Photo: JOYCE NALTCHAYAN/AFP/Getty; Buena Vista Pictures/Everett Collection
Bill Yoast, the high school football coach whose undefeated 1971 team served as inspiration for the classic filmRemember the Titans, died Friday at an assisted living home in Virginia. He was 94.
The men’s partnership was noteworthy, as it came as Alexandria merged its three public high schools into one integrated school.
The ’71 Titans football team went undefeated and won the Virginia AAA state championship, a run that inspired the film.
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“Bill was not going to allow racial differences to exist in this city,” Boone said in the release. “He and I found a way to talk to each other and trust each other.”
The former head coach also credited Yoast as the “best friend he ever had.”
Yoast was born in Alabama in 1924 and served a three-year stint in the Army Air Corps, a precursor to the Air Force, according to theWashington Post.
He went on to teach and coach in Sparta, Georgia, but reportedly left for a different city in 1954 after he was chastised for letting black players on the baseball team use the high school’s showers.
Yoast later coached at T.C. Williams from the historic 1971 season until 1996, according to thePost.
The Alexandria school district remembered him as a “quiet, humble people-person” who was “instrumental in helping pull the city together.”
source: people.com
