Off Beat: Guy who fought long hair has a namesake with a bare skull

Lynyrd and Skynyrd are helping local students learn about the human body.

And their names, appropriately, are inspired by two teachers.

The two anatomical figures are on display in Susie Ridgway’s classroom at Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School, where she teaches human anatomy and physiology.

“A few years ago, to continue to be a highly qualified teacher, I decided to take some math and science classes at Clark College,” she said. “The first day I went to my math class, the teacher said, you could never be late to class. I was teaching all day and then driving to Clark — and sometimes I was late — so I dropped that math class.

“I tried again with a different math teacher — at night, so I would not be late. However, he was a high school math teacher in the day and treated us like high school students.

“The third time was a charm,” Ridgway said. That math teacher, whose first name was Leonard, “was the greatest math teacher ever!

“So when my students insisted that I name my skeleton, his name came to mind — and my students thought it was a great idea.”

Later, there was a similar discussion involving an anatomical figure with a big patch of skin gone from the torso to show internal organs.

With all that missing skin, “We decided to name him Skinard,” she said.

It didn’t take long for someone to link those names with the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, she said, and “That’s the way it’s been ever since.”

The other teacher who was a namesake? The rock ‘n’ rollers named their band after one of their own teachers. It’s a riff on Leonard Skinner, a P.E. teacher who was known for enforcing the school’s policy against boys’ having long hair.

Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.