Charles Willard Mathews Memoir, Part 4 - The Final Chapter
Continued from (Charles Willard Mathews memoir, part 3 - War & Beyond)
This Has Been My Life (Cont.)
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| 1996 - Chuck meets Natasha, the newest Mathews |
Later: A few years have whizzed past. I must add to
this story of my life, in some ways filling in gaps and others providing a
sequel.
I had been very active in
Scouting all through the years. About the time I was retiring I had ideas about
letting younger men step up to lead, but I was slow in carrying this forward. I
finally began to act on these ideas when I realized I was to leave Colorado.
After I retired at the end of
1974, I was talked into teaching ‘management’ courses for the University of
Southern California at various military bases. That was interesting because it
enabled me to visit other parts of the country for two-month stints, but the
teaching was not really interesting and the curricula were woefully
out-of-date. In 1980 while I was preparing to leave Fort Campbell, Kentucky,
Jean became suddenly ill, and was taken to Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. For
two months she was in intensive care before she died on December 23. I
continued to teach for a few classes for USC - at Fort Riley, Ft. Carson and
Ft. Rucker, but that was not my bag and I resigned.
I felt that I needed a home. So
with little delay I remarried. My bride was my former secretary at NORAD, Mary
Ann (Sansone) Mike. We bought a home at 924 E. Dale, Colorado Springs, fixed it
up just like we wished but the wintery weather gave Mary Ann the urge to find
an abode in a warmer area. After a journey through Arizona and along the border
from Nogales to Las Cruces, NM, we spent a couple of days with Charles and
Patricia. Mary Ann liked the city and found a house that we later purchased. In
a couple of months we packed up and took residence on August 9, 1985 at 131
Mimosa Lane.
For me the departure from the
snow, the mountain peaks and the wilderness flowers was difficult. Having
climbed all the high (above 14,000 ft.) peaks of Colorado, skied and snowshoed
a lot, and been involved in search and rescue, it was a big change to drop to a
3,000 foot desert. At this writing I am making up for that separation by going
to Colorado to work on the new Colorado Trail, and I spent a couple of weeks in
1989 rebuilding high trails at Big Bend National Park.
Serious illness
befell each of us since we came to Las Cruces. In 1987 Mary Ann suffered
horribly from a painful lower back dislocation. It has very slowly healed. Unfortunately,
she also has an affinity for allergies that cause her to be very uncomfortable
in the summer. During the holidays of ‘87-‘88 I was having severe and continual
headaches. Dr. Pettit ordered me to the hospital and started me on a routine to
reduce and control High Blood Pressure. That was a miserable two weeks in the
hospital and a long period spent in returning much to normal activities.
Here
ends my father’s memoir. He remained in Las Cruces for the rest of his life,
participating in Boy Scouts and prison visitation. He enjoyed playing cribbage
with his son Charlie (CWM III) and granddaughter Megan.
In
1996 he traveled to California to visit us and meet his newest granddaughter.
When I left him at the airport, I was saddened to think that I might never see him
again. Within the next couple months his doctor told him that he had several blocked arteries and needed quadruple bypass
surgery. He refused, asking the doctor how much longer and 80-year-old man was
expected to live anyway. He passed away on May 9th, 1996.
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