Coach Portrayed in 'Remember the Titans' Will Visit VCU Medical Center

By Cheryle Rodriguez

Former football coach Bill Yoast, who was portrayed in the film “Remember the Titans,” will visit VCU Medical Center to present a check to the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program.

Yoast, representing the Gerry Bertier #42 Foundation, will be at North Hospital on Thursday, Nov. 1, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., in honor of former high school football star Gerry Bertier, who sustained spinal cord injuries and was paralyzed from the waist down following a car accident. Members of the Richmond Flying Squirrels baseball team and foundation volunteers also will be in attendance.

“In my lifetime I have had the privilege of having thousands of young men and women call me ‘coach,’ but I never met anyone else like Gerry Bertier,” said Yoast. “Gerry had a spirit within him that embraced adversity, overcame pain, confronted injustice and was the essence of achievement.  It was that spirit that took Gerry Bertier from the darkest dark when he suffered his spinal cord injury back to the light. “

Bertier, who attended T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., participated in the Paralympics, winning multiple medals. He died in a second car accident in 1981.

The foundation, which raises funds for spinal cord research, has been donating money to the VCU Medical Center’s Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program for seven years.

 "Our Spinal Cord Injury program has been truly blessed through its close relationship with the Gerry Bertier #42 Foundation,” said William McKinley, M.D., professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, medical director of the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Program. “There are tangible benefits such as being able to acquire new rehabilitation technologies to assist our patients and the purchase of a new wheelchair accessible van for therapeutic community reintegration trips.” 

Media planning to attend must be escorted into the hospital.