Is Mattie Stepanek still alive?
Deceased (1990–2004)
Mattie Stepanek/Living or Deceased
Who is Mattie Stepanek mother?
Jeni Stepanek
Mattie Stepanek/Mothers
Did Mattie Stepanek earn a black belt?
Mattie was born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Yet Mattie has never let his disease keep him down: He earned a junior black belt in martial arts while tethered to an oxygen tank; and despite being just 11 years old, he home-schools at the level of a high school junior. But Mattie’s real gift is for poetry.
How old was Mattie Stepanek when he died?
13 years (1990–2004)
Mattie Stepanek/Age at death
Child poet Mattie Stepanek, whose inspirational verse made him a best-selling writer and a prominent voice for muscular dystrophy sufferers, died Tuesday of a rare form of the disease at age 13.
What did Jeni Stepanek do for a living?
Her son was a celebrity, the little boy poet with the devastating rare disease who earned a following around the world. Fighting that same illness—and now, a constellation of other afflictions—the Rockville resident looks back on what a brief but wondrous thing it was to be Mattie Stepanek’s mom.
Why did Jeni Stepanek call her mother Mattie?
“I am both living and dying at the same time,” he said, explaining to his mother that his body was failing but his mind and spirit were alive. His mother called him Mattie. There was a storm inside Mattie’s mother, too. The same rare disorder, dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy, a condition similar to muscular dystrophy.
What was the name of Jeni Stepanek’s first child?
Then her first child, Katie, was born Dec. 10, 1985, with serious disabilities. Katie loved her mother’s silly voice when she read “Milk and Cookies’’ aloud, and she died in July 1987, two months before Jeni Stepanek’s second child, Stevie, was born. Stevie lived six months.
Last week, his mother, Jeni Stepanek, left the Rockville, Md., condo purchased with the proceeds from her son’s best-selling “Heartsongs’’ poetry books. It was where, for Mattie’s final years, they lived together until he died two Junes ago at age 13.