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http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/tournaments/classic/news/story?id=3914056
Bass fisherman Wharton remembered as 'everyone's friend'
February 19, 2009
Posted: February 19, 2009, 7:47 PM CST Last updated: February 19, 2009, 7:48 PM CST
David Wharton looked through a window wide enough to see a sun-splashed setting outside a school building in Center, Texas, when he decided teaching was not the life for him.
Instead, he became a competitive angler.
Wharton, among the all-time leading money winners and most recognized names in competitive bass fishing, died of a heart attack suffered Sunday in Sam Rayburn. He was 59.
"The experience of a pro fisherman is that they're on the road so much that it's nothing to drive 18, 19 hours, from coast to coast," said Wharton's wife, Carla, who traveled to several tournaments after they married in December 1995.
"David did this for 30-something years. It's fun to a point, but it's also hard work," she said.
Wharton, however, preferred that line of work over what he might have done had he not sat in front of that Center school window.
Wharton graduated from Stephen F. Austin with an education degree in 1972 and applied to be a teacher in Center.
Seated in front of the window while he filled an application, Wharton thought about how well the fish might have been biting that day, got up from his chair and returned an incomplete application.
"He thanked them for considering him for the job, but he couldn't do it. He had to go fishing," said Carla Wharton, 54.
David Wharton earned more than $800,000 in 264 BASS tournaments between 1974 and 2005. The last of his four BASS career victories came at the 2003 Louisiana Showdown on the Toledo Bend Reservoir, which yielded a $100,000 payday, Carla said.
Wharton also competed 11 times in the Bassmasters Classic, considered the peak of bass fishing competition.
"The whole time he was on the tour, David was everyone's friend," said Randy Dearman, a 61-year-old on the tour from 1984 to 2004. "He never had no problems about fishing holes or anything. If somebody was at a place, and he wanted to go there, he'd go off and fish somewhere else. He had a lot of respect."
Wharton also left a lasting impression on his stepson - the boy just 11 years old when he lost his biological father in a 1990 car wreck.
Without a child from his first marriage, Wharton accepted Carla's son, Blake Morrison, as his own when the couple married in 1995, the family said.
"He didn't talk much, but when he talked, everybody in the room listened," said Morrison, now 30. "If he had something to say, you knew it was right, even if it was about fishing or not about fishing."
Visitation service is at 1 p.m. Sunday at Lake Rayburn Methodist Church. The funeral is 2 p.m. Sunday, also at the chur
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Regie Harris (1968)
Moving to Timpson and starting out in the first grade, was a little bit scary for me. I remember David as one of the most friendly kids in class. That warm and gentle personality continued to grow as we all grew up together.In about the sixth grade most of the boys in class played baseball on the playground. Being left handed, I was not the best at athletics and was often teased. Not by David, though. This tall, slinder kid could knock a baseball into Michael Crawford's living room across the street from the playground! David would always offer to bat for me, and I would run the bases. NEVER did he critize or make light of anyone. Could a kid ask for a better friend?
His sense of humor was always enjoyed by everyone and was probably the most generous and considerate person I have ever known, bar none.
By high school, David had become very special to everyone in class and admired by all of us.
The last time I saw David, was probably on the Senior trip 1968 but the warm memories of my friend have lasted a lifetime.
Regrets? Yes. That I did not take the time to tell him how much I appreciated his friendship until it was too late. He will be painfully missed.