Some of the links on this and other related pages are not working. Please bear with me, as I am working on them.

Matkin family roots run deep at Redstone Arsenal
Redstone Rocket, May 14, 1997 by Skip Vaughn

Not every family has a mountain named after it-- even if the name gets misspelled.
Madkin Mountain on Redstone Arsenal is named for the Matkin family whose roots
here go all the way back before the Civil War. The family's tradition continues
today with Brian Matkin and his wife, Brenda, working on modern Army systems.

Brian Matkin is chief of the concepts and analysis division in the AMC
Smart Weapons Management Office. Brenda is an RF (radio frequency) seeker engineer
in the Missile Guidance Directorate at Research Development and Engineering Center.

Brian's father, William Jordan Matkin, Jr., visited the Matkin family cemetary
on post for the first time Friday.
"My father was born about a quarter of a mile from here in 1889," William
said. "And his father before him was William Blunt Matkin, who came to this area
sometime prior to the Civil War and settled right here on this property. My grandfather
was about 5 years old (when the moved here) prior to the Civil War. And they had immigrated
here from North Carolina."

William Blunt had several older brothers who stayed here with their father just a
few years before leaving for Texas when the Civil War started. William Blunt Matkins stayed
in this area and raised a family of four children, including William Jordan Matkin, Sr.

"My dad was the only boy in the family," Matkin, Jr.recalled. "He had three sisters
and he had been a businessman in Madison County during most of his life. When he was 50 years
old, he bought property in Morgan County and started farming over there in the Lacey's Spring area."

Matkin, Jr., 81, joined the Navy after finishing high school in 1936. He boutht property
in Lacey's Spring in 1940, and he moved back to this area from California in 1954. Matkin, Jr.
came to work at Redstone in 1955 and retired in 1976 from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration. "It's been called Madkin Mountain since I guess the first Matkins moved here," he recalled.
A road in Lacey'l Spring is also named after the family: Matkin Cove Road.

Brian, 48, was born in California. The oldest of four boys and a girl, he and his family
returned to Alabama when he was 6. "I have very little recollection of Redstone back then,"
Brian said. "I started coming to Redstone when I was a teen-ager periodically with my father.
And I got to go into shops where he worked."

Brian served in the Air Force from 1968-72, spent a year and a half in Vietnam, and is a
disabled veteran. He came to work at Redstone in 1976 as an Army engineer and has been here ever
since. Brian is a sergeant in C Battery, 1-203rd Air Defense Artillery, Alabama National Guard.
He said he joined the National Guard to better understand the systems he's been developing over the
last 30 years, and the real-life situations associated with them.

It just so happens that the Matkin family cemetary is near the air defense training site used
by his National Guard unit on the northeast side of the post.

"Our roots are here in this area," Brian said. "We're not just passing through. We're gonna
be here awhile."