A final goodbye to Coach LeVine
Vigil to honor one of the Swannanoa Valley’s brightest stars
Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
January 14, 2021
Head coach Jim LeVine, third from the right, and the coaching staff of the 1974 Buncombe County Champion Owen Warhorses. LeVine, who passed away Jan. 3 at the age of 87, never had a losing season as the head coach of the Warhorses. Owen High School 1974 yearbook photo courtesy of Kenny Ford
There are far too many stories about Jim LeVine in the Swannanoa Valley to count. As a star athlete he electrified crowds on the field for the Dark Horses of Black Mountain High School, which occupied the building on Flat Creek Road that now houses the elementary school. Once his playing days were over he became “Coach,” as he was known to generations of students at Owen High School where he was the physical education teacher, driver's education instructor, athletic director and coach over a career that spanned decades.
As the community mourns the loss of the beloved athlete, coach, mentor and friend, who passed away Jan. 3, at the age of 87, his impact on the lives of others is as immeasurable as the number of memories that continue to live on.
An outdoor candlelight vigil to honor and celebrate the life of the coach will be held at 6 p.m., Friday, Jan. 15. The socially distanced event will begin in the parking lot of Harwood Home for Funerals and the procession will walk a few short blocks to the home LeVine shared with his wife of 62 years, Anne Marie. The brief memorial will include a moment of silence and phone flashlights will be used to give it a candlelight effect.
Steve Ensley and Richard Hudson are organizing the vigil, and encourage everyone in attendance to wear masks and practice COVID-19 safety. The event will allow the people whose lives were directly impacted by LeVine to pay their final respects.
“Coach LeVine taught me to swim long before I was an athlete,” said Ensley, who remembers his former teacher and mentor fondly. “I met him in the third grade, and he was already such an important figure in the Valley. Once I was in high school, he taught me how to drive, and he was my coach and teacher.”
LeVine’s work in the community left a lasting legacy, according to Ensley, whose in-laws were neighbors with the coach for more than 60 years.
Jim LeVine, standing, poses playfully for a yearbook photo with former Owen High School principal Charles Lytle. Owen High School yearbook photo courtesy of Kenny Ford
“The impact he had on the people who live here is tremendous, everyone has stories about him,” he said. “Most people don’t touch as many lives as Coach did.”
Memories of the Buncombe County native are too numerous to count, but they have been with Carl Bartlett since childhood. The “Voice of the Warhorses” for decades, some of Bartlett’s earliest football memories include LeVine’s playing days at Black Mountain High School, where he earned the Western North Carolina Running Back of the Year Award.
“Jim moved back home from Florida, where he was an All-State football player at Miami Beach,” Bartlett said. “He had the kind of personality where you always knew he was around. He was a hard-nosed player and he was always a big deal in the Swannanoa Valley.”
Not only did the star running back turn heads on the field, he was often the center of attention off of it, especially when he was driving his 1950s yellow Ford with tan leather seats, Bartlett recalled.
“I grew up on the east end of town, around Padgettown Road,” he said. “Jim had to come through there on his way to the pool, which was the local hangout for the kids back then. Every time he’d see us walking, he’d pick us up and drive us the rest of the way. We thought it was a big deal pulling up to the pool with Jim LeVine in that car of his.”
LeVine attended Duke University after high school before earning a degree in education from Western Carolina University. After a brief stint at Lee Edwards High School in Asheville, he returned to the Swannanoa Valley as a driver’s education instructor and coach at Owen, less than a decade after the Black Mountain and Swannanoa high schools consolidated to form it.
He was promoted to head football coach in the early 1970s and his impact was immediate, according to Kenny Ford, who played for LeVine and would later go on to coach the Warhorse program for 29 years.
“He was already a legend in this community by the time I played for him,” Ford said of LeVine. “I remember him bringing everybody into the auditorium and he told us we were going to win.”
That statement was bold at the time, according to Ford, because the Warhorses were coming off of several difficult seasons.
“They were 1-9 the season before Coach LeVine took over and, at that time, Owen had kind of gone from being a football school to a basketball school,” he said. “But at that moment, he instilled a winning mentality in our program.”
The coach made immediate improvements to the football program, including multiple renovations to the field house at Shuford Field, the home of the team until the construction of Warhorses Stadium in the 1990s.
“He did stuff we’d never seen,” Ford said. “He chartered buses for our away games, he started giving out helmet stickers when we made plays and he really helped restore Warhorses Pride.”
LeVine’s efforts weren’t limited to the football field. During his career at Owen he established the school’s wrestling and weightlifting programs, and in his role as the athletic director, he hired a young unproven coach named Roy Williams to lead the basketball program. He also coached wrestling, golf, swimming, track and baseball. LeVine was the first inductee in the Swannanoa, Black Mountain and Owen High Schools Hall of Fame. A plaque recognizing him as a “friend, athlete, coach and teacher” is mounted on the top left corner on the display at the entrance to the schools’ gymnasium.
Jim LeVine, left, hired current University of North Carolina men’s basketball head coach Roy Williams, left, to lead the Owen High School basketball program in 1973. It was the first head coaching position of Williams’ career. Owen High School yearbook photo courtesy of Kenny Ford
“Coach LeVine loved Owen,” Ford said. “He was proud of his hometown and he wanted us to be proud, too.”
In his first season on the sidelines LeVine led the Warhorses to a 6-4 record. The team would finish 8-2 while capturing a Buncombe County Conference Championship three years later, earning LeVine recognition as the WNC Coach of the Year.
“He was a great coach, but the most special thing about him was that he made everyone want to go out there and play for him,” Ford said. “Everyone had so much respect for him, nobody wanted to go out there and let Coach LeVine down.”
When a young Ford began considering a return to his alma mater as a head coach in 1986, his mentor was one of the first people he went to for advice. The team, much like when LeVine took over, had been struggling in recent years.
“I was young at that time and a lot of people, including my dad, thought I wasn’t ready,” he said. “But I remember Coach LeVine telling me, ‘these kids will play for you.’”
Ford wanted to restore the pride and tradition that his former coach brought to the program.
“I wanted those kids to go out there and play for the Swannanoa Valley like we had under Coach LeVine,” Ford said. “I didn’t want to disappoint him, and that was something that really motivated me.”
Longtime Owen High School head football coach Kenny Ford remembers his former coach and mentor Jim LeVine at Shuford Field, where the Warhorses played in the 1970s. Ford credits LeVine with instilling pride and a winning mentality in the program. Photo by Fred McCormick
Ford plans to attend the candlelight vigil for his former coach, who he will remember as a “loving and caring man.”
“He cared about all of us kids in the Valley, and checked up on a lot of us over the years,” he said. “Coach LeVine was a great man, and everyone who knew him knows this community is better because he was part of it.”