Bill Raynor, a celebrated basketball player and coach, poet and educator, marked the release of his memoir, “Why Black Men Nod at Each Other,” last week at Cristo Rey Boston High School in Savin Hill in front of friends, colleagues, and former teammates.

Raynor grew up in Mission Hill through the 1960s, earning acclaim as a key member of championship teams at Catholic Memorial High School in West Roxbury and in varsity play at Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1974 with a degree in education.

After some international travel, including to Senegal and France, he returned to Boston to coach at his high school alma mater, where, he said, he “fell in love with coaching.”

Over the next 40 years, Raynor went on to coach at St. Mary’s of Lynn High School, Harvard University, Brown University, College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, and MassBay Community College. Now retired, he devotes two days a week as a student counselor at Cristo Rey.

Rosemary Powers, the president of Cristo Rey Boston High School, was at the book launch to support her colleague.
“We are just so thrilled to have Bill at Cristo Rey,” she told the Reporter. “He inspires the kids every day. I’ve heard him tell them, ‘Always drive to do better. Look how big the world is.’ He has such a presence on our campus.”

Major themes in the memoir, Raynor said, come from his days as an athlete and from the viewpoint of a coach.

“One of the great things about participation in sports is that it’s a great equalizer in terms of breaking down the barriers that we have,” Raynor said. “You know, we’re separated by religion and race and economic status, but through athletic competition, many times those barriers are broken down and people get a chance to see each other as people and see the value of each other. And oftentimes, I don’t think we appreciate each other’s differences, but in sports, we look at them as something to embrace.”

Similarly, Raynor said, the memoir draws from his experiences growing up in a tumultuous period in Boston, with school desegregation and racial strife at the center of community life. He recalled how, when he was in his twenties, a childhood friend was killed by police in a case of mistaken identity.

He explained that the title of his memoir comes from a question he received from a white student he coached at Holy Cross when they were at Logan Airport en route to a game, and how he seized the opportunity for a teachable moment with his response.

“Nodding at each other is acknowledgment,” Raynor said. “It says, ‘I see you.’ It says that, even though I don’t know who you are, or I’ve never seen you before in my life, I know that we share something. It could be the guy who got off the plane in a three-piece suit, and he’s a CEO, and he’s walking to baggage claim, and it could be the Black janitor pushing the cart, and they pass each other, and give each other a nod. This shows you how powerful and how insidious race is in everything that we do.”
You can buy “Why Black Men Nod at Each Other” and Bill Raynor’s poetry collections at raynorbooks.com.