U.S. rep. candidate’s wife builds ‘brick’ foundation
Speaks of Matlock’s strong ethics he wants to bring to D.C.
Dean Matlock brought a brick to Concord-Farragut Republican Club’s monthly meeting last week.
Filling in as the club’s featured speaker for her husband, state Rep. Jimmy Matlock [R-District 21], “My husband is the brick that can go to Washington, D.C. and help firm the foundation for an ethical, moral government; to keep it firm,” Dean Matlock said Thursday evening, Oct. 5, in Knox County Sheriff’s Office Turkey Creek precinct off Parkside Drive.
State Rep. Matlock is running for the 2nd U.S. Congressional District seat to be vacated by the retiring U.S. Rep. John J. “Jimmy” Duncan Jr., a Republican.
“This happens to be a Civil War brick. It was made in Lenoir City … it came from what I think they referred to as the Jackson Hotel because Andrew Jackson supposedly stayed in it when he came through,” Dean Matlock said. “This brick, after 200 years, is still pretty firm. … My husband has the strong composite of a brick.”
Dean said her husband’s qualities of “maturity and responsibility” were formed “when he was very young. … “It’s in the composite of his ‘brick.’ God has put those things in his life.
“… He’s moral, he’s ethical, he’s giving, those things are in his ‘brick,’” she added.
As a small child, “He had his own pigs that he raised. … And when he was big enough to roll a tire, he worked with his father,” she said. “… When he started college [at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro] he paid for his own college, it was not provided for him.”
With the family opening Matlock Tire Service’s Farragut location in 1980, “After two years Jimmy’s father became ill, so Jimmy quit college and went home to take care of family business and [tire store] business,” Dean Matlock said. “… When Jimmy was 23 his dad died, and Jimmy had to take over the business.”
Raising young children when her husband first went to Nashville as state representative in 2006, Dean Matlock said, “I always say he was conquering. I held things together while he conquered.”
