MATTHEW J.T. STEPANEK

“Put on Oprah.” “Put on Oprah right now. RIGHT NOW!” It was Chris Cuomo bellowing on the phone. “Hurry. Listen to this kid”!   “We should book him…get him on GMA”.

I immediately looked at the clock. I have no idea why I looked at the clock. Like I was going to jump on an American Airlines or Delta shuttle to Chicago and try to find him in Harpoland. I heard this angel-as-child speak for less than a minute and I immediately went into booking, strategizing, producing mode.

He was on Oprah for the whole hour and Christopher (I usually called him Christopher when I was mad but I’ll call him that positively in this reference.) was mesmerized by Mattie, as were dozens of people in Magazineland on the 9^th floor of ABC World HQ watching intently a little boy in a wheelchair, on a ventilator say the most I N C R E D I B L E things about life. An old salt. A prophet. A poet. A peacemaker. Also, an adorable little boy.

The Oprah TV echo reverbated in the hallways and cubicles too. Everyone was watching throughout the building. This was the height of Oprah Peak Appointment Television.

“Gerard,” saying it forward to my secret weapon, the star researcher in the research library who can find anything and everything I have ever needed …in seconds. “put on Oprah. Theres a kid and his mother. Help me find their home number..please and thank you”.

By now I deduced that the show was taped and not live this particular day. There were 20 minutes left in the show and I was now dialing a phone number listed to Jeni Stepanek. Somewhere in Maryland.

I immediately apologized for being so impulsive and direct. One of the first things I said (which she fondly recounted in her memoir years later) was “if anyone else calls, please remember that I called first and please do not accept any other interview invitations until we speak again”. I had to take a shower after writing that last sentence. Shameless, I know. But the world watched Oprah. She was the World’s Leader. We all followed. “Your phone is going to ring off the hook”, I warned. “And Chris Cuomo and I want to share your son’s message with the world….when can we come down.?”

Squatting in a magazine producers office on Columbus Avenue, I didn’t even live in New York but was there for weeks at a time. One time Chris and I left a NY shoot to jet off to Hong Kong for the China Quake. I sometimes forgot where I lived because I was so attached to the editorial assignments. I almost didn’t care about anything else. “I don’t care if you live in Alaska, just keep doing what you do”, said Shelley Ross the Herculean woman who with Diane Sawyer brought Good Morning America into a new century with new vision, new priorities and re-energizeed production values.

She was a fan of stories “with heart”. And this one was a doozy.

By the time Oprah’s closing credits rolled I had a tentative agreement that we would do something and we shot an interview within a week.

Mattie outdid himself in his interview with Chris. In fact Chris’s interview was one of the best I have ever seen him do..asking highly cerebral thoughtful questions to a 9 year old boy without sounding condescending. Despite a terrible head cold that day, he was gently warm and almost affectionate in his approach. He also, like the rest of us, looked almost dumbstruck..gobsmacked ..almost not believing that this kid was saying such beautiful, inspirational, relatable things.

It was just over two months after 9/11 so the timing of a boy, in a wheelchair fighting a most certainly fatal disease that would claim him five years later, giving the world a major life lesson…was almost God given.   Each sentence was punctuated by a dramatic pause, a gasp, actually as Mattie caught his breath on the ventilator. Almost like we all needed the extra few seconds to ingest, digest, absorb such mammoth heart healing thoughts. It was mindblowing. When it was all over, the cameramen and I just sat and looked at eachother, in awe at what we had just witnessed.

The piece was a work of love. Writing with someone else in a collaboration takes some getting used to. Chris rewrote and rewrote and then accepted and more often rejected my revisions and would sometimes argue.   “This isn’t the New York Times. That track is too many sentences,” I’d moan.   But we always had middle ground “for Mattie”. He tweaked his script right there in the tracking booth…usually making it better. Just like Diane Sawyer did. Constant refining. The goal: perfection.

When all 5 minutes and 3 seconds of our little piece aired, I am told there was not a dry eye in the control room. Anchors never weep on television but there were a few sniffles that morning. I never stopped crying in the edit room. It was really the only piece (okay maybe not the only) that made me uncontrollably cry.

Mattie wrote several poetry books. They spoke of little lessons about life and big ones too.   One nugget that viewers embraced was Mattie’s affection for President Jimmy Carter. “You weren’t even born when Jimmy Carter was President…why is he your hero?” Chris, astounded, asked Mattie. Mattie talked about how Carter never asked for credit for his peacemaking. Precious television. But I had an idea for even more extraordinary television. With the help of GMA’s senior book editor Patty Neger, I became aware that President Carter would be appearing on GMA two weeks after our taped piece. I suggested we have them meet for the very first time in a surprise live event on Good Morning America. After careful planning, Charlie Gibson pulled off the surprise on the morning of December 4^th, 2001 to a shocked, elated Mattie and a visibly moved, humbled former President and peacemaker.

Firefighters across the country became fans and friends and legions of book fans and people lovers across America fell in love with Mattie.   We followed up and did a few more pieces with Mattie over the years…one time having him interviewed in his hospital bed. Mattie spent most of his life hospitalized.

I remember the first time I came down without Chris. “Where’s Chris?” “Chris isn’t coming?”, Mattie asked sadly. He loved Chris. And the feeling was mutual.   Almost childishly, I felt Mattie didn’t even like me because he and Chris had so much fun. I was too serious for some reason…or old.   I was actually jealous! I realized I was spiritually inadequate because of Mattie and I became more spiritual because of him!   I always wanted to do a piece with just the outtakes of Mattie and Chris ribbing eachother about Harry Potter characters, literary references…even politics. They were like two little kids having fun. It was beautiful.

There were many close calls. Mattie’s life teetered from infection to coma to infection…for months at a time. When the end came, we went to the funeral and covered the funeral, a hard thing to do. But Mattie got what he really wanted…to live to be a teenager. He died at 13. Chris didn’t show it publicly, but I know he was truly crushed when the world lost Mattie T. J Stepanek. How Chris loved to say out loud Mattie’s full name. And how Mattie lit up listening to Christopher Charles Cuomo say it. I know Chris loved him and as a journalist he shouldn’t. But he’s human. Sometimes too human. It’s not a bad thing.

Chris and I won a National News and Documentary Emmy, a rare thing for a network morning show…except if you work at CBS’s Sunday Morning where it’s a full time sport getting Emmy nominations…no joke!

Full circle, Mattie brought Oprah to me. Kind of. Two years after his death, a playground was dedicated to Mattie’s memory. At the ceremony amid a huge crowd, I interviewed Oprah about what Mattie meant to her and the World. Her World. The World that she Led. I can’t even remember what she said, but it was amazing. She is probably the most “instantly articulate” well spoken person I have ever met. Concise, precise and efficient with her words, unlike wordy “triple adjective” me. (See the beginning of this sentence!) She spontaneously spoke in perfect sentences. No cursor, no editing. No cut and paste. Incredible. It was weird. We were eye to eye and the same height..but I couldn’t really see her eyes because of so much make up. I mean, it didn’t look bad.   Just noticeable because we were standing so close to eachother in the crowd. She glowed. There most definitely was an aura. But the words drowned out everything.

But Mattie’s real gift to me was inspiring me to find more stories that inspire. And to tell them with broader import and meaning. Another gift was getting paired up with Cuomo, a rising star at the time and future anchor. We did all sorts of features and news pieces. Seriously, he was fantastic interviewing children. And big people too.

He always sent the very best Happy Birthday emails…though I dread this years. Despite our occasional squabbles that got a bit tempestuous…(“You Ungrateful Orange”, he once wrote during my last and I hope very last big weight gain) …there is always love and smiling eyes whenever we see each other. Unannounced and unexpected, this man came to my mother’s funeral. Sat in the very last row of the Church. I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget him. I’ll never forget Mattie. Ever.