Published: August 17, 2008 12:14 am            

HUTSELL: Her kindness forever carries on

Her name was Miriam Matthews, but you’d have a hard time finding anyone who called her that.

To the world, her name was Sug — short for Sugar.

And that’s fitting because, frankly, she was one of the sweetest people that has ever graced the earth that we stand on.

The consummate coach’s wife, forever the Momma Mustang, Sug Matthews passed away on Tuesday at the age of 65.

She was the wife of current Madison and former New Washington boys’ basketball coach Jim Matthews. She was the mother of twin sons, current Clarksville boys’ hoops coach Scott Matthews and Eastern Washington University assistant Jamie.

Known almost as much for her huge heart as her trademark salt and pepper ponytail, she’ll also be survived by the thousands of people whose lives she impacted.

From the star players who grabbed all the major minutes, to the lowly junior varsity benchwarmer writing this column, Sug didn’t care what the kid did during the 32 minutes he was on the basketball court.

She cared about doing what she could to make that player smile.

“She was a big, big part of my life,” said Borden head coach Doc Nash, who played high school basketball for Jim Matthews at New Washington, spent two seasons as a collegiate player at Manchester for Jamie and started his coaching career at Austin High School as an assistant to Scott. “She was a coach’s wife and a real, real good one. She was everywhere we were, always knew the right thing to say. Kind of a mom away from our own mom.”

She was the “Locker Room Fairy.” A veteran of thousands of different game days, Sug filled the stomachs of her players with some sort of goodies the night before every contest, and she spent her years filling dozens of scrapbooks over the course of a season for every player on the team.

“Everything she did, you could tell she did it because she loved us,” Nash said. “She loved being around basketball. She loved the teams, she loved the kids — she’ll be missed by everyone.”

You just needed a minute with the lady to get an idea of who she was.

“When I’ve told people this week that she had passed,” said Henryville boys’ hoops coach Perry Hunter, a former Matthews assistant at New Wash, “they said the same thing. Even if they didn’t know her well, they all would talk about the one time they met her and how nice she truly was and how they will always remember that about her. It wasn’t one thing that she said in particular. It was just her way in general.

“From the day that my daughter was born, every time I saw her she wanted to know about her. She wanted to see pictures. She wanted to hear stories. To some people, that’s small talk. That’s just something to ask to be polite. She cared. She really wanted to know because she loved kids.”

You could call 100 coaches in Indiana and ask for a Sug Matthews story and they’d all contain the same few words — nice, sweet, caring, great.

As I attempt to finish these last few paragraphs with my eyes watering, I want to say a final thanks to Sug for the one last time she made me smile.

It was last winter, when my job was beating me up and my popularity level in my hometown had plummeted. At a Mustang hoops game, Jim and Sug sat next to me and we talked for the better part of four quarters about a variety of subjects.

As the horn sounded and I walked away, a hand patted me on the back and simply said, “You’re really good at what you do.”

Whether she meant it or not, that was Sug. She knew exactly what to say. She knew how to make someone feel good.

The world lost a real good one this week when Sug Matthews departed. When those phone calls started swirling on Tuesday with news of her passing, it reminded people just how special she was.

“Some people when they die, after two or three generations people may not be remembered,” Hunter said. “With the ripple effect, with the number of lives she touched — her kindness and her caring will always live on.”

Contact Mike Hutsell at mike.hutsell@newsandtribune.com.

        

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