Ex-Beebe aide, 44, dies after cancer battle

Friends and colleagues on Monday recalled the optimism and humor shown by Matt DeCample during his battle with cancer.

DeCample, a spokesman for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, died Sunday after being diagnosed with liver cancer in 2016, a family spokesman said. He was 44.

DeCample came to Arkansas in 1999 to work for television station KATV in Little Rock. He left the station in 2003 to become a spokesman for Beebe during his tenure as the state’s attorney general, and continued to serve as Beebe’s spokesman after Beebe was elected governor in 2006.

Beebe recalled DeCample’s kindness and wit, saying his former spokesman had more friends than anyone he’d ever met, and described the Washington native as “a world of information.”

“Matt had the rare combination of an incredibly quick mind and a depth of knowledge that was truly astounding,” Beebe said in a statement. “I’ve always said that he was Google before Google.”

DeCample often blogged about his battle with the disease, using the header: “Fighting cancer with writing and bad jokes. Also using modern medicine.”

Throughout the blog, he shared his story with positivity and humor.

“Here I am at 41, and I have cancer,” he wrote in the blog’s first lines. “Always the overachiever, this guy.”

Former state Rep. Clarke Tucker said in a Facebook post that, after he was diagnosed with cancer, DeCample was one of the first people he called.

“Getting diagnosed with cancer in your 30s is frankly a strange thing, and I didn’t know how to talk about it,” Tucker said. “Matt was someone I could talk to, but he did so much more than that. He mentored me, helped me grow, and made me laugh.”

DeCample later became a consultant and worked as a spokesman for various organizations, including the Arkansas Cinema Society and the Little Rock Film Festival.

He also was a member of Improv Little Rock and The Joint Venture since their inception and worked alongside the groups’ director, Brett Ihler, for about 15 years.

“He had a unique relationship with all of us, and he made every one of us feel special in a different way,” Ihler said. “But he did that with everybody. You wanted to be his friend, and I wanted to be out on stage with him.”

Ihler said DeCample was reticent at first when it came to doing improv, but he eventually found his “silly side” and became great at improvisation.

The director said the funniest thing he ever saw DeCample do happened during a weekend show about 10 years ago. In one scene, the two were in a fever dream and DeCample began to dance, “looking all goofy,” Ihler said.

When asked what he was, DeCample replied that he was a “banjo-playing octopus.”

“It was so unique and so strange, but it stuck with me forever,” Ihler said.

Jason Pederson, a reporter who worked with DeCample at KATV, said DeCample valued family and that his mother and father were with him when he passed. Pederson also noted that “a former governor and a current mayor” visited DeCample on Sunday.

“How many of us will be able to say that? Well done, Matt. Well done.”