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<a href="https://forumeus.com/search.php?query=glynn+abel&do=process" target="_blank">Glynn Abel</a> was remembered this week as an outstanding athlete, university and community leader, mentor to young people, and "just a plain, good man."
The longtime dean of men at UL (when it was SLI and USL) died Saturday of cancer. He was 94 years old and active until only a week before his death.
Abel, a winner of the Lafayette Civic Cup in 1989, came from a large family in rural Carroll County, Miss., attended junior college in Mississippi, then came to SLI in the late 1930s.
He made his name as one of the finest athletes to play for the school, lettering in football, baseball and track. He was a triple-threat halfback in the single-wing football attack and was named a Little All-American in 1938.
He said in a radio interview several years ago that he got to Lafayette by accident. He was on his way to the University of Utah to play football there when he stopped to visit an old friend in Lafayette. The friend talked him into staying and playing football for SLI.
That, friends say, was Lafayette's gain.
<center><p><a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/NEWS01/803270313/1002" target="_blank">The rest of the story</a>
Jim Bradshaw
jbradshaw@theadvertiser.com
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"He was just a wonderful human being who never had an unkind word for anyone," remembers banker Buddy Webb, a friend of 20 years or more. "He was a pillar of the community."
"There isn't a person I've met in this town who didn't know Glynn, and every one of them had something good to say about him."
"He was always a leader," according to Margaret McMillan, who knew Abel since their undergraduate days at SLI. "He got things done and was successful at whatever he did."
She remembered him as "a thoughtful and kind person" who went out of his way to help others.
McMillan, who was on the faculty at the time, and others credited Abel with a leading role in the peaceful integration of the university in 1954, making it the first Louisiana college to end racial segregation.
After graduating in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in animal husbandry, Abel stayed at SLI as assistant dean of men, leaving only during World War II, when he served as a naval officer in the Pacific Theater.
He returned to SLI in 1945 to become dean of men and held that position until 1969, when he retired from the university and became manager of the Lafayette Municipal Auditorium (now the Heymann Performing Arts Center) and later served as Lafayette's Director of Community Affairs.
Longtime friends Red Dumesnil and Red Lerille remembered that Abel was also a supporter of the so-called "minor sports" at the university.
"When he was dean of men, he used to take the tennis team on trips," Dumesnil recalled. Lerille said he was also sponsor of the university's national championship weightlifting team.
"He was quite a guy," Dumesnil said.
He was active in a variety of civic affairs, serving as president of the Beaver's Club of Lafayette, chairman of the mayor's committee on youth, a member of the governor's commission on higher education, president of Dean of Men's Association for five-state area and of the Louisiana Dean of Men's Association.
Webb said that when he visited Abel during his last hospital stay, the avid golfer (who shot at least eight holes-in-one) told him (in jest), "I said I wanted to be buried on a Saturday so that it would mess up everyone's golf game."
"Actually," McMillan said, "He wanted a Saturday funeral to be sure that his friends would be able to travel and come to it without having to take a day off work. He was thoughtful even in death."
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