Mr. Anthony Clark Sledge

Mr. Anthony Clark Sledge, 79, died Saturday, April 15, 2023, on the afternoon of his Navasota High School Class of 1963’s 60th year reunion. Honoring his wishes of “not doing funerals or weddings!” a celebration of his life will be held Friday, April 28th, at 4:00 PM at Nobles Funeral Chapel with Rev. Clyde Larrabee officiating.

Anthony was raised by his grandparents, Bertha & L.S. Sledge, Sr since his parents, Margaret (Burns) and W.A. Sledge both died young. His sister Shirley died in 2018.

He excelled in sports: basketball, football and track. He and Bill Miller were winning champs in duo tennis.
He attended the University of Texas for a short time. 1968 found him in Bandera, TX, working on a seismograph crew. That’s where he met old maid schoolteacher Linda Dykstra who was working her third summer at the Mayan Dude Ranch. They were very interested in each other, especially when he started working as a wrangler at the ranch. He’d never been to Iowa, so he decided to go. They were married on Monday evening, August 26, the first day of the school year.

Since her parents lived next to the high school, the bright lights of Danville’s football field and the 1A or 2A school practicing beckoned Tony. He started going over to watch, then HELP practice. The coach was a basketball coach. Football was new, not a priority. Tony started TRAVELING with the team on the bus. They started winning! So he was very popular with the local boys. More so when he and Linda opened a saddle and western wear shop, the Way Out West. He did horseshoeing, made tack, and went to rodeos.
After visiting sunny Texas with 70+ degrees one Christmas, Tony decided he’d had enough of Iowa’s below zero weather. So, back to Texas they came, living first in Magnolia, then Courtney and now South of Navasota.

A “jack of all trades”, he owned a C.B. shop, a “Fin, Feather & Fur” shop and finally a gun & gun repair shop.

In 1975, he had a tragic tractor/shredder accident. He got off the tractor at the Fahey Place, and the tractor headed down the hill to the lake. He tried to jump on the tractor, but the wheel caught his chest, holding him down so the shredder got his leg. He got the tractor stopped, got a whip from his truck to make a tourniquet for his mangled right leg, drove himself to the highway and flagged down a policeman who drove him to town. Dr. Leonard Coleman did everything to save his leg, but it got an infection and was later amputated.
But that didn’t stop him: he was prominent in Navasota Little League. He kept the fields mowed and was Julian Melchor’s “right-hand man.” He always had a team his sons were on. Being the winning coach, he often got to coach the All-Star teams. In 1992, he was awarded Little League Baseball local league Volunteer of the Year Award.

He knew how to do many things: plumbing, electricity, construction. He was always proud that “an 11-year-old boy, a schoolteacher and ‘a fat boy in a wheelchair’” built a two-story, 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house, 2 outbuildings, 2 shops (one having an elevator to take him to the second story (thanks to neighbor Roy Karnei!!))

His hobbies were collecting guns, knives, rods and reels, and hunting and fishing, especially deep-sea fishing, with his 2 boys. He also loved watching his sons play sports. He loved traveling, the Astros, Texas Rangers, and University of Texas baseball.


Left to mourn his passing are his wife of early 55 years, son Major Mikel T. Sledge now Lieutenant Colonel in the Texas State Guard and wife Kristy (Bob) Sledge, their children Levi and Lauren of Hutto; son Kevin Clark and wife Tommie Lynne (Rittersback), their children Kolby and Taylor of Magnolia; cousin Gene Sledge and wife Katheryn of Sealy; second cousin Deana Willis of Tomball; cousin Becky (Sledge) and Randy Hughes of Navasota, their son Dillon and wife Erin Hughes and their two children Ella and Eli, other newly married son Lucas with his wife Taylor, all of Navasota; niece Belinda Letulle, nephew Randy Franklin (both in Denison, TX) and “half daughter” Beverly Simpson Martin (who lived with the Sledges her sophomore through senior years) and her son Isaac of North Richland Hills, TX.

In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be sent to the Navasota First Baptist Church building fund. The family invites you to leave kind words or fond memories at www.noblesfuneral.com .