Mattie Stepanek

(http://www.mattieonline.com/about.htm)

My hero is Mattie Stepanek. He was a poem writer and did a lot of things for society. He was also on Oprah. Mattie was a great person who I admire as my hero. Mattie was born on July 17, 1990 and he grew up in Washington. He lived in a very small condo. He had a very bad disease called Dysautonomic Mitochondrial Myopathy. He lived until he was 13. He was very young and died only days after his 13th birthday. His favorite hobby was finding cool rocks around where he lived. He wrote poems in his free time. Most of his life he spent in a wheelchair because of his disease.

Mattie did many helpful things for the world. He cared a lot for nature which inspired him to write his poems about peace and saving the earth. He was a guest star on the Oprah show and he talked about his life. He said “Always play after every storm”. At first I never knew what exactly he meant by that but now I do and I agree with him. He was always trying to do things to help the environment although he was mostly inside his house writing. He was nice to people and never made anyone sad, until his death.

My hero's career was a poet. He wrote over 300 poems and published four books in his lifetime. He wrote about many things like family, animals, society, peace, and friends. Also he wrote about nature and living forever. To him writing poems was not as hard as they said. He never gave up, he just kept going. No matter what happened to him or anyone, he would never give up. He received little money for his books but he did not care. Just as long as he had family and friends nothing mattered. My hero did many things that I admired. He never gave up and he was always caring. He always had his dreams on his mind and always hoped for better times. His citizenship and respect for others and nature is why I admire him so much. The lesson I learned here is to never give up on your dreams.