Selfless Boy Joins Torchbearers

Matthew Nidetz said he had to do something.

Four children at his church had recently lost their mother to cancer. So he decided to celebrate his 11th birthday last November by throwing a party, inviting dozens of guests and giving the presents he received to the grieving children as Christmas gifts.

“It made me feel good,” said Matthew, a sixth-grader from Camarillo. “I was thinking: I have so much. I just need to give back.”

It was just such selflessness that led to Matthew being selected as the youngest Ventura County resident to carry the flame in a torch relay leading up to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The 65-day torchbearing relay begins Dec. 4 in Atlanta, and Matthew will be 12 by then--the minimum age to participate.

His mother, Mary, said she nominated her son to carry the torch for a number of reasons. For one, he volunteers as an assistant coach for mentally and physically disabled children who play soccer with the American Youth Soccer Organization in Thousand Oaks. His father, Arthur, coaches the team. Matthew is also dyslexic and must work with a tutor twice a week. But, his mother said, he never complains.

“He’s very proud of his schoolwork,” said Mary Nidetz, 38. “It doesn’t come easy. He really appreciates that B or that A, because he knows how hard he has to work.”

Laura Newman said she isn’t surprised he was selected as a torchbearer. As Matthew’s fifth-grade language arts teacher last year at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School in Thousand Oaks, Newman said she noticed he often reached out to fellow students, putting his arms around those having a bad day, or choosing classmates normally picked last to play on a team in gym class.

“Sometimes you get these really good kids, but they let you know about it. Matthew never did that,” Newman said. “He was just doing it because he really wanted to do it.”

That’s how he felt about the four children whose mother died last year.

The children ranged in age from 2 to 14. Matthew’s party yielded two carloads of gifts, which officials at his church, St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic Church in Westlake Village, delivered to the family on Christmas Eve.

“They were blown away,” said Mary Jane McGraw, one of the church’s lay members who change the altar cloths and prepare the wine for Mass. “They couldn’t believe anyone would be that thoughtful and that kind.”