Aldon Lewis Lenard
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Aldon Lewis Lenard (born northern Italy January 6, 1921, died Kingston, Ontario, Canada February 23, 2007) was an all-around athlete, university professor, athletics administrator, and coach. He has been called the best all-round athlete to ever be associated with Queen's University.
Lenard was born in Italy and moved to Canada with his family at age three. They settled in Windsor, Ontario, where Lenard completed high school and excelled in virtually every sport he attempted, including football, basketball, and track and field. He played semi-professional football with the Hamilton Tigers (today the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League) in the Ontario Rugby-Football Union for two seasons, and was a superb quarterback, kicker, and defender.
He joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1941 and served for four years during World War II, and won a number of field events at service meets, such as the discus and the javelin, handily beating the best Americans and Britons who were also posted at the same bases.
At the war's end, Lenard enrolled in the Physical and Health Education (today the Kinesiology and Health Studies) program at Queen's University. He played football and starred at quarterback, and won the Jenkins Trophy as the outstanding student-athlete in his graduating year, 1949. That was the first-ever class to graduate from Queen's in that field of physical and health education. He also played varsity basketball, golf, track and field, swimming, and softball for Queen's.
Lenard then enrolled in a Master's program at the University of Michigan. At that time, it was virtually impossible to do graduate work in his field in Canada. He did his doctorate at the University of Illinois, and returned to Queen's in 1954 to join the faculty, teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses. He was eventually appointed as full professor.
He became an assistant football coach at Queen's in 1954, and stayed with that until 1970, seeing Queen's first Vanier Cup title in 1968 under Frank Tindall as head coach. He also coached the golf team with success for many years into the 1980s. Lenard's coaching blended exceptional skill and knowledge, positive feedback and encouragement, incisive analysis and constructive criticism, guided by a steady hand.
He was appointed as Director of Athletics and Recreation in 1963 for Queen's, and served in that post for 20 years, until 1983. During that time, from 1972, the Ontario University Athletics Association (OUAA, today OUA) group unified its operations to include all provincial institutions which wanted to compete, under one league structure; before that, there had been several separate leagues. Today, the OUA, with 19 member institutions, is the largest university sports conference in the world.
Under Lenard's leadership, Queen's expanded from 19 to 42 varsity teams, the most in the country. Queen's also opened a new and greatly expanded athletics complex in 1971, to meet rising enrollment from baby-boomers who were reaching university age.
Lenard was elected President of the National Athletic Director's Association in 1972, and Vice-President of the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union (CIAU, today CIS) in 1973. He served as Chairman of the CIAU Administrative Council from 1973-74, Chairman of the OUAA Administrative Council from 1974-76, and President of the OUAA from 1980-1988.
A remarkable feature of his all-round abilities was the combination of teaching, coaching, administration, and active competition, all with great success.
Lenard was a recipient of the J.P. Loosemore Award from the OUAA for outstanding service to university athletics. He was inducted into the Queen's University Golden Gaels Football Hall of Fame, the Queen's University Golden Gaels Coaches' Hall of Fame, and the Kingston Sports Hall of Fame.
He had won the Kingston City Golf Championship in 1957, and many more golf club championships and local events. He was shooting his age when in his mid-70s; this is one of golf's rarest and toughest feats, and he would compete actively against his own golf team's members, even while spotting them 40 or more years. Lenard continued to compete very avidly and successfully at golf, bowling, and curling, until suffering a stroke in 2001 at age 80, from which he lost the use of his right side. His final years were quiet, but he lived to see the planning for the Queen's Centre, the next generation of Athletics and Student Life Centre for the campus. This new project will be the most complex and most expensive (slated for $230 million) ever undertaken at any Canadian university, and had its groundbreaking ceremony on March 2, 2007.
Lenard died at age 86 in Kingston on February 23, 2007. His wife Jean, whom he had married in 1946, died ten days later, on March 7, 2007.
