Woodlawn: One Hope. One Dream. One Way.

by Todd Gerelds, Mark Schlabach (With)

Now a major motion picture starring Jon Voight, Nic Bishop, and C. Thomas Howell.

This riveting true story of courage, strength, and football at the height of racial tension in Birmingham, Alabama tells the story of Coach Tandy Gerelds, his running back Tony Nathan, and a high school football game that healed a city.

In the midst of violent, impassioned racial tensions in Birmingham, Alabama, new football coach, Tandy Gerelds, was struggling to create a winning football team at Woodlawn High School—one of the last schools in Birmingham to integrate. The team he was handed did not have the caliber of players he needed to win—until he saw Tony Nathan run.

But Tony was African American and Coach Gerelds knew that putting him in as running back would be like drawing a target on his own back and the back of his soon-to-be star player. But Coach Gerelds saw something in Tony, and he knew that his decision to let him play was about more than football. It was about doing what was right for the school—and the city.

And soon, the only place in the city where blacks and whites got along was on Coach Gerelds’s football team. With the help of a new school chaplain, Tony learned to look beyond himself and realized that there was more at stake than winning a game.

In 1974, Coach Gerelds’s interracial team made Alabama history drawing 42,000 fans into the stadium to watch them play. It was this game that triggered the unity and support of the Woodlawn High School Colonels and that finally allowed a city to heal and taught its citizens how to love.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction, Christian, Football, History, Book Club, Biography

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Todd Gerelds is author of the book Woodlawn, which became a major motion picture that played in theaters across the country. In the book, Todd recounts the events he witnessed as the son of Coach Tandy Gerelds. This true story of hope, faith, and love has made an impact in schools, churches, athletic teams, businesses, charity organizations, and in many individual lives.

Todd has spent over 20 years as an award-winning sales professional, sales trainer, and sales manager with three Fortune 500 companies. Todd is married to Jennifer Morgan Gerelds. They have four daughters: Morgan, Bailey Kay "BK", Alli, and Maggie Leigh.

Reviews

[Pop · Rating 4 out of 5]

I graduated from West End High school in Birmingham, Alabama May 1963 at the height of racial war taking place in our city. My class was the last that was all white at West End. I joined the Army a few days after graduation on May 31, 1963. I was tired of all the racial tension. I wasn’t a racist, in fact one of my best friends was black. George and I worked together at a local drug store delivering Rx to customers after school and on the weekends. George, my black friend to blacks and I to whites. We were close enough to have each other at our homes. I was told by our employer that I had to stop being so friendly with George because he (my employer) had been warned we would be in danger of being targeted by local racists. He would have to hire another white boy. I joined the Army, not the only reason however, I couldn’t find a decent job. My girlfriend and future wife (50 year’s March 8, 2018) was an Italian Catholic (I was just a young white boy without any religious ambitions). Italians and Catholics weren’t treated much better than blacks.

This book covers much that was happening to our city. It wasn’t the greatest piece of work I have read but it did remind me of those times and appreciate where we have come. I came back to Birmingham after serving 4 years in the Army, the last year in Vietnam. I still live about 20 miles from my old home in Birmingham. Birmingham is now a great place to live. Come visit some time, you may not want to leave!

BTW, I was baptized in the Catholic Church while in the Army in 1964. Not always faithful but always trying! The Lord has been good to me and I am thankful!

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

It saddens me to rate this book so low. Rest assured it is due to the writing, not the story. I requested this book because I thought it might be a great story for me to share with my 12 year old son. Not to brag (too much), but he is a natural athlete who enjoys hard physical work and almost effortlessly shines in football and basketball. I thought the story of the Woodlawn players dominating in their sport while overcoming prejudice and giving glory to God would be perfect for him. And maybe it will be, in movie form.

Yes, I will still watch the movie and even look forward to it, because I hope that those who create the cinematic form of this story are able to give it life. This story should have suspense, excitement, and emotion, but it reads like a list of scores in the newspaper. A talented writer could have done so much more with this, helping the reader feel that they personally knew the players as they learned to love God and each other.

The line "for whatever reason" is actually used multiple times in this book.

This is one of the few times that I will suggest that you watch the movie and skip the book.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing my copy of this book. Opinions are my own.

[Terri Robinette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Birmingham born and raised. I am proud, and both disappointed/horrified, at my beloved city. The book, Woodlawn, is a wonderful representation of my city and the South. Inside, the reader will learn of the horrific acts committed during the time of racial tension and segregation. A time that most of us do not like to reflect upon, bringing shame, even for those yet born. The book will explore the strength of our faith in God, a strong aspect of the South. How Christianity brought two sides together to form a bond, a team. The book will delve into one man's pursuit for winning, over the expense of everything else. And lastly, the book is about football, a southern staple, Friday night lights and all that. From Tony Nathan to other well known football names, the reader is provided a glimpse of football fame throughout history. God, family and football - the bright spots of Birmingham. Racial tension, Bombingham, Bull Connor - the negative part of our history that should not be forgotten. Its all there wrapped up in a nice, easy to read package. I would recommend (and already have) this book to others.

[Aidan Tate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really good book that not only inspires people to glorify Christ but also tells the amazing story of a racially divided school that overcame so much adversity. It also tells about football.

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good story. But the movie was better than the book.

[Holly Nazario · Rating 3 out of 5]

Usually I would prefer a book over a movie, but this movie was hands down much better than the book! An incredible true story and worth the watch!

[Emily Boyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was impacted more by the movie

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here’s what I liked:

• I’m 100% sure all the people that this book is about, are amazing.
• that they found Christ.
• learning more about the civil rights time.


Here’s what I didn’t like:
• this book gets extremely preachy - I felt like I was getting the same church lecture about 30 times.
• the timeline is wonky. In the last chapter, it literally takes word for word exact same text that was said in various previous chapters - made me have to double check that I didn’t accidentally bump my audible to a prior chapter.
• there are many, many, many, many detailed stats in this book - darn near killed me to finish it. it was just pure stats being read off a LOT.

Listened to this on Audible. 🎧

[Niajah Perez · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok and I like how they believe in Christ in this story because in most stories you don’t hear Christ being mentioned. In WoodLawn it took place in Birmingham and it was basically about how these two racially separated schools overcame there differences and came together as one. This book wasn’t really that good the only thing I like about it is that it talked about the racial tensions and how they ended up overcoming their adversity’s . Furthermore if your into preaching and football coaches and there teams struggles you would like this book but this book isn’t for everyone and isn’t something that just everyone would like.

[Lucas Wooten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story, but not written very well. It seems as if the author just took his dad’s letter from the epilogue and made it a little longer with some filler. I wasn’t bored by the book because I don’t mind reviewing old games and stats, but it was never really exciting as far as football goes. The spiritual aspect of it is wonderful news. God is bigger than football. As I described the book to my wife she said, “So it’s a Remember The Titans knockoff.” which I found slightly offensive, but not far from the truth. I hear the movie is much better, and I hope so.

[Ryan O · Rating 4 out of 5]

This true story of strength and courage is perfect for sport readers. Football at height of racial times in Birmingham Alabama that inspired the movie the Woodlawn that tells a story about coach Tandy Gerelds along side running back Tony Nathan. It tells about how a high school football game cured the whole city.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book about how Christianity changed players lives on one football team in Birmingham, Alabama. Because the players gave their life to Jesus their season and their lives were changed forever. This book is based on a true story.

[Gerard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! This is more than a story about football. It is a great story of history, and using sports as way to bring people of all races together. Highly recommend this book!

[Elizabeth Forehand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

Great read..... a wonderful story of what happens when God is allowed in our lives. This story also shows what happened in the history of Birmingham Alabama .

[J Bloomgren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed. The author missed the mark. A true, inspiring story that has potential to be a G O A T book, but unfortunately I found it boring & slow.

[Jackson Irons · Rating 4 out of 5]

The wonderful book titled Woodlawn written by Todd Geralds was a true inspiring book about how a school integrated together and how their football team had to learn to work together. The white and blacks at first despised each other. They acted as if they were different species. The battle of just trying to get the players to get along was such a struggle and a tragedy. By the grace of God and the players giving their lives to him they were able to come together.



I personally enjoyed the book a lot. It was a great heartfelt story. I loved Tony Nathan and how he was able to come to God and give his life to God. Also how he put his differences behind and worked with his teammates. The story kept me on my toes constantly. Not knowing whether it was going to go bad between the white and black kids. My favorite part was when they came to jesus because that’s important in my life. The story was written well in sequential order and i liked that. It made me happy seeing people integrate and realize we are equal and seeing people come to jesus. I am personally not a big reader and this book kept me looking for more!


I did not like that this book had racism in it. I understand it ended well but I didn’t like the beginning. I also didn’t like that it was kind of short. I wish they made the book longer. It was a bit much at times on the racism side and i didn’t want to read that part. But besides that it’s a great book.


I give this book a 4 star rating because I personally loved it. I enjoyed reading it very much and I am glad I found this book. I would recommend it to anyone age 13+. Hope this helped!

[Chris Kane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chris Kane
Ms.Pryle
English
03 May 2017
Woodlawn
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. (MLK)” In the middle of violent racial tensions in Birmingham, Alabama, new football coach, Tandy Gerelds, was struggling to create a winning football team at Woodlawn High School,one of the last schools in Birmingham to integrate. The team he was handed did not have the caliber of players he needed to win until he saw Tony Nathan run.

Tony was African American and Coach Gerelds knew that putting him in as running back would put him at more risk than any linebacker he was going to face. But Coach Gerelds knew he had to have faith in Tony, and he knew that his decision to let him play was about more than football. It was about what everyone was fighting for...equality.

Soon, the only time in the city where blacks and whites got along was on friday nights . With the help of a new school chaplain, Tony learned that there was more to winning the game, for him the fact he was playing was a victory in itself.

[Jonathan Beigle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Loved reading about the history of an Alabama high school football, especially after watching the movie first. It doesn't seem like the movie was anything like the book, but it's been a while so I need to watch it again. I could see how the format could turn some people off to the book (the first half of the book gives an allocation of a full chapter to a single person's history and then the last half is one football season at a time), but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. It's like Remember the Titans, but with a Christian story behind it.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My mom attended Woodlawn, class of ‘58, and I spotted this book at a grand reunion this past spring which really peaked my interest given the stories I’d heard and the amazing memorabilia at the reunion. It made me want to learn more. I really enjoyed the historical nature of the city and the school rivalries depicted in the book, but was disappointed that it segued away from the school and more on Mr. Geralds. I’m sure he was an amazing individual, but I felt the book could have done more for the racial tensions during the time and lacked in that manner.

[Matthew Bright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Woodlawn is easily one of my favorite true athletic stories I've read. As a current high schooler who loves to play sports, I found it a very fascinating story that was very inspiring. Although I've never been to Birmingham I find it very easy to connect to others who play sports no matter which one. Not only is it a great story, it is true, this high schooler and coach helped so many people out through tough times of racial problems.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book to me was average. The story was a little bit slow as the beginning spoke of people that they would never bring up again. It also wasn't the happiest of books. This book is filled with racism, supremacist groups, and many deadly fights.

[Nathan Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book that kept my interest the entire time. It shows the success of a football coach and the message he sent to his players. It is a real story and it is very encouraging to see how black and whites came together and no longer saw each other as different people.

[Bryce Hall]

This book is about the life and career of Tandy Gerelds. The book is an inspirational and uplifting book giving the audience a behind-the-scenes look at the football life of Gerelds. Gerelds was a natural leader and displayed faith, teamwork, and purpose to help unit a broke community.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but I honestly prefer the movie of this one.

[David Lipely · Rating 3 out of 5]

No remember the titans like awesome sauce, but still a semi-solid football/racism story...

[Sam Crosbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great story. Poorly written.

[Chad C]

I enjoyed this book, I like the sports genre and it hit on a lot of topics that are relevant today.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is awesome! The book is staged during segregation times and it´s really cool how Christianity brought both sides together in the south in Birmingham. during these times white people in the south didn't like black people but they had to come together. They hated each other for a long while but throughout the book they came together through football and they learned how to work together. I recommend this book for teenagers that are into sports.

[Max Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tony Nathan is not just your everyday black boy. Not only is he black but faces the many hard-to-bear obstacles that the times of the 1960’s and 1970’s throw at him. Integration caused him to integrate into white schools where many of the students not only wholeheartedly disliked blacks but had true passion to make it extremely difficult for them. With theses obstacles Tony took on additional challenges in order to pursue his hopes of being on sports teams. Tony’s coaches saw special qualities that everyone else does but no matter how much a skilled athlete he is he still gets little recognition due to the color of skin he represents. By the end of this book a town becomes more unified through a purpose greater than themselves allowing them to see that no matter what color skin each person has they’re equal and have a shared value and worth. Todd Gerelds finalizes this book in showing that a town of anti-integration can be changed in a whole new way through the power of one man…God.
Todd Gerelds does well on displaying the real issues in this time. For example he does a good job on when the kids enter the integrated school. He shows that the were getting yelled at and there were many riots. He uses a good sense of showing the problems these blacks faced in the story. He described the characters well and what their position was in the conflict. He did this through a style in which the point of view switched often but was overall based on quotes and personal views. Often he pulled the main characters back into the story and went back and forth between between their personal lives and the overall life of the team. This overall brought the story together in giving you a good back story on the main characters while bringing in a good story on the football part.
Todd does a good job on telling us all about the main character, Tony Nathan, but often goes into a deep backstory on other characters. It almost seems like he uses useless information and goes on forever. It almost makes you want to say “get on with it.” He continues places throughout the story that could have been confined much. But he does create often good pieces of information and buries them in the story but available open enough to recognize it. He made me look forward to reading about the football stuff but often doesn’t fluently put it in a good sense. He uses almost a list style in the way of describing the football. For example in parts of the story he would go through a whole season of football in like 5 pages. He also often built the story to its climax and made you anticipate something good but then it would just drop off and leave you devastated. For example in some instances he would have you thinking that the team was going to do something great but then it just didn’t happen. Then at the times when they were going to do something big it sometimes wasn’t very climactic. This could be because he was trying to keep the overall football sense on the down low in order to portray the sense of how God overall helped them and gave them strength. Therefore he could take some backstory out but not put the football sense in such of a list form.
This book really portrays the true problems that many people of a different color faced in the 1960’s and 70’s. Gerelds truly will capture your heart in this moving piece really helping you realize through God anything is possible. He will really take those interesting switches between a sports life and a deeper meaning in life creating a great work of literature. This is a real page turner because it truly captures all the aspects and parts to make a book go from a book you read to a book you want to read.

[James McHugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a really hard one for me because I wanted to love Woodlawn. As a Christian, as a huge sports fan, this seemed right up my alley.

The problems are all over the place with this book. The story bounces around so much that you start to wonder "When was Woodlawn's magical season?" When did they finally win it all, win a state championship etc.

The answer essentially ends up being... never really. The story goes into detail about coaches and players and when they left Woodlawn and the the book finally breaks into what seems like a monotone reading of the back of football cards where you basically just hear scores and stats for several pages at a time (and I love sports statistics). The faith aspect of this novel doesn't even seem to play a huge role.

Nearly an entire high school football team accepts Christ and then there's little mention of that aspect of their journey for most of the rest of the story. Several chapters later it gets brought up like it was being discussed the entire time and it's an "oooohhh yeah we did read about that" moment."

When you reach the epilogue much of it has been covered (word for word) at earlier points in the text and you are left wondering if that chapter of the book accidentally got printed twice. The quest to conquer racial tensions is also not greatly developed in the reading. At some point passing mentions show us that black and white members of the team become more socially cordial and Tony Nathan is accepted as the team star but there's really not a lot of story on that struggle.

This is essentially Remember the Titans with a faith aspect to it, which should be the main focus of the story, but it takes a back seat to the success of the team, which never really materializes the way you might expect it to. While I understand the story is true, if the team didn't really have a storybook ending (which it doesn't) then why focus so much on the details of every season? During some of the seasons which are painstakingly detailed, the only real storyline is the coming together of the players and the impact of their faith on the community and the school. Unfortunately that really isn't talked about much. All in all this becomes a really tough book to recommend the further you get into it. It's not entirely clear what the apex of the story is and if it is the born again aspect of the Woodlawn team, then the story is relatively over just a few chapters in.