Was Gerry Bertier Really Paralyzed? Remember The Titans True Story Explained

Remember the Titans is a classic Disney sports film and while the movie is based on a true story, some of the facts, including the specifics of the injury to Gerry Bertier, are not completely accurate. Released in 2000, Remember the Titans is the inspirational tale of a football team who puts aside prejudices to play together on the field and become friends off it. In Alexandria, Virginia in 1971, T.C. Williams High School, and subsequently its football team, are integrated for the first time. Led by coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington), the Titans become a symbol of unity that the entire community rallies around.

Hugely celebrated, Remember the Titans is an uplifting, funny, and poignant tale about how sports and empathy can transform a small-minded town into a true community. Remember the Titans is based on real-life events, and T.C. Williams High School, Coach Boone, Coach Bill Yoast (Will Patton), their incredible football streak, and the accident that paralyzed Gerry Bertier are all true to life. However, Remember the Titans also took some major liberties with the truth in its attempts to tell a compelling story.

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Gerry Bertier Really Was Paralyzed In A Car Accident

In Remember the Titans, after the Titans’ state semi-final win, Gerry Bertier is involved in a car crash that paralyzes him from the waist down. It’s a huge loss for the team and a tragic incident for Gerry, his family, and his friends. However, the Titans manage to succeed without their All-American linebacker and defeat George C. Marshall High School for the state title.

In real life, Gerry Bertier was injured in a motor vehicle accident and was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. However, the accident came after the state championship, in which Gerry Bertier played, rather than before (via ESPN). Unfortunately, Gerry Bertier’s fate in the film matches what happened in real life, and he did pass away in 1981 after another car accident.

T.C. Williams High School Did Not Have Any Close Games

Nearly every game in Remember the Titans, at least the ones shown in the film, is close, always coming down to the last few seconds or requiring an inspiring speech from Boone or Yoast to ensure victory. In reality, the T.C. Williams Titans were a juggernaut of high school football. Charles Mitchell, a running back for the Titans, said, “There were more than a few times that I felt genuinely sorry for the teams we played,” via ESPN. The Titans ran up the score on many teams, going 13-0, outscoring opponents 265-31, and being named the second-best high school team in the nation (via Northern Virginia Magazine).

The Racial Tension Between The Players In Remember The Titans Was Worse Than In Real Life

A major theme of Remember the Titans is how football was able to bring together a town stricken with racism, prejudice, and hate. To showcase this, the movie offers plenty of examples of the Black players and coaches being treated horribly by white residents of Alexandria. The first scene has Gerry Bertier and his friends running to yell at Black students entering T.C. Williams along with a crowd of angry citizens. The fact is that T.C. Williams High School was desegregated in 1965, six years before the Titans won state. By that point, racial tensions were still high, but they were not as violent as depicted in the movie.

According to Joann Patton, who dated Yoast and taught English at T.C. Williams, “The kids behaved a whole lot better than most of the adults,” In the film, Boone tells the Titans that every team they will be facing is completely white, which is patently untrue. Every other team in the league was integrated at that point.

While Remember the Titans embellished some storylines for dramatic purposes doesn’t mean the racial tension as a whole was exaggerated. Brown v. Board of Education had only occurred 20 years prior to the start of the film in 1951, Rosa Parks refused to get off a bus 16 years prior, the Black Panther Party had been formed five years earlier, and Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated only three years before the beginning of Remember the Titans. The real-life Titans may not have faced the same overt racism as depicted in the film, but across the U.S., Black people were facing prejudice and hate at every turn.

Sheryl Yoast Passed Away Due To A Heart Condition

Sheryl Yoast (Hayden Panettiere) is Coach Yoast’s precocious daughter who cares more about games like football than dolls. In real life, Yoast had four daughters, and none of them, including Sheryl, were particularly interested in football beyond showing up to games with their father. While Yoast was frustrated with the decision to only portray one of his daughters in the film, it was his other three daughters who gave their blessing for the choice. It may have been a way to honor their sister who passed away from an undetected heart defect in 1996 at the age of 34.

Gerry Bertier’s Girlfriend Emma And His Best Friend Ray Are Fictional

Many characters in Remember the Titans are based on real-life people, but two major ones are completely fictional. Emma Hoyt (Kate Bosworth), Gerry Bertier’s girlfriend, and Ray Budds (Burgess Jenkins), Gerry’s prejudiced best friend, are not actual people. Gerry’s real girlfriend was named Becky, and she was Yoast’s neighbor. Though these aren’t real characters, they are both important to the fictional Gerry’s arc in the story. It’s one thing for Gerry to stand up for the Black players on his team against other schools, but it means a lot more when Gerry stands up to his friends.

The Gettysburg Trip Was Fictionalized For Remember The Titans

The real Titans team did take their summer training trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, but what happens from there in Remember the Titans is complete fiction. In the film, a number of major moments happen at the historic battlefield. But in fact, there were no 3 AM runs, no forced cuts from the team for those unable to “survive” camp, and there was no inspirational speech from Coach Boone at the Gettysburg cemetery explaining how the white and Black players had to come together. It’s a shame considering it’s one of the scenes that make Remember the Titans one of Denzel Washington’s best performances.

After the speech in the movie, the players on the team come together on this training trip, at first hating each other, only to bond on the field. In reality, while many players admitted there were fights on the field and in the locker room, they say this was a symptom of hyper-competition rather than racism. With two schools merging, only a few players would be able to keep their starting spots, so there was plenty of jealousy and anger.

A Brick Wasn’t Thrown Through Coach Boone’s Window, A Toilet Was

In one scene of Remember the Titans, Sheryl Yoast is visiting Coach Boone, another event that never happened, when a brick crashes through his window, frightening his family. It’s a startling scene that shows just how high the tension in Alexandria is with Boone being head coach of the football team. But the real story is even more shocking. It wasn’t a brick that was thrown through Boone’s window but an entire toilet.

Boone talks about this in the DVD commentary, saying,

As much as Remember the Titans takes creative liberties, this incident is a heavy reminder that even if the racism presented in the film wasn’t exactly true to their exact history, the danger and daily hate Boone and other people of color faced (and still face) in America was very real.

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