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Gib Mathers was an award-winning Wyoming journalist, avid outdoorsman and conservationist, whose primary focus as reporter was aligned with his great love for the outdoors and the wildlife species …
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Gib Mathers was an award-winning Wyoming journalist, avid outdoorsman and conservationist, whose primary focus as reporter was aligned with his great love for the outdoors and the wildlife species that inhabit the state’s wild country.
He was also a University of Wyoming journalism graduate, and his legacy is now being honored with a new UW Department of Communication and Journalism scholarship.
The scholarship endowment, when fully funded, will be $25,000, UW Communication and Journalism officials announced in a recent newsletter. It’s too early to say how large the scholarships themselves will be.
“The intent of the Gibson Lee Mathers Memorial Scholarship Fund is to support quality journalism in Wyoming,” Gib’s brother, Earl Mathers, wrote in a letter to the UW Foundation. “It is our fervent hope that those served by these scholarships help to extend the legacy of authenticity and integrity in journalism that were so steadfastly represented by Gib Mathers throughout his illustrious career.”
Mathers’ lifelong love of the outdoors drew him to journalism, the newsletter relates. Understanding and living in nature, he hoped to share his love of Wyoming with others through his writing.
“As a young man, he worked in carpentry, on mountain survey crews and in Yellowstone National Park for several years,” Earl wrote. “He was around 40 years old when he embarked on his career in journalism.”
After graduating from UW in the 1990s, Gib worked for newspapers around Wyoming, including Basin, Evanston and Kemmerer, and eventually for the Powell Tribune, where he wrote for about 12 years until his death.
“Gib spent many days in the wild, most especially in the environs of the North Fork of the Shoshone River west of Cody where he ultimately perished from hypothermia during the winter of 2017,” the Foundation letter said. “Due to adverse weather conditions and the remoteness of the location, it was well over a month before his body was found.”
Mathers “might have died young, but his memory will live on as other students pursue their own passion for reporting,” UW Communication and Journalism officials said in the newsletter.
