Former Lincoln High basketball coach Alden "Aldie" Johnson, 90, died Thursday morning in Lincoln.

Johnson was the face of the Links' boys basketball program for 32 years. He posted a 457-311 career record and won three state championships before retiring in 1991.

He began his 41-year coaching career at Waverly, then went to his alma mater, Minden, before taking the Lincoln High job in 1959.

Johnson and the basketball coaches at the other three Lincoln high schools in the 1970s and '80s provided a broad spectrum of basketball philosophy. Ed Johnson was the Lincoln Northeast coach, with Wally McNaught at Lincoln Southeast and Paul Forch at Lincoln East.

"That was a day and age where you had the slowdown with Wally, Ed was medium-speed, Aldie could shift gears and I was at the other end, up-tempo all the time," Forch said Thursday. "He was unpredictable. You didn't know what kind of defense you were going to get. In 1980, we lost a tournament game to them in Kearney and he had three guys playing man and two zoning the bucket.

"Aldie was that way. He could play up-tempo, slow-tempo. He had some great teams. They were always a team that could score well."

Johnson's impact on students and athletes is one of the things his son, Jeff, said will be his father's legacy.

"He touched a lot of people's lives and had a positive influence on so many," the younger Johnson said. "If you talk to the kids he coached, they would tell you how he affected their lives, how he helped grow their lives after athletics. It's what you've learned that you apply to life."

Aldie Johnson said when he retired that he had tried to leave coaching two years earlier, but was convinced by principal Sam Nelson to stick around. His original resignation letter resonated with all the things that made Johnson special in education and athletics.

"Success and satisfaction is measured by yardsticks, time-pieces, dollars and cents, A's and F's and with W's and L's," he wrote to Nelson. "Coaching has given me the opportunity to know, respect and appreciate both sides of the coin, but yet knowing the goal of every athlete and team was always the same — striving for a perishable wreath which does not last forever.

"So it is with great satisfaction that I submit this letter, well-knowing that memories are not perishable but will last forever."

Johnson was just as passionate about his teaching as his coaching. He taught American history and helped pilot programs at Lincoln High, such as the team teaching project, Afro-American history, educational participation in the community and advanced-placement American history for college credit. He was very involved with Boys State and Boys Nation and also worked with the Nebraska Coaches Association and the Nebraska High School Sports Hall of Fame.

He graduated from Minden High School, Nebraska Wesleyan and earned his master's degree from Nebraska.

Aldie and Shirley Johnson set up the Alden Johnson Family Scholarship in 1992. Shirley was a teacher and coordinator at Norwood Park, Hayward, Holmes, Bethany and Eastridge elementary schools. 

Johnson is survived by his wife, sons Jeff of Lincoln and Lee of Kansas City, grandson Jake, and granddaughter Jaimie and her husband Justin Monroe. Services are pending.