Where Are They Now? — Matt Urban

My place while at Provo High was with Mr. Nielsen in the computer lab. Computers were what I did, and still do to some extent. I even ‘lettered’ in Computers, did you even know that was an option? I’ll bring my letterman’s jacket/pin to the reunion if you want proof. If I wasn’t there, I liked to spend a little time behind the scenes of some of the Drama Productions working on the stage crew.

During high school I interned at the Provo School District office. Anything that involved computers, I was the one who did it. That turned into a full time job after graduation and I stayed on at the district, in one capacity or another for 13 years.

During the years at the district, I was longing for something a little more exciting, fulfilling, I don’t know what..so I took a leave of absence and worked for Novell for a short time. Well.. that wasn’t it, so I went back to the district I went. For the next several years I worked at Timpview, spearheading their “Exec Tech Center” (Executive Technology Center), I even taught a couple of computer classes.

As with everything, that got old after a while and longed to do something that I’d always wanted to do so I enrolled in the Law Enforcement Academy . Please now, collect your respective jaws off the floor. I hired on with the UHP and have been working in Section 6 (Utah county) since the summer 2000. That was about the same time that the patrol troopers started getting computers in their vehicles, so guess what I spend a lot of time doing now? I’ve been on the road the whole time except for about a year with SBI (state bureau of investigations) dealing with, you guessed it, computer crimes. One of the highlights of that year at SBI was the 14 hour days that we spent providing security for the athletes at the Olympic Village.

Funny story, not funny as in Ha ha, but funny as in ironic. The very day that I found out I got that position at SBI was the same day that I was diagnosed with Cancer. Nodular Sclerosing Hodgkins Disease is the name the doctors threw at us that we certainly weren’t prepared to catch. The ‘desk job’ at SBI was such a blessing for that year because at the time, being on the road would have been impossible. The cancer had progressed to Stage 4 (= not good) but after a couple surgeries and 6 months of hell...I mean chemotherapy, I stand before you a Cancer Survivor. I did let my hair grow back a little..... but not too much.

I married Andrea Wadley (class of ‘89) in October of 1990, we dated all through highschool and even shared a locker in ‘little b wing’ (that wasn’t an option on that recent poll). In our opinion, it was the best place to have a locker. She is a stay at home mom and master of anything she does (can you tell she’s writing this part?).

We have 6 children, our oldest, Miranda, she turns 16 the day before the reunion, loves EFY and seminary. Then comes Cameron (13.5), he is a Star Wars Genius and loves to have ‘Air-Soft gun wars’ with his friends, Jared (11.5) enjoys bike riding and any kind of physical activity, and can build some pretty cool Lego creations, Emily (9) is a cowgirl and loves to ride the neighbors horse as often as possible. After that, instead of another baby, I (Matt) had that cancer that was mentioned above. In 2003 Brandon (almost 5) made his entrance into the world, he came out with a knot in his cord and hasn’t unwound since, with his perpetual motion you’d think that he would have by now. Last is Alison (3) she’s the baby. At 6 months she was diagnosed with infantile scoliosis, her spine had a 44 degree curve. Shriners hospital did a fabulous job and took such good care of her. After 3 body casts and treatment for about 2 years, she’s now clinically straight, 0 degree curve.

We have a lot of time together as a family as we are a home schooling family and get to go on lots of fun field trips and adventures together. The crazy UHP schedule makes it possible for Matt to come along on most of our adventures in learning.

We lived in Provo from 1990 til 2006 when we built (and general contracted) our own home in Santaquin. That was sure a crazy, interesting, fun, nightmarish, experience. You can read/see all the gory details at our homebuilding blog if you want http://www.buildingnewhome.blogspot.com/.

I applaud those who are still reading, and apologize for the length of this post but the U-Z section of the site is pretty sparse so we felt we should fill it out a little.