She was a legend in Sylacauga and Decatur, teaching gymnastics, cheerleading, and lessons of life to thousands of girls. Lenette Calvin died Sunday at 97 and has rejoined her husband, Coach Tom Calvin.
Mrs. Calvin fell just short of her 98th birthday. She was born August 4, 1928.
Lenette Calvin had a 60-plus-year coaching career, primarily at Sylacauga High School, Austin High (Decatur), and her chain of private girls’ gymnastics clinics named ‘Calvin’s Twisters.’ She had a generational impact on girls’ sports in the state. Alongside her late husband, football coaching icon Tom Calvin, they made history as the only husband-and-wife duo inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame.
How did Lenette Calvin describe her coaching?
“It offered a springboard for planting a lot of seeds,” she said. “The seed is so powerful, because it only takes one to get it going.”
One former football player of Coach Tom Calvin is Rev. Billy Coleman.
“I do not believe that you could find a couple not only in the state of Alabama but in the southeast – maybe larger than that – that made a more dynamic influence on more people than this couple,” Coleman said.
Tom and Lenette Calvin were at Sylacauga High School as coaches and teachers from 1956 to 1977.
Rita Price Ingram, a gymnastics student under Lenette Calvin and later a volleyball coach, said Mrs. Calvin made it feel more like a family than a team.
“She was the type of coach you wanted to work hard for and you didn’t want to disappoint her, because she made you feel good about yourself,” Ingram said. “She made you want to go out and work harder. She was an inspiration to all of us, we respected her, and we were proud to be called ‘Mrs. Calvin’s Girls.’”
Lenette Calvin served as state director of high school gymnastics in Alabama from 1959-1989.
Both Calvins graduated from the University of Alabama. He started on the football team and she was a member of the cheerleading squad, serving as head cheerleader her senior year. They were married on December 17, 1949.
Their wedding and marriage were storybook. The wedding of the decade was featured atop the Birmingham News.
Lenette won the Southern Olympic diving championship in 1948 and qualified for the 1948 Olympic trials. Tom played for four years in the NFL with the Pittsburgh Steelers before becoming Sylacauga’s head coach.
In 1992, she was Inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame.
In 2011, she and her husband were awarded a Chair by the Sylacauga City Schools Foundation for her twenty years of local impact.
In 2018, she received an official State Proclamation at the opening ceremony of the Alabama State Games.
Lenette Calvin and her coach/husband were old school – discipline, hard work and impeccable Southern manners. When she entered heaven’s gate Sunday, they likely greeted each other the same way they always referred to each other around others. She called him “Coach Calvin” and he called her “Miz Calvin.”
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about the colorful and positive in Alabama — her people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is former State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at [email protected]
