One year ago this week, Dick Harmon of the Deseret News wrote about Lisa Mathews, who died April 13, 2017, at age 53 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, and the impact she had on the BYU football team.
Mathews, mother to former BYU football players Marcus and Mitchell Mathews, was “the true mother of the Band of Brothers,” said former receiver Kurt Henderson.
When Henderson's parents left to serve a three-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and were unable to attend his games, Lisa adopted him into the Mathews family.
“Lisa, just by the goodness of who she is, always looked after people,” Henderson said. “She always knew how to find people who needed to be loved. Every time I came out of the locker room after a game, she was the first one I’d see. She’d come up and give me the biggest hug. I had no family to do that.
“Lisa would know every play that I was in, whether I’d played just the last quarter or the whole game. She’d say, ‘Oh, that one time you were on the 30-yard line wide open,’ and she made me feel like a contributor, like I was the guy, like I was a stud, she’d make me feel so good. All the Mathews did that for me.”
Henderson added: “She was a fighter and an example to us. She had the grand scheme in sight, and her family was the center of her existence.”
Henderson wasn’t the only team member affected by Lisa Mathews' kindness, according to Harmon's column.
“I’ll always remember her opening her house to players who didn’t have anywhere to go for holidays,” said former BYU receiver Devon Blackmon, who is from California. “I was at her house for Christmas. She always had something going on. Her spirit is what I will miss the most, she was such a spark, she had an energy that was unmatched, she was always in a good mood and ready to go. I am in shock, especially when she was just here.”
Read more about Lisa Mathews' impact at Deseret News.