50 YEARS AND COUNTING FOR OUTDOORS WRITER
Retirement Hasn't Slowed Rea's Passion For The Outdoors

Larry Rea for USA Today Network-Tennessee

On this date in 1967, I spent my first day on the job as a member of the Commercial Appeal's sports department, going against the wishes of my former boss, Jack Keady at the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock. When I told Keady, a man I deeply trusted, I was leaving for Memphis he said, "Son, you won't like it there. You'll be back in 5 months."

Well, 50 years later I'm still here, writing once a week for the CA, where I spent most of my time covering high school sports before closing out my tenure in the last 13 years as outdoors editor. As the prep editor I wrote about some of the Memphis area's most famous athletes and coaches as well as notable moments, including the inaugural state football playoff championship game - Morristown East (coached by Rex Dockery) beating Memphis South Side, 15-12. South Side was coached by Rube Boyce, who was known more at that time as the coach who cut Elvis from Humes High's football team.

In April 1988, CA Editor David Wayne Brown chose me to follow Reynolds, who had worked at the CA for 40-plus years. Since then I have devoted the bulk of my career to the outdoors in print, online and on the radio.

I had hoped to compile my 50 top outdoors articles in the CA, but that would require way too much space. So, after whittling my original list from 300 to 50, here's my memory makers.

THROUGH THE YEARS IN THE OUTDOORS WITH LARRY REA:

May 15, 1992: Dock operators along the Little Red River believe the recent catch of a world-record brown trout on the river near Heber Springs Ark., will prove to be a double dose of good fortune for the area. For sure, the 40-pound, 4-ounce brown trout caught Saturday by Howard 'Rip' Collins of Heber Springs, Ark., will bring fishermen to the area.

January 15, 1994: Picture this -- 15,000 spectators viewing the first Olympic whitewater slalom competition to be held in a natural river setting, with the grandstands surrounded by lush, landscaped grounds. Welcome to Tennessee's version of the 1996 Olympic Games. Southeast Tennessee's Ocoee River Gorge will provide the backdrop for the '96 Olympic whitewater event.

August 3, 1994: Memphis-based Ducks Unlimited announced Tuesday an agreement to produce next May the first Ducks Unlimited Great Outdoors Sporting and Wildlife Festival, which sponsors say will become America's foremost show for outdoors enthusiasts. The event, hailed as a "hands-on, innovative outdoor experience," will be held May 5-7 adjacent to DU headquarters at the 250-acre Agricenter International.

August 14, 1994: He's a rocker, hunter and crusader who comes to concerts armed only with a guitar and his mouth. Both can be deadly. When rock and roll legend Ted Nugent isn't performing, such as Frday night's upcoming concert at Mud Island, he's saying things like "the future of the shooting sports in this country is in the hands of tomorrow's outdoorsmen and women. The youth of America must be educated to the wholesome and valued world of hunting and conservation."

May 12, 1996: Getting the Ocoee River prepared for the 1996 Olympic Games has been no small undertaking. In fact, it has been what project director Paul Wright calls "a traumatic experience...like having labor pains for four years." The baby is about to be born.After almost two years of intense, daylight-to-dark construction work and two more years of sorting through mounds of government red tape, the Ocoee River will host the Olympic slalom canoe/kayak competition, Jly 26-28.

March 27, 1977: David Goad, a wildlife biologist for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission squirmed to get his lanky frame inside the 3-foot hole, slipping deeper and deeper into the opening's darkness until only half his legs could be seen. Goad was halfway inside the winter home of one of 16 radio-collared female black bears the AGFC monitors annually in late winter. On this day, Goad and about 15 others, including Janet Huckabee, wife of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and me, were surveying a den occupied by a female black bear known as Heather.

August 10, 1997: Tears were flowing when it came time to crown Dion Hibdon of Stover, Mo., as the champion of the 27th BASS Masters Classic Saturday at the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center. Hibdon was crying . So was his mother, Stella, and father, Guido. For that matter, so were many of the 39 anglers competing in what is dubbed the Super Bowl of professional bass fishing. These were tears of joy, an emotional moment for a 31-year-old angler whose father won the Classic in 1988.

February 27, 1998: Leon Searles couldn't let the opportunity pass. He was determined to be the lone nonresident to participate in Arkansas's first elk hunting season this fall. But for that to happen he'd have to pay the price. Searles, of St. Johns, Mich., was the successful bidder on an Arkansas elk permit at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's annual convention last weekend at Portland, Ore. His winning bid was $42,500. "Does that tell you how bad I wanted that hunt?" Searles said.

November 4, 1999: A year ago, Mark Rose was a district director for the Boy Scouts of America with a dream of one day quitting his job and going full time on one of the professional bass-fishing circuits. "I knew one day I would give it all up and fish for a living," Rose says. "Bu I knew it had to be in God's time, not my time." God's time came sooner than Rose, of Marion, Ark., expected. And it came close to home. A third-place finish -and accompanying $20,000 paycheck-in a Walmart tournament on the Mississippi River based out of Memphis.

December 10, 2000: Sometime in the late afternoon on Dec. 18 a convoy of trailers will complete a 50-hour drive from snowy Alberta, Canada to East Tennessee. The convoy of four trailers will be carrying a historic cargo-50 elk from Elk Island National Park near Edmonton. The elk are scheduled to be released at 11 a.m. on Dec.19 as a part of a four-year effort by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency to re-introduce a "free-roaming herd" to Tennessee.

May 13, 2001: How much does Bill Dance love to fish? So much he used to give his mother a rod and reel for Mother's Day. "She didn't know one end of the rod from the reel," Dance says. "She would give it back to me and tell me to use it until she needed it." Dance's mother never needed the rod and reel, but her son certainly did. He has combined his rod and reel talents with his gift of gab and tireless work habits to become one of the icons in the world of fishing, a superstar.

July 1, 2005: Pat Pitt couldn't sleep after learning of the death of Dr. William F. 'Chubby' Andrews. Pitt, like countless others in the Mid-South, had duck hunted, swapped stories or shared a meal with Dr. Andrews, who died at the age of 84 at his home in Germantown Wednesday. "I guess it was 4 in the morning and I was still up thinking about him," said Pitt, who lives in Olive Branch. "The Mid-South hunting fraternity lost a true legend, father figure, cherished friend and mentor with the death of Mr. Chubby.”

July 10, 2005: Armed only with a camera, an assortment of calling devices and two decoys, George Brint headed to the woods on a recent morning in search of what Gary Cook, Region 1 office manager, once called "one of the most amazing animals on the face of the earth." We're talking about coyotes, for which there is no season in Tennessee and which since the early 1990s has become more than a hunting pursuit for Brint, the owner and founder of Advanced Decoy Research.

December 22, 2005: He's never spent a day in the hospital. For that matter, he's never had a headache. Maybe, says his wife of 64 years in jest, "that's because there's nothing up there to ache." Yet, it's often the sick, depressed and downtrodden that benefits the most from Tommy Young's talents. This gentle, Bible-quoting silver-haired man, whose roots are in Whitehaven and who at age 87 is one of the Mid-South's most decorated wood carvers, loves to bring a smile to those who benefit from his carvings.

January 4, 2006: ABASOLA, Tamaulipas, Mexico - To a bird hunter, this is heaven. From the minute you arrive at Harlingen (Texas) International Airport you know you are among friends. Everybody, it appeared, was headed to Mexico to hunt white wing doves at one of the 30-plus hunting destinations located in what's known as the Grand Valley of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Hunters were everywhere in the airport. You could tell they were hunters by their clothes (camo caps and loose-fitting shirts and pants.

June 17, 2006: Fishing and Father's Day have always gone hand in hand for Carl Graham and his daughter, Carla. But before the family could properly celebrate Father's Day, Carl had to do one important thing: He had to fish in the St. Jude Bass Classic, held annually on the Sunday during Memorial Day Weekend at Sardis Lake in North Mississippi. Only four times in the tournament's 34 years has Graham not fished in the SJBC. One of these days, Graham would say, "I'm going to win that tournament." Well, they did.

September 20, 2015: When you hear the name Mossy Oak, what do you think of? Camo, right? After all, that’s where the term began more than three decades ago, when Toxey Haas took a bag of dirt to a fabric factory and said he wanted to create a pattern to match the dirt. He got more than he bargained for. Mossy Oak is one of today’s iconic outdoor brands. With beginnings as a maker of camouflage clothing for hunting, Mossy Oak has grown into a family of brands.

Note: All of these stories were published in The Commercial Appeal. Rea writes a weekly outdoors column on Sundays in The Commercial Appeal.