He captained a powerhouse football team at Morristown High School. And he was determined to tackle tougher opponents: Housing discrimination and urban blight.
Now, friends and family are mourning Matthew King, 35, whose death Monday in Baltimore is under investigation.
The son of former Morristown council president and current candidate Michelle Dupree Harris and town housing inspector Mark King, Matt was the founder and president of the Harlem Park Community Development Corp., a nonprofit striving to transform a crumbling African American neighborhood in West Baltimore.
Harris said her son’s death is being investigated as a homicide.
Police have labeled the case a “questionable death,” and are awaiting a report from the city medical examiner about the cause, Baltimore Detective Vernon Davis said on Wednesday. Matthew King’s body was found at 3:39 pm Monday in a residence in the northeast part of Baltimore.
“I think someone hadn’t heard from him in awhile,” and called police, Davis said. No other details were available. Davis said the medical examiner’s findings could take a week or two.
Funeral arrangements still are pending, said Harris. An online fund drive has been established to defray costs.
‘HIGHWAY TO NOWHERE’
“Matt was over 6 feet in stature, and his love and passion for his family was as big as he was tall,” his mother said.
He grasped the importance of giving back, which came naturally, Harris said.
“As a community activist, his dedication and hard work spilled out into the streets as his every step being one of selflessness. Through his tireless work within his community, everyone could see the visionary that he was. He never put limitations on himself. It showed in the life he lived,” she said.
In a social medial post, Matt’s family asked for “time and space”:
https://www.facebook.com/1007929169/posts/10222421514259167/?d=n
Friends and former coaches, still stunned, remembered Matt King as an outgoing personality who welcomed tough challenges and inspired others to embrace his vision. He looked out for kid sisters McKenzie and Charleigh, was friendly to everybody, and was contemplating running for the Baltimore council, they said.
“He cared more about everyone else than for himself,” said Robert Sparano, a Morris School District administrator who was a classmate of Matt’s at West Virginia University.
“Whatever he put his mind to, he could do it. He worked really hard,” said Gordon Drewery, one of Matt’s coaches on the 2004 MHS football team that went to the state finals.
Matt even convinced skeptical friends that he could turn around Harlem Park, a West Baltimore neighborhood in decline for decades because of disastrous urban renewal projects and discriminatory housing practices. An unfinished “highway to nowhere” symbolized the area’s bleak prospects.
“If you look around,” he said in a Baltimore Sun interview in July, “you see the assets and bones of what once was a great community. We need to get back to that great community, and even surpass it.”
‘AN EXCELLENT ROLE MODEL’
Matt created his community development corporation in 2019 to “correct some of the systematic racism that exists, that was impacted through urban renewal but also redlining and the highway to nowhere,” he told a Baltimore TV station in June.
Even as a 9-year-old, playing baseball and basketball at the Morristown Neighborhood House, Matt was speaking his mind and demanding fairness, said family friend David Gilliham.
As an adult, Matt appeared more interested in creating affordable housing than in acquiring wealth or power, Gilliham said.
“He just seemed to want to be able to provide for people an opportunity to experience what he experienced– which was chances, which was housing, which was stability, which was safe. He grew up in a good town, and that influenced him, and he wanted to do that in Baltimore.”
Matt never forgot his roots, Gilliham said.
“He was connected to where he came from. He grew up with working class parents. That was his base. That’s what he wanted to provide.”
Matt held a master’s degree in business administration, and was pursing another in nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship at the University of Baltimore. He remained active with Omega Psi Phi, his fraternity at WVU.
A onetime intern for forrmer Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11th Dist.), Matt moved to Maryland in 2010. He worked as an insurance agent, started rental investment- and financial services companies, and became co-owner of a hair care business that served nursing home residents, among other customers, his resume indicates.
Lessons about leadership and teamwork were learned as a lineman, on offense and defense, for the Morristown High School Colonials. He was named captain in his senior year.
“I always felt he was an excellent role model for our younger players,” said former head coach John Porcelli.
“He personified all the things we look for in our program. Matt always did the right things, on and off the field,” Porcelli said, describing him as intense and highly competitive, yet well liked. “I’m still kind of in shock that he’s deceased.”
Another popular Colonial, Darell Johnson of Porcelli’s 1993 championship team, was lost to COVID-19 last year.
Engaged to be married, Matt King seemed in good spirits when he texted on Friday, Drewery said. Drewery sent his friend daily Scripture verses, “so he would stay grounded.”
The special education teacher admits he was among the skeptics, at first.
Matt “had these grand ideas of what he was going to do. And he looked at Baltimore as a place where he could do great things,” Drewery said.
“Everything was about to come to fruition. And then this tragedy happened.”
