On being an environmentalist: “I try to do little things that positively affect the environment and the natural world. For instance: picking up litter, river cleanups and last February I went to the big shell beach cleanup on Padre Island National Seashore which is an event where hundreds of people come together to volunteer to pick up all the trash on the beach. Trash is a big problem there but if you get a lot of people together and clean it up, it gives you a real positive feeling and you get a lot done with a lot of people. The same thing applies for the rivers here. I do a lot of canoeing and I’m real big on picking up trash. I’ll fill up my whole canoe up with trash and it’s kind of a rewarding thing. A lot of people are like, “Wow, you’re just picking up that trash? This isn’t your property, you don’t own this but you’re just picking it up?” And you can tell it kind of changes their perspective a little bit. I try to teach my kids that, too. It’s about caring about the little things not because you own it or because it’s yours but because it’s worth caring about.”
