Who Is... Matt Donaldson?
William Matthew Donaldson (Matt) was born in Salt Lake City in 1987. Matt’s father, Bill Sr., was a custodial engineer for almost 60 years at the prestigious Roland Academy (elementary and high school) in Salt Lake (he’d been working there for 30 years at the time of Matt’s birth). Matt’s mother, Josephine, was born in Puerto Rico, and worked as a cook at the Academy. She was also an active volunteer at their local Church Of Latter Day Saints ward. Matt was an only child, and his parents were quite a bit older when they had him (dad was 50, mom was 45).
Since his parents were long-time employees of the school, Matt was allowed to attend, something he would have been unable to do as the annual fees would have been far too much for the family to afford.
Matt was always embarrassed that his parents were menial staff at the school and he very rarely interacted with them in case his friends saw it. His parents, to their credit, made sure to keep that as secret as they could and would only speak with Matt when there weren’t others around. His mother had taught him to speak Spanish, so often he would communicate with her that way so other’s wouldn’t know what they were saying.
Matt was never a strong student, but he was a standout athlete and became a very popular man on campus, and a guy known to party harder than he studied. Everyone thought he’d end up getting a free ride at a big college either on a football or basketball scholarship. And there were chances for that, but Matt simply was unable to do well enough on the entrance exams to actually make it in. He ended up settling for a small, local community college, where he again stood out for his athleticism but struggled with his grades. He was, however, eventually able to get his certificate in electrical engineering.
Back in grade 10 he met a young woman named Brittany Robison and fell head over heels for her. She came from an extremely wealthy family (as did almost all the kids at the academy) and at first had no idea that Matt came from a somewhat less than affluent family. Thinking he too came from money, she agreed to go out with him. He hid his lack of money from her well at first (he did have a part-time job at the post office, so he was able to make some money to take her out) but eventually she found out. By then it was too late, however, as Brittany had fallen for Matt and no longer cared he didn’t come from means.
It was important to Brittany and Matt, however, that Brittany’s parents not find out about Matt’s status as they would never allow her to date him if they knew. As Brittany and Matt continued their relationship, it became harder and harder to keep the truth from her family, and the lies ended up getting bigger and more elaborate.
Matt really did want them to know the truth, but he wanted to be with Brittany more. He knew that somehow, some way, he was going to have to make a great deal of money to win the parent’s respect. He got a decent paying job as an electrical engineer working for a large contracting company in Salt Lake (he and Brittany told her parents he was an executive there) but while the money was okay, it was nowhere near the level he needed to be at. He even took out life insurance policies on both his parents, and despite their being older, they were in fantastic health and showed no signs of slowing down in life.
Matt’s partying style never really left him, and he remained close to many of the guys he hung out with in college. While his choice of poison was typically beer or rum, he occasionally experimented with things of a harder nature, including pot, mushrooms, LSD, and cocaine.
After dating Brittany for more than a decade, and their remaining faithful to each other despite Brittany heading off to Vasser for four years of university, Brittany’s parents were pushing the two of them to get married. Matt was concerned; he had told Brittany’s parents that his parents were now living overseas as his father was an executive for Boeing; the thought of the families getting together scared the living daylights out of him – his parents were far too simple (in Matt’s opinion), too average, and if they all met the lies would be exposed, and likely Brittany would be forbidden to wed Matt.
Matt had to make a choice, and he chose an extremely elaborate and expensive way to make the wedding happen – or to be more accurate, weddings. Matt had the idea of having two weddings, one with everyone but his parents invited (they couldn’t make it in time due to Matt’s father’s work commitments), and then tell his parents he and Brittany were choosing to elope.
This was all fine, but the problem was money. One of Matt’s party friends had a buddy who was a loan shark. Matt asked for an introduction and the shark agreed to loan Matt $40,000, enough for the wedding and honeymoon. The money allowed Matt to put on quite the spread, very much impressing his new in-laws. But now he had to come up with $60,000, the original $40,000 plus an additional $20,000 worth of interest.
Now married, and also now with a pregnant new wife, Matt begins years of juggling debts by borrowing on the family name. Matt never did tell Brittany where the money for the wedding came from (he told her he’d been saving all those years) and he was using all kinds of lending agents to keep his debt a secret. While he was able to keep it from her for seven years, both the outstanding amount and the stress on Matt were growing rapidly – he now owed more than $100,000 to various high-interest lenders that were growing more and more impatient with Matt’s lack of repayment.
Brittany was also getting to be a little discouraged with Matt’s lack of ambition and his inability to make more money. They wanted their son, Markus, to go to J. Robert Oppenheimer Academy just as they had, but this would put far too much financial stress on Matt as the tuition was nearly as much as his earnings. So Matt turned to his father-in-law for guidance, and he offered Matt a job in his shipping company. Matt didn’t want to work for his father-in-law, but felt he had little choice if he was to keep Brittany happy.
With all this going on, Matt is feeling the screws tighten more and more, both from the lenders and from the growing unhappiness of Brittany. He needs a way out.
Season One Begins At This Point In Time