Episode Details

Sylvia Turner, affectionately known to generations of Lafayette families as “Ms. T,” joins Discover Lafayette to reflect upon a remarkable life of teaching, music, faith, and service to others.

For more than five decades, beginning in 1972, Sylvia taught children and adults to swim in the backyard pool of her Lafayette home. But anyone fortunate enough to have taken lessons from Ms. T knows she taught much more than swimming.

She taught safety. She taught respect. She taught children to encourage one another, to follow rules, to appreciate their parents, and perhaps most importantly, to believe they could do things that initially frightened them.

“One of my greatest compliments was when people would say, ‘You don’t just teach swimming, do you?’” Sylvia recalls. “I said, ‘No, I don’t. I teach everything I can while I can.’”

Two Lives: Ms. T and Sylvia the Singer

Many Lafayette residents knew Sylvia exclusively as Ms. T, the swim teacher who could spend long summer days in the pool working with one class after another. Others knew an entirely different Sylvia Turner, a classically trained singer whose musical life was intertwined with that of her late husband, John Turner.

Sylvia grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and came to Lafayette with John, who taught voice at UL for 34 years. Sylvia later received an opera scholarship, and the couple performed opera together as well as singing at university commencement ceremonies.

She also became a fixture at the Order of Troubadours ball, serving as the opening soloist for “Make Believe” for 40 years.

The separation between her two worlds occasionally created funny moments. Sylvia remembers singing at a commencement ceremony when a family approached her afterward, looking puzzled. “Ms. T, is that you? Did you sing?” “Yes,” she answered.

“In the singing world, a lot of people didn’t know that I taught swimming,” Sylvia says. “And then in the swimming world, a lot of people didn’t know that I sang.”

A Fear of Water Leads to a Lifetime in the Pool

It is fitting that Sylvia ultimately devoted so much of her life to teaching people to be comfortable in the water, because she did not learn to swim herself until she was 11 years old.

Her mother, Lucille, had nearly drowned at age 18. The experience was so traumatic that Sylvia grew up repeatedly hearing, “Don’t go near the water.”

Eventually, her mother enrolled her in Red Cross swimming lesso