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GREENSBORO — Jack Jensen was part of the very fabric of this city, helping bring us all together, a tapestry of a life that made us feel part of something larger. Greensboro lost someone important Sunday night.

Jensen died after returning from a golf tournament. The longtime teacher and coach at Guilford College was 71.

He knew everybody, and everybody seemed to know him. His passions were family and school, golf and basketball.

He was an integral part of the city’s history, providing great moments in sports and doing something not many people do anymore. He made us all better.

Jensen coached the 1973 NAIA national basketball championship team at Guilford, a team that changed the college and the city around it forever, sending players to the NBA and coaches into our high schools. Jensen later coached the men’s golf team to three national titles, teams that sent players to the PGA Tour and golf teachers into the community.

“I’ve been fortunate to be around the right kind of people,” he said two weeks ago. “That’s probably something we take for granted sometimes.”

Jensen was one of those no one took for granted. He was the right kind of people.

He came here in 1965, a young high school coach from Elkin who had played basketball for Bones McKinney at Wake Forest. He came to Greensboro to work for legendary coach Jerry Steele, thinking he might make a decent head coach himself some day.

“I didn’t think it was that hard,” he said. “I was wrong.”

Jensen became the most decorated coach in Guilford College history and one of the most honored coaches in America. He was enshrined in six halls of fame including the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and the Guilford County Sports Hall of Fame. His long and winding acceptance speeches were always the highlight of those festivities.

Robert Kent played for Jensen on the 1973 team that went to Kansas City, Mo., and won the NAIA championship. He said Jensen stayed out of the way of what he knew to be a special team.

“He would sometimes come into the locker room at halftime, drink a cup of water and say, 'Y’all just keep doing what you’ve been doing,’” said Kent, now the boys basketball coach at Page High School.

It will be harder to keep doing what we’re doing now that he’s gone. Jensen was at all the events in this city, all the events that brought us together as a city. He was a thread who wove together so many lives here, lives touched by Guilford College, by basketball and by golf. He used to say golf and basketball were a big part of what Greensboro was all about.

But he would never admit to being anything more than a part of it. Someone was always more important, more integral. He was self-effacing and humble to the end.

As he prepared to follow Guilford to the NCAA Division III basketball tournament two weeks ago, he sat in his office and returned phone calls. He reminisced about his days when he was the young basketball coach.

“I didn’t know any better,” Jensen said. “I had good players, and I had a team that got along. I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be like that. That was what I always tried to do, just keep the players happy, try to make them a little better every day and hope they all got along.”

That was his gift. He got along with everybody. He touched the lives of so many people and helped make Greensboro a major player in two of its passions, golf and basketball. None of those will be the same now, not golf, not basketball and not Greensboro.

We lost one of the good ones Sunday night.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com