Sunday, November 8, 2009

I went to Mattie Stepanek's peace park on Sunday. I heard about Mattie when I saw his mother, Jeni, on the news the other night. Her son suffered from a rare form of muscular dystrophy, dysautonomic mitochrondrial myopathy from which he died before his 14th birthday. His mother has just written a memoir about Mattie which is why she was on the news, but her son was astounding. Mattie published poems of peace and advocated on Capitol Hill for peace. Mattie had two other siblings who died from the same disease, and at the age of three, he learned to cope with the death of his brother through poetry. He published five books of poems, some of which were New York Times best sellers!

Mattie and his family live in Rockville, MD. After his death they created a park in his name where a statue of him is in addition to football fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, a massive playground, a dog park, and more. On benches scattered around the park quotes from his poems are posted. It was a fantastic experience not only to see his mother talk about Mattie on the news last week, but to go to the park and see how much the community he lives in still loves him.

I ordered his books through the consortium from school so I'll be sure to share some poems when I read them hopefully next week.


Here are the photos I took at his Peace Park:

Terence was just scratching his head but he looks really emotional!

Look Mom! My first dunk! Dad will be so proud!

Peace and love.