![]() I was attacked, threatened, shot at, and verbally abused constantly. The FBI tried to encourage the principal to close the school. I loved Ethel, but she was the maid and because of her position, she could only be so close to me (my mother made sure she knew her place).įor the next two years, Woodlawn High School became a war zone. Ethel had helped raise me from the time I was three years old. The only black person that I knew was my maid, Ethel May Porch. I had never been around black students, and I did not know how to act, coach, or teach them. This led to bad feelings that soon turned to hatred. The black students did not want to change schools, and the white students did not want them in their school. Five hundred black students were transferred from Hayes High School to Woodlawn. In 1970, Birmingham city schools were forced to integrate. There were no problems in the school, although the black students were not treated sociably. In 1968, a few black students started to school at Woodlawn under the Freedom of Choice Act. When I started teaching at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1965, there were no black students in the school. I wanted to be well organized and became upset if anything or anyone got out of order.Ī series of events transpired in the early 1970s that would forever change my attitudes and behaviors. ![]() I learned to be sound at what you do and to have an order of anything else for that matter. I learned my lessons from better coaches than myself, who usually beat my team. I thought it would be filled by winning football games. I know now that I was never going to fill the void in my life. I involved myself so deeply in my job that I had very little time for my family or friends. My success came slow and steady, but not near enough to satisfy my inward drive for personal success. However, I did an adequate job of teaching, for fear that my principal or fellow workers would think that I was not doing the job. Unfortunately, I was not very interested in science, or, for that matter, the students. At the same time, I was teaching science. I decided I wanted to be the very best coach, and I would push my assistant coaches, my players, and myself until I reached my goal. I considered a defeat a personal flaw in my armor. Nothing else seemed to fulfill my wants or ego. I became obsessed with competition and winning. Professionally, I cared as much about success as I did the young men I was coaching. The need for success and the drive to be the very best completely engulfed my personality and changed my way of living, both personally and professionally. For the first time in my life I felt stress and pressure. Six years after I began my educational career, I was put into a leadership position as head coach and athletic director of the third largest high school in Alabama. For the first time, I realized that some people did not work hard and did not have a real drive to succeed. ![]() ![]() During this time, I was very selfish, hardheaded, and could not comfortably express love to others.Īfter four years of being an assistant under a very demanding head coach and working for a very disciplined principal, I became a little more withdrawn. However, even then I took winning very seriously. I was more concerned with having more excitement the better. As a carefree, twenty-two-year-old assistant coach and science teacher, I was probably an extrovert, who cared very much about having friends and being liked. When I look back on the thirty years I have been in the workforce, I can clearly see how my jobs and environments have affected my personality and how I associate with and treat other people. Shortly before his death on January 10, 2003, Tandy Gerelds wrote about his experiences as Woodlawn High School’s football coach during the early 1970s:
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