Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher and basketball coach whose name is forever linked with Jacksonville’s legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd, died in his sleep early Monday morning. He was 77.
His son, also named Leonard Skinner, said he found his father dead around 2:30 a.m.
Skinner was a by-the-book gym teacher at Robert E. Lee High School, his alma mater, who, in the late 1960s, sent some students to the principal’s office because their hair was too long.
Gene Odom, who worked security for the band and survived the crash of its plane in 1977, said one of the longhairs was Gary Rossington. Rossington was guitarist in a rock band that would later name itself Lynyrd Skynyrd in a smart-aleck tribute to the gym teacher.
To Mr. Skinner — known to many as “Coach” or “Big Leonard” — the incident soon passed into obscurity. He didn’t even recall the name of the long-haired student, and certainly didn’t know of an up-and-coming Southern rock band bearing a mocking version of his own name.
Years later, though, his son was listening to the band’s 1973 debut album, “Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd.” The younger Skinner recalled that his father was not impressed, asking him: “What the hell kind of noise are you listening to?”
Around that time, his family said, a relative called after hearing a radio show on which the band told how it had come up with its offbeat name. And so Mr. Skinner became something of a celebrity — forever having to show his ID to people who didn’t believe that Leonard Skinner was his real name.
Mr. Skinner eventually made friends with some members of the band when they came to jam at The Still, a bar the ex-coach opened on San Juan Avenue. Mr. Skinner also named a couple of bars at the Beaches after himself, capitalizing on the fame of the name.
