Member-only story
About Me — Matt Pierce
How Determination and Resourcefulness Led Me to Journalism
I shouldn’t be writing this. Life with a third grade education isn’t easy. Somehow I’ve managed to do it. There is nothing about me or my life that makes much sense, but it’s my life and everyday I am learning to be comfortable with and appreciate who I am.
On a fall day in 1981 I came into this world. My father worked rewinding electric motors and my mother was a young 17 year-old. They were working class people living in the stereotypical shadow of big oil, big ranches and big money.
To make ends meet my father delivered papers for the San Antonio Light before he went into work just after daybreak. My mother dropped out of school in the 8th grade to escape the abuse she was catching at home. As we say down here in Texas “they didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”
My dad eventually scored a job working as a government contractor and we moved further out from the city to a rural area of Wilson County, Texas about 30 miles south of San Antonio. We lived with my paternal grandmother who we simply called “Mamaw.” My dad was not a rich or overly educated man–none of my family was. But they managed to survive and felt I would too.
