MDA summer camp is one of my favorite events of the season. It’s a chance to become reacquainted with old friends.
I am a long-term camper. I have been attending MDA summer camp for almost twenty years. Sometimes I am working, as I was today. Sometime I am playing; helping campers with their fish pond, or golf game. Every year I look for familiar faces in the crowd. Every year, some are missing.
It’s because of these missing faces that I have worked to help raise money for the past two decades for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It is a poignant reminder that while research progresses (never fast enough) that there is still no cure for these neuromuscular diseases that so cruelly rob children of their muscles and their lives.
This year’s Labor Day Telethon will be especially difficult. This year Matthew Martin won’t be there. Matthew was an Honorary Fireman with the Tooele City Fire Department. Every year he joined them as they presented a generous check from their “fill the boot” campaign. Every year he asked for a kiss on the cheek. It was a kiss I was always more than happy to give. Then he would turn ten shades of red. During that moment in the last telethon, it occurred to me that kiss may be my last.
Matthew fought Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. There is no good form of Muscular Dystrophy, but this is one of the worst. He fought with courage and determination to the end. The battle was lost on May 2, 2010.
Matthew was buried with the honors of a fallen firefighter. He left behind a loving family and a brotherhood of firefighters who also loved him. I loved him too. In his honor I will continue to battle these diseases anyway I can. I will be back again this year for the telethon in an effort to change and save lives. I am weary of missing faces.
