.

I think the people in a fire department depend on each other to back them up when their life is at stake. It's even more important to trust the person that you work with and respect them. We set out to do that in a small way on a football team, but I think it's true in the fire department, the police department, and many other departments where you have to depend on someone else to really get through the job that you're performing.

FC: What do you feel were the strengths you had as a coach that helped to overcome the diversity in your team?

Yoast: First of all, you've got to respect, trust and show loyalty to the people you work with. I felt that in learning to work with the black kids that I'd never worked with before, I found out that they wanted to feel important and I set out to try to make each one of them feel like they were important. I could remember going to teach in situations when some of the kids were sort of slow to interact, and I would always try to pull them in, to the point where I'd say, “What do you think?” Try to get their input.

I reflected on my ability to interact with these young men that I've never worked with before. I came about very slowly. I had to take a look at my tolerance level and, I think, my patience and understanding. I was never as aggressive and boisterous as Herman, but I think it worked pretty good because I'd have the kids come to me a lot of times when they were being a little bit depressed about something that might have happened on the field. So when they started coming to me, then I realized we were getting the interaction we had hoped to get between the players and the coaches. I was always more laid back and easygoing than Herman. So it worked out pretty good, sort of like they say on ESPN, the “good-cop, bad-cop.”

FC: It's interesting that in today's society we're seeing a lack of loyalty. It's something that's almost becoming scarce these days. We've seen it in changes from volunteer to full-time departments; we see it in changes in leadership and in corporations.

Yoast: That's true, also people just don't trust each other any more. I know for a fact we need it more than just in athletics — in the fire department, city government, police, schools, principals and teachers. We all need some way or a common goal so that people can put the goals of the group in front of their own goals.

FC: How different would your approach have been or would it be today if women were involved? This continues to be an issue in the fire service. It's a very male-dominated industry, much like football.

Yoast: I worked with girls' track at the same time I was working football. It's no different if you just interact and get to where you can interact with the people and they can feel important. Get them to the point where they can trust you and you trust them and they trust each other. It makes no difference. You do have to handle certain situations a little more delicately when women are involved. I have five daughters; I know very well how to deal with women.

In coaching the girls, I did have to use different techniques altogether and again ask, “What do they think?” They must be recognized, they must be treated as equals, otherwise they will be the first to sense it.

FC: What could the fire service do to be more proactive role models in their communities, to assist in moving issues of racial harmony or diversity forward?

Yoast: I guess just to foster as much interaction as you can. You know, first opinions are formed when you see someone, but often, once you get to know a person, their actions are more important than what they say. So, by just by being out front and visible to people you know.

It's wonderful to see a bunch of firemen come in when your house is on fire. What an honorable profession they're in. People realize this and I have never heard anyone say anything detrimental to the fire department, except some people complain when they don't get there in time. I think as far as what they can do is show that they are being fair with the people that they take into their organization, show no forms of discrimination; treat everyone the same, and everyone has the same opportunity.

FC: Coach, when you look back at the whole scenario, if you could have done anything different, what would you have done?

Yoast: I don't know of anything I would have done differently, I don't think anything. I wish the movie had shown a little bit more of the interaction that we had with the kids. They implied how we got them to come together, but there was a lot more to it. We spent a lot of time teaching conduct and behavior. I think I'd do the same thing today. We knew they could block and tackle. We knew they were good athletes, but if I had that same situation today I'm sure I would spend the same amount of time being a little wiser.

I could do a better job of teaching behavior and respect for others. I think I could be a little more open about this; there's no silver bullet or quick fix knowing what I know now. I think I could deal with it a little more intelligently and a little better — I had the patience. I think I'd spend more time with individuals on the team than I did then. At that time, I spent time with the individuals that I thought were having a hard time relating to other kids. Now I realize they would all need it, and we had enough coaches on the staff at that time that we could do it. I think I would try to spend more time with individuals rather than team.

FC: Some of our readers will see this article before they get down to New Orleans, while others won't be able to attend. What message would you have for the fire chiefs across the country and across North America?

Yoast: I would say the same thing I would say to the team and my kids when they were growing up: Sometimes we have to look beyond behavior. Behavior's important, but we have to look beyond that sometimes. When we were teenagers, if our parents never looked beyond behavior, we wouldn't have received much love.

Sometimes I think our behavior is like the expression, “Just don't worry about him, he doesn't know what he's doing.” I think sometimes we have to look beyond behavior. Firemen, policemen, coaches and players, sometimes we have to accept the person and look beyond how they're acting and what they're doing. If we can do that, we would have a little more patience with each other. I think the secret to living together, loving each other, is patience and communication.