Leonard Skinner

Forby Leonard Skinner (January 11, 1933 – September 20, 2010) was an American high school gym teacher, basketball coach, and businessman from Jacksonville, Florida. He is known in popular culture as the eponym of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd; Skinner was the band members' teacher.

Biography Skinner was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1933 and graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in 1951. He attended Jacksonville Junior College on a basketball scholarship before being drafted into the U.S. Army. After his discharge from the Army, Skinner attended Florida State University, where he graduated in 1957. Over time, Burns, Rossington, and other band members developed a series of running in-jokes about Skinner and ultimately decided to pay "tongue-in-cheek homage" to him by renaming themselves "Lynyrd Skynyrd". In 1977, an Associated Press article described the band's connection to their gym teacher as follows:

Interviewed in January 2009, Skinner said he was just following the rules about hair length. It bothered him that the legend had grown that he was particularly tough on the band members or that he had them kicked out of school. He said, "It was against the school rules. I don't particularly like long hair on men, but again, it wasn't my rule." After the album was released, Skinner began receiving late-night calls from around the country from fans who had seen the sign (and phone number) in the album artwork. Skinner recalled, "They'd say, 'Who's speaking', and I'd say Leonard Skinner, and they'd say 'Far out!' which it really wasn't at four in the morning."

Skinner became friends with some members of the band, and they played at a bar that Skinner opened in Jacksonville called "The Still". Skinner also named a couple of bars after himself, capitalizing on the fame of the name.

In January 2009, the people of Jacksonville held an event called "A Tribute to Coach Leonard Skinner & Southern Rock" at the National Guard Armory. At the time, the Jacksonville newspaper wrote, "He was just a regular Westside guy, a coach and businessman with a strong code of honor, a disciplinarian at home and at school."

On September 20, 2010, Skinner died at age 77 in a nursing home in Jacksonville, having suffered from Alzheimer's disease for several years. At the time of his death, The New York Times called him "arguably the most influential high school gym teacher in American popular culture." The Florida Times-Union called him "the no-nonsense, flattopped basketball coach and gym teacher whose name is forever linked with Jacksonville's legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd."