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Matt & Sarah Derry

Skunk River Navy Group
Matt, Sarah Derry & Group

Love in the mud

Skunk River Navy couple finds love after a day of cleaning the river.

Matt and Sarah Derry didn't meet on the Skunk River Navy (SRN). Those experiences however brought them even closer together.

"We were introduced by a mutual friend in Maple (Hall) our freshman year," said Sarah (White). "I can't remember if we were officially dating at the time of our first Skunk River Navy, but I'm sure we were spending a lot of time together.

"I will say, however, watching Matt on those trips I discovered many of the things about his character that make him a person I deeply love, admire and am proud of."

Matt Derry was in his element on the Skunk River Navy. The 2004 botany and animal ecology major went on almost every SRN trip his freshman year and returned to help out year after year.

He's officially an SRN Captain to this day.

"I like to clean up the outdoors," he said, "but I participated not only for myself but Dr. (Jim) Colbert (associate professor who founded the SRN). He was not only my academic advisor but he is my mentor."

Sarah, who also graduated in May 2004, went on two SRN trips as a freshman. But as Matt recalls she wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about spending an entire Saturday clearing trash from the waterway.

"It seems to me I had to coerce Sarah into coming as much as I did the other students," he said. "But once I got her out there, we had a blast. By our senior year, I had her coming on her own accord, so much so that we would build our weekend schedules around when the Skunk River Navy was hosting outings."

Sarah says her future husband not only enjoyed his outings on the Skunk River Navy but he made it enjoyable for others.

"He could make hard, hot, heavy work fun by making it a race or by cracking jokes about it," she says.

That was especially the case during a trip their senior year, when both Matt and Sarah were BEST (Biological Education Success Teams) learning community mentors. The river was particularly low and the group had to carry the canoes full of junk over long stretches of sand because there was no water to float them in.

Sarah recalls by the end of the day everyone was tired and morale was low. Students were getting frustrated or giving up.

That's when Matt stepped up.

"Instead of using his leadership to boss the others around, Matt just turned it up a notch," she said. "Seeing this, many got up and we finished the job. I remember stopping to watch him for a moment and thinking how lucky I was to have someone so respectable and determined in my life."

The couple, who married in December 2004, lives in Houston now where Sarah joined Teach for America and teaches science in an urban public high school. Matt works as a scuba instructor at the Houston Scuba Academy.

Their interest in helping the rivers and streams, formulated during this SRN days, is continuing to this day. They recently signed up for a Scientific Diver course through Southwest Texas State University and will be trained on how to preserve the San Marcos Springs.