Matheny Students Overcome Obstacles to Reach Graduation Celebration

It may have taken more time and effort for him than for most students, but Samuel Heisler did what countless school graduates do this June when he flipped off his motorboard at his graduation on Tuesday from the Matheny Medical and Educational Center in Peapack & Gladstone.

His classmate, Bryan Desatnick of Basking Ridge, is often in a wheelchair, but on Tuesday he slowly walked onstage at Matheny's Shornhorn Arts Center, where the graduation center was held for 10 students in Matheny's Class of 2013. 

With assistance, Desatnick also managed to walk to pick up his diploma during a ceremony that mixed tears, smiles, music and pride — and a lot of admiration for the graduates — from their families and others who made their achievement possible.

"They really teach you anything is possible," said Peapack & Gladstone Mayor William Horton, one of the speakers at the graduation for the students, all of whom have medically complex developmental disabilities.

"My message to the Class of 2013 is [to] persevere," said keynote speaker Maggie Redden, who is Ms. Wheelchair New Jersey 2013. Her accomplishments also include being a Penn State University graduate who competed with the 2008 Paralympian Track and Field Team in Beijing. She had also traveled to her native India to work in an orphanage.

"We have mountains to climb," said Redden, a Jersey City resident. "But rarely is there only one way around a mountain," she added.

The Matheny students should follow their dreams as well, Redden urged the group.

New Jersey law allows students with disabilities and other special education needs to remain in high school until age 21, when they must graduate, and find some other way of meeting those needs.

The Matheny School was founded more than a half century ago by the parents of the school's first student — Chuck Matheny, who was onstage for Tuesday's ceremony — so their son in a wheelchair and other disabled students could receive an education. 

"They [the Mathenys] decided that people with disabilities should be people first," said Matheny President Steve Proctor.

The type of students and patients that Matheny now serves have more challenging disabilities than many of those first students, and the institution has adapted to serve the students well beyond their school years, as well as serving out-patients.

Bryan Desatnick will move directly into Matheny's adult education program, and will remain a resident at the school and hospital, as before, said his mother, Edana Destanick. 

Mason Walsh, from Bridgewater, also will move into Matheny's adult programs, said his mother, Jeanne May.

Other students will move into other living situations and can pursue additional paths of education, according to speakers at the ceremony. 

As part of the ceremony, each student was introduced on stage and their accomplishments and special characteristics were described then, and in a specially produced video later. 

For example, student Natalie Tomastyk from Freehold was described as loving music, and the school's yoga studio.

Valedictorian Yasin Reddick, who used a walker to pick up his diploma standing up, was described as always having a smile — especially for girls — and for having plans to attend college and further his art education.

"It took a lot of hard work to get to this point," Reddick, one of the students who is able to speak, said in a video made prior to the ceremony. In a voice-over in the video, Reddick handed out thanks to many, including all the different types of staff members at the school "who helped us over the years."

Edana Desatnick, who attended the ceremony with her husband, Lloyd, and their daughters, Lauren and Sarah, Bryan's sisters, also gave much thanks to Matheny.

"If it wasn't for Matheny, he wouldn't be alive," Desatnick said of her son.

"It's an amazing day," she added of the graduation ceremony.

The school's administrators, staff and leaders were quick to give credit to the students themselves.

"They never said, 'I can't,' 'I won't, or 'I cannot,'" said School Principal Sean P. Murphy. All of the school's students even were troupers in weathering Hurricane Sandy last fall, he added.