Foundation Stories
Michael Davis Mattil Memorial Scholarship Fund
Edward L. Mattil explains that the idea for a scholarship fund had its origins back in 1931 during the Great Depression. He was in eighth grade at the time, and living in State College, where his family had moved from Williamsport several years earlier. His older brother Karl, an outstanding student, was offered a $50 college scholarship and his parents, neither of whom had much formal education, decided that he should accept the offer. They became focused on providing as much support, financial and otherwise, as possible to ensure that their son could pursue a college degree. Karl would eventually earn three degrees at Penn State, including a Ph.D. in bio-chemistry. “I guess he did pretty well,” Mattil says. “They named a building at Texas A&M after him.”
Mattil recalls that he was impressed by his brother’s academic success. “In high school, he got all A’s except for one B, and I was inspired to do that, too.” Mattil achieved that goal, although he notes, with a laugh, that the solitary B was the best grade he earned in high school. “I got through everything by the skin of my teeth,” he admits. Still, he managed to follow his brother’s example, earning three degrees at Penn State on his way to successful careers in graphic design and academia. Mattil would go on to teach at PSU, the University of Minnesota and North Texas State, and he also edited a quarterly magazine, Everyday Art, from 1957 to 1974.
Mattil’s son, Michael, turned out to be another brilliant student, like his uncle. He attended Yale and Boston College before pursuing a career as a publisher, most notably with Little, Brown and Company, one of the most respected publishing houses in the country. Mattil had set up a retirement fund for his son, but after Michael died two years ago, he decided to convert that money into five scholarships—one for each school district in Centre County. “Most of the scholarships that are given at public schools go to academic,” he explains. “But I wanted a scholarship for kids who have special interests in trades, whether it’s a technician of some sort—like a dental technician—or someone who’s interested in construction or some phase of business that wasn’t going to [require] an academic degree. Those kids are sometimes left out, but there are some very good tech schools around here. This doesn’t mean a youngster can’t use [the scholarship] for academic, but we try to find kids who want to learn a trade or a business of some sort, and we’ve picked some really top-knotch kids. We’ve handed out two years of scholarships now, so this will be the third year. And the fund is large enough that it’ll be in perpetuity.”
Remembering how a modest $50 scholarship had changed his family forever, Mattil is particularly interested in helping the have-nots in the Centre region. “I used to go out and teach at the one-room schools and saw that there was a good deal of poverty in this area that isn’t recognized,” he says. “When you come into State College you think that everybody’s well off, but when you get off on the edges you realize that there’s some pretty poor folks around here. I just want to help those kids, who are on the edge, to have an opportunity.”
