Gadsden native Evelyn L. Lewis, track star, coach and mother of Olympic legend, dies at 93

Evelyn Lawler Lewis was a world-class track star, sidetracked from the 1952 Olympic team by injury, but she went on to teach and coach students and athletes, and to see her son, Carl Lewis, earn nine Olympic gold medals.

The Lewis family lost their matriarch on Jan. 4, at age 93.

A celebration of her life will be at 4 p.m. Thursday at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, 3015 N. MacGregor Way, in Houston, Texas. Visitation will be before the service from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.; a livestream will be available at https://goodhope.org/

According to the obituary published by Mabrie Memorial Mortuary, Lewis was born in Gadsden, the sixth of nine children, and was so skinny everyone called her "Chicken Legs."

During her senior year of high school, however, she competed in a track meet at Tuskegee Institute, where she caught the eye of the university's coach, and he asked her to come there.

Lewis did and became the first member of her family to attend college. She made the honor roll and became the school's No. 1 hurdler. She was inducted into the Tuskegee University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1985, according to news release from the school about her passing.

In 1951, she went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the first Pan American Games. "Who would have thought that a skinny little Black girl from Gadsden would have traveled to Buenos Aires and even met Evita Peron," she would later ask.

Lewis later broke the U.S. record for the 80-meter hurdles and had her sights set on the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland. By then, she'd become one of the top three hurdlers in the world, but an injury before the Olympic trials kept her off the team.

Son Carl qualified for five Olympic teams, winning nine gold medals and one silver medal, and claimed 10 world championship medals.

Daughter Carol Lewis was the 1983 World Championship bronze medalist, and a four-time U.S. Champion, specializing in the long jump.

In 1996, the Lewis family ran three consecutive legs of the Olympic torch relay — first Carol, then Carl, then Evelyn. "But Evelyn did not run her leg alone. Carol and Carl ran right along with Evelyn — one on each side of her — and she might as well have been running in the actual Olympics," her obituary read.

It was one of many accomplishments in Lewis' life that earned the admiration of family in Gadsden. She earned their love, niece Alice Vaughn said, by being a loving, outgoing woman, and one of the many positive influences on their lives.

Vaughn lived with the Lewis family for a while in New Jersey, and in Birmingham, in the early 1960s. She said Lewis was one of several strong female influences in her family.

"She gave me a surprise 'Sweet 16' party," Vaughn recalled.

Evelyn Lewis was a good cook and a good seamstress, according to her niece, and she loved sports — especially tennis. Vaughn said she, her aunt and others would get on the phone together when Venus and Serena Williams were playing.

Lewis' father, Fred Lawler, pastored Mount Olive Church on Valley Street, Vaughn said, and Lawler Circle was named for him.

Lewis' father, mother Lurene Lawler and several siblings preceded her in death.

A teacher and coach

At Tuskegee, Lewis met William McKinley Lewis Jr., from Chicago, and they married soon after she graduated. They moved to Chicago and she went back to school for a master's degree — becoming the first African-American to earn a master's from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois.

The couple got teaching jobs and initially settled in Montgomery, where they welcomed sons Mack and Cleve, then moved to Birmingham, where Carl and Carol were born. They lived in Alabama during some of the biggest events of the Civil Rights Movement, participating in the Montgomery bus boycott and providing support to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family. They attended King's first church, Dexter Avenue Baptist, and he baptized Mack and Cleve.

When they lived in Birmingham, the family faced race-related issues every day. According to the obituary, Evelyn Lewis remembered taking the long way home to avoid an amusement park that wouldn't admit Blacks, so she would have to explain to her older sons why they couldn't go there.

While visiting a sister in New Jersey, she interviewed for and was offered a teaching job. The family moved to Willingboro, New Jersey, just two weeks after Carol was born and only a few weeks before the bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church, which claimed the lives of four girls — former playmates of Mack and Cleve.

Vaughn said Chris McNair was one of her uncle's best friends; his daughter, Denise, was one four children who died at the church.

In New Jersey, the children attended an integrated school, playing sports with everyone else.

Evelyn Lewis was one of the first Black teachers in the school district. She began coaching field hockey, later coached track and field, and was involved in other programs for girls. When the school wouldn't start a track program for girls, she and her husband started one of their own, the Willingboro Track Club, in 1969.

Lewis taught and coached until her retirement in 1985.

All the children were involved in sports. Mack excelled as a sprinter; soccer was Cleve's sport.

Lewis took Carl and Carol to the track to save baby-sitting money, her obituary explained, and they became interested in track and field — sometimes imitating drills students were doing, but mostly playing in the sand of the long jump pit.

When Carl and Carol started competing, they began making national teams, followed every step of the way by their parents until their father's death in 1987.

Lewis participated in the Senior Olympics and continued to compete as a discus thrower and shot putter into her 60s.

"She was always elegant, kind, loyal, and strong. Her children will always smile when they think of their Mom carrying that Olympic torch back in 1996. That physical torch is now theirs," her obituary read. "But that is not the only passing of a torch. There is also the figurative one: a beautiful legacy of learning and of loving ... of passion and of purpose … of serving others and of making a difference in this world."

In lieu of flowers, the family prefers donations be made to Interfaith Care Partners, https://bit.ly/3QpXLF8, memo "In Memory of Evelyn L. Lewis."

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Evelyn Lewis, mother of Olympic legend Carl Lewis, dies at 93