OCEAN CITY — The historic 1971 T.C. Williams Titans football team, immortalized in the Disney movie, Remember the Titans, will be meeting for their first reunion in more than a decade in Ocean City next month.
The former teammates will be opening some of that event to the public with a meet and greet at Seacrets as well as a screening of the movie that made the team famous.
Most of the team remains in contact today, according to member and Ocean City resident Bob Luckett. They are part of a players association and foundation that has helped several students throughout the years continue their education via scholarship funding.
But the upcoming reunion represents the first major gathering of the group since around when the movie, Remember the Titans, was released back in 2000. The team has lost several members over the years, including nine players, one coach and a cheerleader. But Luckett hopes to see about 40 members at the reunion this November.
The team will come together for three days early next month. During their first night together, Nov. 1, they will be on-hand at Seacrets to take pictures and sign autographs, along with a public screening of the movie, which focuses on the newly formed T.C. Williams’ football program, which became the Virginia state champions despite team members coming from rival schools prior to going to T.C. Williams. Their previous schools, while legally desegregated, were also heavily imbalanced in regards to race demographics.
Luckett is a fan of the positive message of the movie, but admits that Disney took a few liberties with the source material.
“The story itself is true. While racial issues were there, it was more about three rival high schools coming together as one,” he said.
Between the culture clash with white and African-American students and coaches and the competitive past of the schools that were merged into T.C. Williams, Luckett said that the challenges his team faced were on par with what Disney depicted, including lifting a few scenes directly from real life, such as when coach Herman Boone, played by Denzel Washington, forced players off the bus to training camp and then re-seated them so that black and white players were together.
“The story there is that if you can meet people on common ground and not judge them on all of these other factors, race in those days being the primary one, to come together on common ground for whatever the good is of what you’re doing … you can be successful,” Luckett said.
It’s a message that he believes is as true for young people today as it was in 1971. Luckett believes the old adage about not judging a book by its cover is one of the most important things a young person needs to learn.
“The other big part of the story is to not judge these people because they may be somewhat different than you,” he said. “Get to know them and then make your decisions …”
Back during the summer and fall of 1971, Luckett had no idea that he and his teammates would do something that would create the legacy that it did. It’s a sentiment he passes on to the people he meets at any Titans’ events.
“So think about what you’re doing in school or in life today as a kid and think about whether someone would want to write about it in a positive way when you get to be 40 years old,” he said.
While he expects a lot of private moments and shared jokes and tears during the three-day reunion, Luckett is also enthusiastic about interacting with the public at Seacrets that first night. For more information, contact Seacrets at 410-524-4900 or Luckett at 302-853-2055.
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