Garry Monty with Dakota, Portia and his recovered ring. Photo by Bob Iden.
This time of year, a few talented high school football players and their coaches celebrate winning the state championship. They take photos with their teammates, they hug their supportive loved ones and they claim a title and an accomplishment that can never be lost.
Lake Highlands High earned the school’s only state football championship in 1981 after going undefeated all season. Before 38,000 screaming fans at the Astrodome, the Wildcats defeated Houston Yates 19 to 6 for the 5A title (6A wasn’t created by the UIL until 2014). Players and coaches were honored with championship medals, and most purchased Super Bowl-style rings to mark their achievement.
Fast forward to today, and many coaches from that era remain fast friends. In fact, Garry Monty and Bob Iden, both assistants to head coach Joe Bob Johnson in 1981, took a road trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and Branson, Missouri, with their wives, Vickie and Catherine, earlier this month. The two men had played football together at Kilgore College, and Monty served as best man when the Idens married in 1975.
“After spending a wonderful three days together, we set out on the return home,” Iden recalls. “We decided that we would stop in Eureka Springs to do some shopping and have lunch.”
The men went into the public restroom next to the courthouse square, while the women waited for nicer accommodations at the Crescent Hotel restaurant. After lunch, they began the long trip back to Dallas.
After about an hour on the road, Sherri Hicks, executive assistant to Principal Kerri Jones, phoned from LHHS to say she’d received a call from someone about a coach’s ring. Monty looked down at his hand and realized he’d left his championship ring at the restroom wash basin. His ring had been custom made with family heirloom diamonds, but he hadn’t noticed his mistake as the group enjoyed their lively conversation.
“Sherri Hicks, being the superb executive assistant she is, got the name and number of a young man named Dakota, who found the ring in the men’s public restroom in Eureka Springs,” says Iden. “He knew how valuable it would be to return it to its rightful owner.”
Monty called Dakota, who was on his honeymoon with his new wife, Portia, and she had done some detective work. She found the name “Garry Monty” and the words “1981 Football State Champions” inscribed on the ring and discovered that he had been a coach at LHHS. Dakota called the school and was connected to Sherri Hicks, who didn’t recognize Monty’s name, but did know Iden. After his coaching days, Iden went on to serve as LHHS principal from 1997-2008. Hicks found Monty in a 1982 LHHS Wildcat yearbook and called Iden on his cell — with no idea the men were on a road trip together.
“The scene inside of our car was like one of us had just won the Lotto,” says Iden. “Needless to say, Garry called Dakota and arranged for us to meet him and his new bride in the parking lot of the Eureka Springs courthouse — not too far from the restroom where Dakota found the ring. After our one-hour drive back to Eureka Springs, when he and Portia drove up, our doors flew open and there was a giant 6-person group hug combined with joyous jumping up and down, and Garry must have said ‘thank you’ to Dakota and Portia at least a hundred times! We also learned from Dakota that he was about to report for basic training, that he aspired to become a Navy SEAL and his father had served in the Navy for 22 years including 7 deployments. What a great young couple (early-20s) we encountered — they were honest, caring, and courteous with hopes and dreams for serving their country and helping build a positive future not just for themselves, but for others as well. God bless Dakota and Portia, and all of the other young men and women of good character like them who choose to do what’s right and good, and who have our nation’s future in their hands.”
Garry and Vickie Monty at the reunion of 1981 coaches at Wildcat Stadium. Photo by Mike Duhon.
Bob and Catherine Iden at Wildcat Stadium in 2022. Photo by Mike Duhon.
