of Little Rock, AR

August 23, 1941 - July 21, 2025

Sandy McMath, 83, son of Governor Sidney S. McMath and Elaine Braughton died on July 21, 2025 in Little Rock. Sandy was born on the 23rd of August, 1941 in Quantico, Virginia. Sandy's parents, sweethearts from their Hot Springs High School days, had married in 1937. But, unexpectedly in May of 1942, Elaine died of an acute illness.

Following the war, Sandy and his newly arrived brother, Phillip, lived at their rustic ''home place'' just a horseback ride from Hot Springs. Recently visited, they found only a moment's memory away, the old oak tree guarding where they once played in the dirt with a grey and always dusty hound dog named ''Wagon Wheel'', or Sandy rode behind Sid on a big black saddle horse called ''Colonel''. If you visit Sandy's house today, the ''Ranchero'', you will find much the same setting, only there are more dogs and a donkey named ''Harry''.

When Sid was elected governor in 1948 the family moved to Little Rock. Sandy played with neighborhood kids and found time to host some interesting visitors: the President of the United States, Harry Truman, a couple of movie stars, but more importantly, cowboy gunslingers Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

After leaving the Governor's Mansion, the family moved to Grant County. There Sandy earned his moccasins as a consummate outdoorsman and marksman. Once he disappeared with his hunting buddy, Lewis Wallace and their legendary hound dog, "Ole Red", for two days and nights in the Cane Creek bottoms. Sid, riding Colonel, blowing a fox horn, finally found them. Asked how they got lost, the reply was ''we weren't lost, just confused". A better legal quibble has never been uttered.

Sandy attended Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee where he won the state debate championship two years in a row and graduated with honors in 1959. He attended the University of Arkansas, was a member of the SAE fraternity and graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in history. After a 1966 law degree and the Robert A. Leflar Award in Torts. he was admitted to the Arkansas Bar the same year. Commissioned in the Marine Corps, he served as JAG officer for three years including a tour in Vietnam with the Third Marine Division in 1967-68. Posted out of Dong Ha in Quang Tri, he handled high profile court martial cases and served in that capacity in Northern ''I'' Corps during the siege at Con Thien in some of the heaviest fighting of the war. In addition to campaign medals, he was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon and the Navy Commendation with Combat ''V.''

Following discharge as a Captain, Sandy passed and was admitted to the famously difficult California bar, then traveled for six months with his fluent Spanish in Central and South America. Thereafter, with his friend and law school roommate, Mart Vehik, he attended The London School of Economics, University of London in the United Kingdom, graduating with a masters degree in international law. He also received Air and Space Law Certification from the London School of World Affairs in 1971. Sandy then moved to Paris where he lived for two years studying French at the Alliance Françias.

Returning home, Sandy became the Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney of the 6th Judicial District, 1972-73, working with his brother Marine, Prosecuting Attorney Jim Guy Tucker. After a few years of private practice, in 1969. Sandy's incurable wanderlust induced him to accept the invitation of the famed anthropologist, Dr. Louis B. Leakey. Shaking hands, Dr. Leakey suggested that he should ''pay us a call'' in East Africa. Sandy did. Later, in his receipt de voyage, "Africa Alone", he said, ''Africa had become an obsession'' and that, ''On July 11, 1976, I left Paris for the Cape of Good Hope in a 1974 Toyota Land Cruiser.''

In an astonishing 18-month journey of adventure and discovery, aided by pretty good French and an expired Arkansas driver's license, he got dicey encounters and breathtaking scenery as he drove the deserts of North Africa, down the Ivory Coast across to Rhodesia and finishing in South Africa. In Tanzania, driving up out of seemingly nowhere at nightfall in lion country, Sandy rescued some stranded workers outside what turned out to be the Leakey research basecamp. Impressed and grateful, Mary Leakey asked Sandy to stay and help. From June till September of 1977, Sandy supervised diggings and building the 35 mile long road from the remote site of Laetoli, where Leakey had discovered what are now recognized as some of the oldest fossil remains of early man. Sandy and Mary worked together on this famous site and became fast friends. During this time his legal reputation spread and he was inducted as a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. He parked his jeep and with a tuxedo under his arm he hitched a ride on a cattle truck, arriving just in time to the conference.

"Africa Alone", his receipt de voyage, published in 1983, was reviewed as, ''A spellbinding account of a great adventure and a stirring documentary of modern Africa.'' The McMath law firm beckoned like an abandoned bride and Sandy returned to practice in Little Rock. Following a landmark victory in 1984 against an automobile manufacturer for a young woman quadriplegic, a law journal described Sandy's case as ''representing an advocacy accomplishment of the highest order''. He then joined the visiting faculty of Hasting College of Law, University of California, San Francisco, lecturing on trial advocacy.

The love of the road overwhelmed him again. In 1986 he embarked on a 397 day expedition, driving from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego in the now famous Toyota (some have suggested that it be hung from the ceiling in the Smithsonian). In "Southern Passage", 1993, his second receipt de voyage, Sandy leads us from Mexico, Central and South America to the land of the fire at Cape Horn, down mountain trails, along jungle rivers and through haunted passageways. In Columbia during the civil war, he was briefly detained by the Sindora Luminosa but was deemed a vagabond rather than a CIA spy and was released. In Brazil he served a stint with the famed naturalist Bill Magnusson and helped catalog insects and mould footprints out of the Amazon research camp.

In 1987, as a lifetime outdoorsman and avid skier, Sandy moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, to pen his Passage. There he met the love of his life, Allison Boyer Van Pelt. Together they hiked, skied and biked the Sawtooth Mountains. They got married in 1988 at Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. Sandy always said starting a family was his greatest adventure. Their children, McKenzie Alexandra and Savannah Giselle were born in Idaho and one more, Ian Chase Braughton was to follow in Little Rock.

Sandy returned, as he always did, to the law. In 1992, he and brother, Phillip, won a record invasion of privacy verdict in Federal Court for a 98-year old lady wrongly subjected by a tabloid to a fabricated and shockingly scurrilous news story. In another case that same year, Sandy won another record verdict for bad faith denial of health benefits to a traumatic brain injury patient. Success followed him and he was named Outstanding Trial Lawyer of the Year for 1992-93 by the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association.

Advocate, adventurer, writer, Marine and raconteur, Sandy McMath would recite poetry, Shakespeare or passages from his favorite novel, "Moby Dick", from heart. Like the symbol of that inscrutable force that lies in the depths of that masterpiece, there was an irrepressible and unconquerable spirt that resided deep in Sandy's soul that could defeat everything but mortality - and maybe, in some way we can never understand - even that.

Sandy was above all a devoted husband, father and fast friend. He passed on to his family his love of travel, language and literature and along the way, picked up from them a passion for sport. From t-ball to varsity football, from dressage to ballet, from tennis to basketball, he never missed a game. With Allison and the children, there was scarcely a school break when they were not afoot on another adventure. The long hours between destinations were characterized by reciting poetry, prose, classical music and spinning yarns. Sandy also loved dogs. You could say he knew as many dogs as he did people. Throughout his life there were noble dogs of all origins and varieties by side.

He is survived by his wife, Dr. Allison; daughters, McKenzie Alexandra McMath Coronel and her husband, Juan Carlos Coronel and their two children, Augustus and Helena-Marie; daughter, Savannah Giselle McMath; son, Ian Chase Braughton McMath and brothers, Phillip and Bruce; sisters, Melissa McMath Hatfield and Patricia Bueter Donnelly and many nieces and nephews.

There will be a memorial service beginning at 2:00 p.m. with a visitation to follow until 4:00 p.m. at Roller-Chenal Funeral Home on Saturday, July 26th. Donations are asked to be made to the Pulaski County Humane Society: https://warmhearts.org/donate/.

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