Evelyn Lewis, mother of Olympic legend Carl Lewis, died at the age of 93
Evelyn Lawler Lewis was a world-class track star who was sidelined from the 1952 Olympic team due to injury, but she continued to teach and coach students and athletes and saw her son Carl Lewis earn nine Olympic gold medals.
The Lewis family lost their matriarch on January 4 at the age of 93.
A celebration of her life will be held Thursday at 4 p.m. at Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church, 3015 N. MacGregor Way, Houston, Texas. Visitation will be before the service from 3 to 4 p.m.; live streaming is available at https://goodhope.org/
According to an obituary published by Mabrie Memorial Mortuary, Lewis was born in Gadsden, the sixth of nine children, and was so skinny that everyone called him “chicken legs.”
However, during his senior year of high school, he competed in track at Tuskegee Institute, where he caught the eye of the varsity coach and he asked him to come there.
Lewis attended and became the first member of his family to attend college. He did the honor and became the number one in the school. He was inducted into the Tuskegee University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1985, according to a school press release about his death.
In 1951, he 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,” he later asked.
Lewis later broke the American record in the 80-meter hurdles and set his sights on the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. By then, he had risen to the top three hurdlers in the world, but an injury before the Olympic trials kept him out of the team.
Son Carl made five Olympic teams, won nine gold medals and one silver medal, and won 10 world championships.
Daughter Carol Lewis was a 1983 World Championship bronze medalist and four-time US 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 didn’t run her leg alone. Carol and Carl ran right with Evelyn – one on each side of her – and she might as well have run in the actual Olympics,” her obituary read.
It was one of many accomplishments in Lewis’s life that earned the admiration of the Gadsden family. She earned their love, niece Alice Vaughn said, she was a loving, outgoing woman and one of the many positive influences in their lives.
Vaughn lived with the Lewis family for a time in New Jersey and Birmingham in the early 1960s. She said Lewis was one of several strong female influences in her family.
“He gave me a surprise ‘Sweet 16’ party,” Vaughn recalled.
According to her niece, Evelyn Lewis was a good cook and a good seamstress, and she loved sports—especially tennis. Vaughn said he, his aunt and others would play together when Venus and Serena Williams played.
Lewis’ father, Fred Lawler, pastored Mount Olive Church on Valley Street, Vaughn said, and Lawler Circle was named after him.
Lewis was preceded in death by his father, mother Lurene Lawler and several siblings.
Teacher and coach
At Tuskegee, Lewis met William McKinley Lewis Jr. of Chicago, and they married shortly after his graduation. They moved to Chicago, and he returned to school for a master’s degree—becoming the first African-American to earn a master’s degree from MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois.
The couple got teaching jobs and initially settled in Montgomery, where they welcomed sons Mack and Cleve, before moving to Birmingham, where Carl and Carol were born. They lived in Alabama during the biggest events of the civil rights movement, participating in the Montgomery bus boycott and supporting 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 racial issues every day. According to the obituary, Evelyn Lewis remembered taking the long way home to avoid an amusement park where blacks weren’t allowed, so she had to explain to her older sons why they couldn’t go there.
While visiting his sister in New Jersey, he interviewed for a teaching job and was offered the job. The family moved to Willingboro, New Jersey, just two weeks after Carol was born and just a few weeks before the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that claimed the lives of four girls—former playmates of Mack and Cleve.
Vaughn said Chris McNair was one of his uncle’s best friends; her daughter Denise was one of four children who died in the church.
In New Jersey, children attended an integrated school and played sports with others.
Evelyn Lewis was one of the first black teachers in the school district. He started coaching ice hockey, later coached track and field and was involved in other programs for girls. When the school did not start a girls’ track program, she and her husband started their own Willingboro Track Club in 1969.
Lewis taught and coached until his retirement in 1985.
All the children were involved in sports. Mack excelled as a sprinter; football was Cleve’s sport.
Lewis took Carl and Carol to the track to save childcare money, his obituary explained, and they became interested in track and field — sometimes mimicking the drills the students did, but mostly playing long jump in the sand.
When Carl and Carol started competing, they started making national teams, and their parents followed every step until their father’s death in 1987.
Lewis participated in the Senior Olympics and continued to compete as a discus thrower and shot putter until he was 60 years old.
“She was always classy, kind, loyal and strong. Her children always smile when they think of their mother carrying the Olympic torch in 1996. This physical torch is now theirs,” her obituary read. “But it’s not the only passing of the torch. It’s also figurative: a beautiful legacy of learning and loving … passion and purpose … serving others and making a difference in this world.”
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to Interfaith Care Partners, https://bit.ly/3QpXLF8memo “In memory of Evelyn L. Lewis.”