Form Leonard Skinner to Lynyrd Skynyrd

[luisam]

Leonard Skinner, a former PE teacher at Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida, died in September 2010, aged 77. His passing would have gone unnoticed had it not been for the fact that Skinner gave his name to a band comprised of former pupils at his school: Lynyrd Skynyrd. Angered by their teacher’s disdain for boys with long hair, the future creators of rock anthems like Freebird and Sweet Home Alabama distorted his name and took it around the world.

The teacher's distaste for the long hair of pupils at Robert E Lee high school in Jacksonville in the 1960s led to many a shaggy-fringed student being sent to the headteacher's office – among them the founding members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The band adopted, then adapted, the sports tutor's name – its spelling purported to be a homage to the vagaries of southern American pronunciation – before achieving worldwide fame with rock anthems such as Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird. The group later befriended their former nemesis.

"I just went along with the flow," Skinner said of the backhanded tribute during a 1996 interview. "There was not much I could do about it."

One of the band members, believed to be Gary Rossington, was so irked by the suspension notices he received from the headteacher that he returned with his father, who protested that his son needed to have long hair so that he could support the family with his band earnings. The headteacher was unmoved, suggesting that the youngster get a crew cut and a wig instead.