In his junior year, Marty Matijasich ’71 told the captains on Lehigh Club Ice Hockey that he played goalie for a team back in high school. The starting goalie had quit, and the captains were in desperate need of someone in net for their big match against Rutgers.
Matijasich had made the club as a freshman and earned the supersub award as a sophomore, but he skated on the fourth line. For that game in N.J., he donned the goalie pads and mask against the Scarlet Knights. Matijasich had a career night. Lehigh won, and he earned the shutout.
As the team, classmates, and parents congratulated him, someone hailed him as Kid Zero for stopping all of the shots between the pipes. The nickname stuck.
Kid Zero, the humble guy from the fourth line who is serenaded by serendipity in a big moment, seems to be the story of Matijasich’s life, repeated time and again. Today, he is coming through in big moments still for international students in need.
A Child With Ambitions
But this story starts in Reading, Pa., where Matijasich began his life on the northside. His grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Slovenia, and his family was working class. His father was an Iwo Jima veteran who drove trucks as a civilian. His mother was the backbone of the home — the cook, banker, family manager, and homework checker.
As a kid, Matijasich worked a variety of jobs — a pinboy at the local bowling alley, errand boy/janitor for a sign company, and lifeguard. He passed along his wages to his mom, who gave him some spending money and banked the rest, knowing he’d need it later in life.
Matijasich had ambitions. He was inspired by an older neighbor who won the county science fair and went on to attend Notre Dame University.
He realized in third grade that he liked to learn. He earned good grades. When he entered Central Catholic High School, Matijasich took the college prep courses, was on honor roll, and earned a medal on a national Latin test. Some of his friends had parents who were professionals. When he visited them in their nice houses, it only confirmed for Matijasich that he should get a college education.
His principal had a master’s degree from Lehigh and spoke highly about the university. So Matijasich decided to visit Bethlehem to interview and tour.
When he saw campus, his mouth dropped open. The splendor. The size. The engineering. It was beyond anything he’d seen or expected.
An Adventure at Lehigh
Kid Zero got in … and a Pennsylvania Higher Education Award provided some grant funding that helped him afford it. It helped that his mother had saved all his money from those jobs. ROTC helped him too. While that program was required for all freshmen, Matijasich remained in it for four years.
At Lehigh, what a world he entered! The Freshmen Smoker. Richards Hall. House party weekends. 4 o’clocks. Pajama parade to Moravian. Bonfire. Banners. Turkey Trot. Rivalry game. To quote his class motto, “’71 for fun!”
But after the summer of ’69 as he began his sophomore year, all of the high-flying fun caught up to him. He needed to buckle down on his electrical engineering curriculum or he’d be sent home packing.
Matijasich found a good balance, earning the grades while still making good memories in Thornburg and as a member of Pi Lambda Phi.
Kid Zero got his next big break before graduation. He was sworn into the Army during his senior year. The Vietnam War had been going on for many years, and the U.S. was in negotiations with the Viet Cong to end it. Nonetheless, Vietnam looked to be in his future following his June graduation.
He hoped to marry his high school sweetheart, Joann, a girl from a Ukrainian family who grew up in Reading’s southside. But they didn’t want to tie the knot if he was headed off to war.
That January, just months before graduation, Matijasich drove to Fort Dix for his enlistment physical … where the doctor failed him. He didn’t pass the hearing test. The military was already in peace talks by then and decided to give him an honorable discharge.
That news took his life in a different direction. The marriage got scheduled. He interviewed for jobs. He finished out his senior year with less worry for the future.
Work and Family Life
Matijasich landed a job working for Metropolitan Edison in Easton. To save a little cash for the wedding, he was living in the Pi Lamb house on the, eh-hem, Lafayette campus.
Then life began in earnest … a marriage, three daughters, and life in Sinking Spring, a suburb of dear old Reading, as he started a 20-year career at General Public Utilities.
Later, with deregulation of the electric utility industry, his career brought him to Southern Company for 10 years. He concluded his career with eight years as co-owner of his own energy-trading LLC: Highlands Energy Group. While his career soared, so did Joann’s as she served leaders as an executive assistant at Frito-Lay and then Pepsi.
Amid the work, Matijasich focused on family and philanthropy. At times, the two even intersected when he helped build a playground as a member of the Jaycees. He also helped to found a girls youth soccer league in Berks County, which all three of his daughters played in.
“I’m a boiler room man,” he says. “I do stuff to build and fix what’s needed. As Lehigh has started saying, we are makers.”
Reconnecting With Lehigh
When work and family life slowed a bit, Matijasich began to make more of a relationship with Lehigh.
He connected more deeply with his classmates as co-chair of his Class of 1971 for their 45th and 50th reunions. He was then elected class president at the 50th Reunion. He began to reflect on the incredible life that Lehigh helped create for him. He and Joann wanted to give back to Lehigh.
Kid Zero strikes again. As he leads his class, he has encouraged his classmates to support Lehigh through philanthropy, especially planned gifts like bequests or charitable gift annuities (CGA). He also notes that Lehigh’s development team works with donors to try and match their gifts with their specific interests.
But Matijasich’s philanthropy became more targeted when the war in Ukraine began. Watching those events unfold reminded Joann and him of their honored heritage and deep ties to family. They knew students from Ukraine or from any other country navigating unrest or instability at Lehigh would face untold worries and costs — to travel back, aid family, and save their homeland.
The Matijasich family made a gift to help all international students in need of emergency funds. To fulfill this gift, they combined their preferred giving vehicles by creating a one-time CGA from their IRA.
Marty saw this as an optimal way to provide for international students and maintain the benefits they have come to enjoy. By supporting the International Student Assistance Fund, the gift was further maximized, as it was eligible for matching funds made possible by the Iacocca Family Foundation.
“I have always admired Lee Iacocca ’45,” says Matijasich. “I loved the cars he made, the corporate ranks he climbed, his humble beginnings, and his philanthropy to Lehigh. While I am no Iacocca, I could be Kid Zero.”
So, again, when the chips were down, Matijasich helped save the day. This time for any international student facing a crisis and not knowing where to turn.
“As Lehigh alumni, we give back. We are leaders in our communities. We are family,” he says.
And he is not done yet. As he has aged, his hearing has decreased. So he is tapping into his Lehigh entrepreneurial spirit to help pioneer assistive technologies. He dreams of the day that Disability Support Services on campus might use those tools to help students who navigate similar challenges … and days ahead when Lehigh “future makers” might work on ways to make those tools even better.
So, the impact of Kid Zero continues.
