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Friends, teachers, coach recall Matt Gfeller as hard worker
Journal photo by Lauren Carroll
A group of young men walk into Holy Family Catholic Church for Matt Gfeller's funeral service today.
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Published: August 27, 2008
Matt Gfeller's bedroom, from the doorway and all around the inside, is a shrine to football.
And Gfeller spent his time as a Boy Scout in Troop 920 with his nose to the grindstone, achieving the rank of Eagle Scout this summer.
Those were the traits that a fellow Scout and his coach remembered most yesterday, the day of Gfeller's funeral. Gfeller, 15, died Sunday from a brain injury that he sustained when he collided with an opposing player last Friday in Reynolds season-opening football game against Greensboro Page.
The funeral took place at Holy Family Catholic Church in Clemmons. There, his teammate and friend, Howell Smith, led members of Troop 920 in reciting the Boy Scout Oath.
Earlier, Smith spoke of how serious Gfeller was about his endeavors.
"Everybody says he has been a hard worker on the football field and athletics, but he was just as hard a worker in Scouts and life in general," Smith said. "He already had gotten his Eagle Scout, and even in Scouting he wanted to do his best in everything he could, and he did."
Smith, a senior and third-year starter on the offensive line at Reynolds, became friends with Robbie Gfeller, Matt's older brother and now a freshman at UNC Chapel Hill, in elementary school.
"Matthew came into the troop as a fifth-grader, and I got to know him pretty well because I was pretty close buddies with Robbie," Smith said. "I went on a bunch of camping trips and tented with Rob and Mr. Gfeller and Matt on some occasions. We went to Scout camps for a week at a time, and you really get to know somebody well after spending that much time with him.
"He loved football. You can look at his Facebook profile, and his interests were football and speed exercises to reach peak performance."
Coach Mike Propst of Reynolds said that Matt Gfeller would come to the Reynolds' weight room to work out with his brother and other players when he was in the seventh grade.
"He has always been 'The One that's Coming,' the next great football player at Reynolds, and he was," Propst said. "They live in this beautiful house, and he had this piece of paper taped on his door with his football goals, and his No. 1 goal was to start at Reynolds as a sophomore.
"He had a sign over his door that said 'Football is my life.' He was very serious about it, and he would text message or call me about every day over the summer. He would leave me messages like, 'Coach, I am sorry to bother you, but I really need to talk to you about something.' And it would be about some step he was working on. And I would say 'Matty, you need to stop reading books and just play football.'"
Yesterday was the first day of class at Summit School, which Gfeller attended through last school year.
Loma Hopkins, a music and drama teacher at Summit for 49 years, taught Gfeller for four years, and remembered his performances in plays.
"He was a really unusual boy in that anything he did, he did with all his heart," said Hopkins, who spoke at the funeral later. "Students like Matt are the bonuses you get when you're a teacher.
"When Matthew left, we were so sad because here was someone who made us laugh, here was someone who was willing take on any role, he had no inhibitions about putting himself out and doing what he knew was fun and what was good to do," she said. "As I understand it, he was doing exactly the same thing at Reynolds with football."
Pat Capps, who taught Gfeller in a world history class last year at Summit, had similar thoughts.
"He had some very unique qualities for a 15-year-old," Capps said. "He was a very teachable kid and not just in terms of subject matter, but in terms of life lessons, he listened and he responded. Matthew was his own person in many ways."
Summit School officials started the day with assembly, said Dane Perry, the associate head of the school.
"Overall, the mood has been fairly optimistic about things, and I think a lot of that has to do for kids who are 14 and 15, getting into the routine helps a lot about understanding and moving through the grief and seeing that a part of life is tragedy at times," Perry said.
Smith said that everything in his life since Saturday morning has been a shock. That was when he found out at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center that Gfeller was not going to live. He said that throughout, he has found the most comfortable place to be is with his teammates and coaches.
On Tuesday evening, after school officials decided that Reynolds would play East Forsyth on Friday as scheduled, the Demons rode buses to Deaton-Thompson Stadium and met at the 30-yard line, near the spot where Gfeller fell last Friday.
"We went out there, walked around a little bit, said a prayer where we believed it happened, and then we strapped up and got going," Smith said. "I was personally nervous about going back out there, but once we got out there, I felt at ease, peaceful. It was tough to describe."
The Demons have done the bare minimum this week to prepare for East Forsyth, and Smith said that the game would just be a chance for him and his teammates to get out and play and not worry about the outcome.
"I haven't really thought much past this Friday," Smith said. "We will see. We are playing on Friday just to play. Who knows how things will go?"
• Mason Linker can be reached at 727-7324 or at mlinker@wsjournal.com.
• Journal reporter Lisa Boone-Wood contributed to this story.
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