Just chosen First Sergeant of his company (the highest rank for a junior) in 2001, Matt was heading for his third year at the Naval Academy, helping Mike apply for admission as a freshman there. Dreams were coming true. Engaged to his fiancée, Sara Zebulske, he was bound for pilot training.

At the Naval Academy

Instead, a 25-year-old driver struck the Klotzbach Jeep on July 29. The crash killed Matt. It also injured his mother and father. A nurse at John Muir Trauma Center in Walnut Creek, California, Mary couldn’t work for 15 months or drive for 11 months. By then, she couldn’t endure the pain of working at the bedsides of trauma patients.

 

How has she coped? Her faith kept her going. “I don’t continue on my own strength. It is a strength higher then myself. I know Matt’s in heaven. I’ll see him again.”

 

Honoring Matt by saving others’ lives, Mary is an ardent supporter of MADD, focusing her energy on urging legislators to mandate ignition interlocks in the vehicles of all convicted drunk drivers. Last week she wrote a passionate letter to the 
San Francisco Chronicle  supporting Assembly Member Mike Feuer’s Bill AB 2784 “in its original language, before amendments gutted the bill.”

 

The mother of four, one of 12 children herself, is intent on preventing senseless deaths and injuries from drunk driving. Mary points out that the year Matt was killed 17,448 people were killed by drunk drivers – equal to the number of  9/11 World Trade Center fatalities – 2,996 – if repeated every two and a half 2 ½ months on our highways, for 14 ½ months. She also cites another 513,000 people were injured in 2001 drunken driving crashes.  

 

A day at the beach

The strong faith that has enabled Mary and her family to survive both horrific 2001 events has thankfully helped them endure another unbelievably heartbreaking trauma. On December 26, 2006, Mike was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Remarkably, he graduated from Annapolis on time in May 2007. Now finished with radiation and chemotherapy treatments, he is doing well on a diet and supplement regimen, despite doctors’ predictions.

 

Mary believes in miracles. She’s confident that Mike’s eternal prognosis is excellent. Amazingly, five years after Matt’s death, and just seven months before Mike’s horrendous diagnosis, Mary also graduated with her BS in Nursing, to add to her RN accreditation. Plans to start her masters in biblical studies, with an emphasis on grief counseling, had to be put on hold when she moved to Annapolis for 11 months, to be Mike’s patient advocate.

 

Now working back at the hospital as a case manager, Mary continues to educate others about the dangers of drinking and driving. When speaking to school students, she includes sobering statistics about the dangers of underage drinking.

 

The offender who killed Matt and seriously injured his parents was driving drunk on a suspended license, with his five-year-old son and two drunken teenage passengers in the car. Convicted of gross vehicular manslaughter, child endangerment, and DUI, his blood alcohol content (BAC) measured 0.096 four hours after the crash.

 

Matt is buried at the Naval Academy’s National Cemetery. He signed all his letters and e-mails to home with “Til the shout.  Love, Matt” (based on 1 Thessalonians. 4:16)

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++
California Residents: Contact Senate Public Safety Chair Gloria Romero and urge her and her Senate Public Safety colleagues to support AB 2784 as originally introduced by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, as a bill requiring all persons convicted of DUI to use an ignition interlock device as a condition to driving.