Some of the most interesting stories on a basketball team can be found at the end of the bench, where the walk-on players and managers tend to congregate. Willie Herenton is one of those stories.
The University of Miami sophomore guard, a walk-on from the Chicago area, is the son of Harvard graduates and the grandson and namesake of five-time Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, the first elected black mayor in the city’s history, a former school superintendent and five-time Golden Gloves boxing champion.
Despite his grandfather’s passion for public schools, Willie and his two brothers were home-schooled through middle school by their mother, Andrea, who earned a Master’s degree in education from Harvard and was a GM Scholar in electrical engineering at Tennessee State.