Page 106 - South Mississippi Living - December, 2017

SPORTS & OUTDOORS bonding experiences MAKING
MEMORIES
Outdoor activities create lasting family memories
sAtory by Ricky R. Mathews photos courtesy of The Mathews Family
ndy Rooney once said, I often tell folks that having fish “Everyone wants to live on and deer sausage in the freezer is top of the mountain, but all nice, but the real motivation was the of the happiness and growth opportunity to spend time with my
comes from climbing it.” I’ll add,
when you can climb life’s mountains with your kids, the joy and love you find in each other and the beauty you witness together will touch your souls. Somehow then, life is more complete. The naturalist John Muir said, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature,
he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” I was taught this by my father and grandfathers, and I’ve found a bond with my children teaching it to them.
When I was publisher of the Sun Herald, I occasionally wrote an outdoors column, usually about enjoying the outdoors with my kids. I was always struck by the conversations with readers the columns created, serving as a reminder of how important the outdoors are to the people of South Mississippi.
I can tell you beyond a shadow of
a doubt that fishing kept me out of trouble as a young man growing up
in Gulfport. I loved to fish. Later in
life, after I became president of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation, I was introduced to duck and deer hunting. While fishing and hunting were my primary focus, after my wife Ann and I had kids, we spent our annual vacations hiking and looking for wildlife in national parks across the United States and scuba diving off Key West and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
sons teaching them responsibility
and conservation. My daughter Torie and my wife Ann love to fish the backwaters of South Mississippi. They just don’t like the long offshore trips the boys and I take.
Now that Torie is teaching at St Patrick High School with two beautiful children of her own, we have started the process of instilling in her kids a love for the outdoors.
My son Jordan is a lawyer now, practicing on the Mississippi Coast. He literally can’t get enough of fishing and hunting. Good thing he married a woman who also loves the
outdoors. My son Justin
is finishing his master’s
work at Auburn University
and will start working in
Houston next year. I’m
confident he’ll make the
drive to hunt with Jordan
and me at Delta Bluffs, our
deer and duck camp in the
Mississippi Delta, and back
to Biloxi to fish offshore.
Ann and I pray that no
matter where our kids
go, they will always want
to come home to continue making wonderful memories in the outdoors. A family that enjoys the outdoors together, stays together.
FISHING FUN Ricky Mathews, center, with sons, Justin, left, and Jordan, right, showing off their prize catch from a great day on the water.
106 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • December 2017
FOR MORE REFLECTIONS OF THE GULF COAST >> www.smliving.net
HUNTING WITH THE FAMILY Ricky Mathews, left, with sons Justin, Jordan, his wife Cierra, daughter Torie Williams and her husband Keith Williams, Jr.