Austin Leon Wheeler, 79, a Navy veteran who loved Jesus, his family, his friends, music, sports, cars, fishing, poker and traveling, died Monday, May 4, after a long battle with cancer. He was with his wife Sharon at their home in the Boston Mountains near the headwaters of the White River and the northwest Arkansas community of Pettigrew.

Leon was born on October 29, 1946, at the old St. Vincent’s Hospital in Little Rock and grew up in what is now Sherwood, just outside North Little Rock. He was a member of the Sylvan Hills High School baseball team that won the Arkansas state championship in 1965. In addition, he was a key member of the school’s golf team, a tailback in football and a sprinter in track.

After high school Leon attended Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway (now the University of Central Arkansas), then he joined the Navy. During his 1966 to 1970 tour of duty, he served for 27 months on the USS White River, a medium-sized, flat-bottomed ship said to have the firepower of six destroyers. Sitting just off the coast and in the river mouths of South Vietnam, the vessel fired thousands of rockets in support of American, South Vietnamese and South Korean operations.

When he left the Navy Leon returned to Arkansas and worked for years as a carpenter. Then he played poker professionally in Tunica, Miss. for 14 years. In 2006 he hit a different kind of jackpot, marrying the love of his life, Sharon Kay Hindman, who’d also attended Sylvan Hills High School.

For a couple of years Leon helped Sharon run her heating and air conditioning company in Maumelle, Ark., then they sold the business and moved to the Ozarks, where Leon and several friends had purchased land. Until the Covid 19 pandemic hit, they attended the Pettigrew Community Church and led a busy, sometimes adventurous, life. Leon loved to play music and golf, watch sports, fish for trout on the White and Little Red rivers. He also loved to travel, especially with Sharon.

She recalls their drives from Savannah, Ga,, to the Florida Keys and across the Everglades, into the Smoky Mountains, and out west to Death Valley. Not long before he died Leon explained to a friend how one dark night, instead of looking for a motel, he steered their minivan to the side of the road on a rugged stretch of the central California coast near Big Sur. He wanted Sharon to be able to listen to the strange roars of sea lions hundreds of feet below and, the next morning, watch the sun come up over the Pacific Ocean.

“Leon had a very kind and sweet heart,” says Sharon. “He was compassionate. He loved animals, especially a dog named Two Socks that he had for 19 years.” The last few years “I’d often  hear him praying for his family and friends. He loved his children and grandchildren and he was so proud of them. I thank God for letting me share my life with him.”

Leon was preceded in death by his mother and father, Pearl Maxine (Magby) Wheeler and Henry Austin Wheeler, of Sylvan Hills (now Sherwood).

Besides Sharon, he is survived by his sister, Barbara Lynn Brockinton (Kyle) of Sherwood; his children, Summer Starr Gutierrez (George) of San Antonio, Tx., and Michael Jeremy Wheeler of Benton; his grandchildren, Brendon Riley Milan and Kailee Grace Galarpe, of San Antonio; and his step-children, Brian Christopher Wise (Tracy) of Cabot, and Anna Clarice Peterson (Chris) of Bryant.

A visitation will be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 12, at A Natural State Funeral Service and Crematory, 2620 W. Main Street, in Jacksonville, Ark., followed by an 11 a.m. funeral service. Burial will be at Gibson Cemetery in nearby Gravel Ridge.