Laura Matthews-Stanford
There’s a brief moment in the retelling of her childhood story when Laura Matthews-Stanford (Jackson, 1980) could be mistaken for Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie, 1935).
It comes after she’s a third-grader trading baskets – and elbows – with her larger-than-life dad and before she starts attending high school football games, ostensibly, to observe her mom keeping stats and her dad officiating but, really, “to check out the boys,” she says.
Between those and other occasionally misty-eyed tales of her yesteryears, Laura shares how she would routinely mount her horse, Pooh, and summon her pooch, Rocky, then make the short trek from her family home to the nearby schoolyard. And it’s at this point the listener could be forgiven for conjuring visions of a solitary rider and her faithful canine companion clip-clopping along a rutted wagon road leading to a one-room schoolhouse with a hitchin’ post out front.
Then the key details of the story snap the listener forward again from the 1870s to the 1970s version of southwest Portland, complete with its paved streets and modern modes of transportation – the school bus system, the parents with cars, the Sting-Ray bicycles, etc.
But Laura didn’t need any of those vehicles to get to that playground. She didn’t need a horse, for that matter. “We lived two houses from Stephenson School,” she says.
But here’s the point: While being a girl who grew up with a pony in suburban Portland may not tell the entire story of a childhood, it seems like a decent indicator of an idyllic one. It's a conclusion Laura doesn’t contest: “I feel really fortunate to have grown up when and how I did and so grateful for all my parents worked so hard to give us,” she says.
Naturally Drawn to Sports
Laura grew up with parents who were teachers, her mother at Lake Oswego and Lakeridge high schools; her father at various schools within the same district. Both were highly supportive of Laura and her older sister and brother, Leslie and Burke, all of whom were somewhat naturally interested in sports.
In addition to Evelyn Matthews keeping game stats with Laura tagging along, Rod Matthews had been a three-sport athlete at Benson before becoming a P.E.teacher and high school and small-college official well known for both his oversized personality and considerable reffing skills. Laura fondly remembers when her dad’s rotating teaching schedule would take him to various schools in the district, including hers, Forest Hills Elementary, on what she called “Daddy Day.”
“Dad’s nickname was Gabby, and if you ever met him, you know how he got it,” says Laura. “We’d go out to dinner, and I’d get embarrassed because he was so loud. But it ran in the family. People who knew us referred to us as the Loud Family. Dad was a lot of fun and a true inspiration.”
Not long after the Matthews moved from Lake Oswego to Southwest Portland when Laura was in second grade, Dad installed a basketball hoop in the driveway and encouraged his daughter to get after it. In season, he’d also teach her to fast pitch in a backyard large enough to accommodate the family’s horses and the barn he built for them.
“It was a huge yard,” she says. “Every time I threw an errant pitch I had to go out the gate, around the fence and down the hill to get it. I was told to run the whole way. But once I got over the hill where Dad couldn’t see me, I’d walk.”
Back in the driveway, the older and taller Laura got, the less Dad eased up during their one-on-one basketball clashes. “He wouldn’t take it easy on me,” she says. “He was 6-6 and wasn’t afraid to body block me and block every shot I attempted. I learned to get creative just to get a shot off. I had to get good because of my dad.”
High School Sports Not in the Plans
Laura says couldn’t wait to get to Jackson High School. “It was such an awesome school. We toured the school our first or second day and they showed us the gym, and I remember standing in the middle of it thinking, Oh, my God, I want to do something in this gym.”
She’d wind up doing plenty there, even though, surprisingly, sports weren’t originally part of her high-school plans. Despite all those driveway hoops contests, backyard softball lessons and countless hours spent at the schoolyard bouncing volleyballs off brick walls under the watchful eyes of Pooh and Rocky, Laura never had a chance to play any organized sports before high school. That would change when she met the Jackson teacher and coach (and future PIL Hall of Famer) who would have a powerful impact on her life in high school and well beyond.
“A few days into my freshman year I remember passing Jim MacDicken’s classroom and him coming out to ask me if I played sports,” Laura says. “I told him I didn’t and he says, ‘OK, you’re going to.’ He introduced me to Jackson’s volleyball coach, who let me on the team and I loved it.”
She would wind up playing it well enough to earn 1st Team All-PIL status as a junior, the same year she made 2nd Team All-PIL in basketball and 1st Team All-PIL in softball. While those honors helped Laura earn entry into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2025, she says they aren't the highlight of her high-school playing years. That status is reserved for her teammates and her basketball coach and mentor MacDicken.
“He was such a great coach,” she says. “He taught me everything, building on the fundamentals my dad taught me. He was patient and encouraging and inspiring. He just had so many unique ways of getting his point across. I’m forever thankful for the role he played in shaping who I am.”
Crying Foul
One of Laura’s favorite basketball memories is of playing Monroe when both her parents were in the stands, a rarity given her dad was typically officiating somewhere else on game night. On this night, Gabby’s presence turned serendipitous when one of the game’s two officials failed to show.
“They decided to ask Dad to fill in,” Laura remembers. “But before they asked him, Mac asked me if I was OK with it, which I thought was really cool.”
She may have had a change of heart later in the game when Dad made the call that sent his daughter to the bench with five fouls. “You know how they say a dad is always hardest on their own kid? Dad’s only feedback afterwards was, 'I call ‘em as I see ‘em, honey.' I didn’t talk to him for 24 hours,” she says with a laugh.
In another of Laura’s favorite memory, Mom has a starring role.
“We’re playing in the state tournament in Salem and we’re down one or two with a few seconds left when I get fouled,” she recalls. “I’m at the line waiting for the ball when out of the corner of my eye I see a woman walking down the sideline. I look over and see it’s my mom leaving the gym. She told me later she couldn’t stand the pressure of watching her daughter shoot the potential game-winning free throws. It’s weird that I can remember that so clearly but don’t remember if we won the game. But I think I made one free throw to tie it.”
Laura left Jackson with a full-ride offer to play hoops at Clark College but instead tried to walk on at Oregon State. “I didn’t cut it,” she says. “The coach told me to play two years at Clark, then come back.”
She followed the first piece of advice, playing for Clark from 1980 to 1982. But after suffering an ankle injury, Laura opted not to make a second attempt play for the Beavers.
Aloha Oregon
While recovering from her injury, she joined her parents on a Maui vacation and, in February 1982, she was back on the island as a full-time resident. She stayed for 30 years, with her parents joining her on the island after they retired in 1984 and her brother moving over as well.
Evelyn died of cancer in 1987. When Laura's father ultimately remarried, his wedding was one of the more than 2,000 Laura would coordinate during her long career in hotel management in Hawaii and Portland, after she moved back in 2012. She also worked in property management and jewelry sales before retiring in 2024.
In May 2012, Laura traveled from Maui back to Portland for her brother Burke’s funeral services. On the trip, she met her future husband, Erwin Stanford, and never returned to the island. The story of their whirlwind romance is too priceless to shortchange here, but suffice to say, it’s fit for a Lifetime movie.
Their blended family includes Laura’s two daughters from a previous marriage, Marie, 39, and Cherine, 38; her stepdaughter, Jessica, 37; and two grandchildren.
Gabby passed in 1998, but Laura recently helped the othe rdominant figure in her life, Jim MacDicken, celebrate his 80th birthday, and he was on hand for her PIL Hall of Fame induction last year.
“Dad was my greatest inspiration in everything I did, and Jim was a great teacher and coach and is a great man,” she says.
He is also the person who submitted her Hall of Fame nomination, an honor Laura says she never expected.
“I think if I could go back in time and change anything, I would believe in myself more,” she says. “I never thought I was good in sports; I think I could have done better, done more, set a better example, been a better role model.”
Laura says that helps explain why she didn’t get her hopes too high when she learned she'd been nominated. Then when fellow Jackson graduate, Kent Dorsey, called to say she’d been voted in, she says, with another laugh, “I told him I didn’t know what was better, getting a call from him – Kent was a hottie in high school – or getting into the Hall of Fame. But I was overwhelmed. I was so honored, I cried.”
Do you know Laura Matthews-Stanford? If you’d like to reconnect, she can be reached at [email protected]
Member Spotlight
There’s a brief moment in the retelling of her childhood story when Laura Matthews-Stanford (Jackson, 1980) could be mistaken for Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie, 1935).
It comes after she’s a third-grader trading baskets – and elbows – with her larger-than-life dad and before she starts attending high school football games, ostensibly, to observe her mom keeping stats and her dad officiating but, really, “to check out the boys,” she says.
Between those and other occasionally misty-eyed tales of her yesteryears, Laura shares how she would routinely mount her horse, Pooh, and summon her pooch, Rocky, then make the short trek from her family home to the nearby schoolyard. And it’s at this point the listener could be forgiven for conjuring visions of a solitary rider and her faithful canine companion clip-clopping along a rutted wagon road leading to a one-room schoolhouse with a hitchin’ post out front.
Then the key details of the story snap the listener forward again from the 1870s to the 1970s version of southwest Portland, complete with its paved streets and modern modes of transportation – the school bus system, the parents with cars, the Sting-Ray bicycles, etc.
But Laura didn’t need any of those vehicles to get to that playground. She didn’t need a horse, for that matter. “We lived two houses from Stephenson School,” she says.
But here’s the point: While being a girl who grew up with a pony in suburban Portland may not tell the entire story of a childhood, it seems like a decent indicator of an idyllic one. It's a conclusion Laura doesn’t contest: “I feel really fortunate to have grown up when and how I did and so grateful for all my parents worked so hard to give us,” she says.
Naturally Drawn to Sports
Laura grew up with parents who were teachers, her mother at Lake Oswego and Lakeridge high schools; her father at various schools within the same district. Both were highly supportive of Laura and her older sister and brother, Leslie and Burke, all of whom were somewhat naturally interested in sports.
In addition to Evelyn Matthews keeping game stats with Laura tagging along, Rod Matthews had been a three-sport athlete at Benson before becoming a P.E.teacher and high school and small-college official well known for both his oversized personality and considerable reffing skills. Laura fondly remembers when her dad’s rotating teaching schedule would take him to various schools in the district, including hers, Forest Hills Elementary, on what she called “Daddy Day.”
“Dad’s nickname was Gabby, and if you ever met him, you know how he got it,” says Laura. “We’d go out to dinner, and I’d get embarrassed because he was so loud. But it ran in the family. People who knew us referred to us as the Loud Family. Dad was a lot of fun and a true inspiration.”
Not long after the Matthews moved from Lake Oswego to Southwest Portland when Laura was in second grade, Dad installed a basketball hoop in the driveway and encouraged his daughter to get after it. In season, he’d also teach her to fast pitch in a backyard large enough to accommodate the family’s horses and the barn he built for them.
“It was a huge yard,” she says. “Every time I threw an errant pitch I had to go out the gate, around the fence and down the hill to get it. I was told to run the whole way. But once I got over the hill where Dad couldn’t see me, I’d walk.”
Back in the driveway, the older and taller Laura got, the less Dad eased up during their one-on-one basketball clashes. “He wouldn’t take it easy on me,” she says. “He was 6-6 and wasn’t afraid to body block me and block every shot I attempted. I learned to get creative just to get a shot off. I had to get good because of my dad.”
High School Sports Not in the Plans
Laura says couldn’t wait to get to Jackson High School. “It was such an awesome school. We toured the school our first or second day and they showed us the gym, and I remember standing in the middle of it thinking, Oh, my God, I want to do something in this gym.”
She’d wind up doing plenty there, even though, surprisingly, sports weren’t originally part of her high-school plans. Despite all those driveway hoops contests, backyard softball lessons and countless hours spent at the schoolyard bouncing volleyballs off brick walls under the watchful eyes of Pooh and Rocky, Laura never had a chance to play any organized sports before high school. That would change when she met the Jackson teacher and coach (and future PIL Hall of Famer) who would have a powerful impact on her life in high school and well beyond.
“A few days into my freshman year I remember passing Jim MacDicken’s classroom and him coming out to ask me if I played sports,” Laura says. “I told him I didn’t and he says, ‘OK, you’re going to.’ He introduced me to Jackson’s volleyball coach, who let me on the team and I loved it.”
She would wind up playing it well enough to earn 1st Team All-PIL status as a junior, the same year she made 2nd Team All-PIL in basketball and 1st Team All-PIL in softball. While those honors helped Laura earn entry into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2025, she says they aren't the highlight of her high-school playing years. That status is reserved for her teammates and her basketball coach and mentor MacDicken.
“He was such a great coach,” she says. “He taught me everything, building on the fundamentals my dad taught me. He was patient and encouraging and inspiring. He just had so many unique ways of getting his point across. I’m forever thankful for the role he played in shaping who I am.”
Crying Foul
One of Laura’s favorite basketball memories is of playing Monroe when both her parents were in the stands, a rarity given her dad was typically officiating somewhere else on game night. On this night, Gabby’s presence turned serendipitous when one of the game’s two officials failed to show.
“They decided to ask Dad to fill in,” Laura remembers. “But before they asked him, Mac asked me if I was OK with it, which I thought was really cool.”
She may have had a change of heart later in the game when Dad made the call that sent his daughter to the bench with five fouls. “You know how they say a dad is always hardest on their own kid? Dad’s only feedback afterwards was, 'I call ‘em as I see ‘em, honey.' I didn’t talk to him for 24 hours,” she says with a laugh.
In another of Laura’s favorite memory, Mom has a starring role.
“We’re playing in the state tournament in Salem and we’re down one or two with a few seconds left when I get fouled,” she recalls. “I’m at the line waiting for the ball when out of the corner of my eye I see a woman walking down the sideline. I look over and see it’s my mom leaving the gym. She told me later she couldn’t stand the pressure of watching her daughter shoot the potential game-winning free throws. It’s weird that I can remember that so clearly but don’t remember if we won the game. But I think I made one free throw to tie it.”
Laura left Jackson with a full-ride offer to play hoops at Clark College but instead tried to walk on at Oregon State. “I didn’t cut it,” she says. “The coach told me to play two years at Clark, then come back.”
She followed the first piece of advice, playing for Clark from 1980 to 1982. But after suffering an ankle injury, Laura opted not to make a second attempt play for the Beavers.
Aloha Oregon
While recovering from her injury, she joined her parents on a Maui vacation and, in February 1982, she was back on the island as a full-time resident. She stayed for 30 years, with her parents joining her on the island after they retired in 1984 and her brother moving over as well.
Evelyn died of cancer in 1987. When Laura's father ultimately remarried, his wedding was one of the more than 2,000 Laura would coordinate during her long career in hotel management in Hawaii and Portland, after she moved back in 2012. She also worked in property management and jewelry sales before retiring in 2024.
In May 2012, Laura traveled from Maui back to Portland for her brother Burke’s funeral services. On the trip, she met her future husband, Erwin Stanford, and never returned to the island. The story of their whirlwind romance is too priceless to shortchange here, but suffice to say, it’s fit for a Lifetime movie.
Their blended family includes Laura’s two daughters from a previous marriage, Marie, 39, and Cherine, 38; her stepdaughter, Jessica, 37; and two grandchildren.
Gabby passed in 1998, but Laura recently helped the othe rdominant figure in her life, Jim MacDicken, celebrate his 80th birthday, and he was on hand for her PIL Hall of Fame induction last year.
“Dad was my greatest inspiration in everything I did, and Jim was a great teacher and coach and is a great man,” she says.
He is also the person who submitted her Hall of Fame nomination, an honor Laura says she never expected.
“I think if I could go back in time and change anything, I would believe in myself more,” she says. “I never thought I was good in sports; I think I could have done better, done more, set a better example, been a better role model.”
Laura says that helps explain why she didn’t get her hopes too high when she learned she'd been nominated. Then when fellow Jackson graduate, Kent Dorsey, called to say she’d been voted in, she says, with another laugh, “I told him I didn’t know what was better, getting a call from him – Kent was a hottie in high school – or getting into the Hall of Fame. But I was overwhelmed. I was so honored, I cried.”
Do you know Laura Matthews-Stanford? If you’d like to reconnect, she can be reached at [email protected]
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