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Al Dennis

Al Dennis

Al Dennis

Al Dennis left us on April 25, 2023, to join his Heavenly Father and the angels. His death has left a considerable void in the lives of his immediate family members and his very large circle of friends and former colleagues. Al was born on March 17, 1942, to Lula and Alron Dennis in Ville Platte, Louisiana. He lived to be 81 years old while he battled Parkinson’s disease and several aches and pains associated with a long and successful career in athletics.

Al lived most of his childhood in almost every state in the nation until he moved to Baytown in the summer after his eighth grade year in order to participate in athletics. He attended Robert E. Lee High School in Baytown, Texas. He stood 6-foot-4 and played football, baseball, basketball, and track. He played quarterback for the Robert E. Lee Ganders. He met the only love of his life on the second day of his residence in Baytown and kept a very serious eye on her for the remainder of their lives together. He married Paula Stricklin in 1963. 

Paula and Al were very well known in Baytown as Mr. and Miss Robert E. Lee — an honor bestowed on them by their classmates. As a new college graduate, Al joined the coaching staff at Jesse H. Jones High School in Houston for two years. He moved back to Baytown, Texas and coached at Ross S. Sterling until 1972 becoming the head football coach at Ross S. Sterling High School (the Rice Paddy School) in Baytown. He was 29 years old and the youngest head coach in the state of Texas. During their storied careers in the Baytown area, they were called Ken and Barbie, both because they were a perfect couple, but also because they fit the profile of young teens’ romantic illusions.

Their only son, Chad, was born in 1970, and was an avid admirer of both his mother and his father, attending every football game his father ever coached. Al’s coaching skills were rewarded with a recent formal naming of the football field and complex at Sterling High School in his honor. There is a monument to him placed strategically at the entrance to the football field. His name is scripted in the turf: Al Dennis Field.

The legacy that Al leaves behind extends far beyond his birth, his life, his child, grandchild and his wife. Al Dennis was the man that parents revere for the positive influence he had over the lives of their children. Al Dennis has been honored by several events during the last two years just because the young men he coached and mentored wanted to honor both his memory and his legacy. It doesn’t matter that he led a brand new high school team at Sterling to the state championship; it matters that he meant so much to so many of those young men. These men, now grandfathers to their own children, gave Al public praise for his devotion to them. He helped them to find a purpose, passion and future because every one of them was important to him. 

Al and Paula had only one child, Chad, who was as well-known as his father, since he attended nearly every game and idolized the big men who were high school players under his father’s tutelage. Chad and his wife, Mindy, have only one child, Coleman, who became the student of Al and Paula’s love of adventure, camping, hunting, and ranching. On the week of Al’s demise, his only grandson, Coleman, was getting married on April 29. Al missed that wedding, but he was looking down and blessing the ceremony of his grandson’s marriage.

Living life to the fullest is a difficult task in any world, but Al Dennis accomplished that challenge. He had everything he needed as a successful coach, high school principal and superintendent of schools. He respected everyone he met; he furnished advice and support to those who needed it, and he loved all of humanity with the fierceness of a warrior. Al Dennis, coach, deer hunter and protector of men, will be sorely missed. When you pray, remember him, for he is residing now in His mansion which God has promised us. Amen.

At the present time, two memorial services are planned, one in Georgetown and one in Huntsville. Al will be buried in a family cemetery, the Black Jack Cemetery, in Huntsville, Texas. The Georgetown celebration service will be held at the Worship Place at 11 a.m. on Monday, May 8. A graveside ceremony will be held at 1 p.m. on May 9, at the Black Jack Cemetery.