At an age when many people are slowing down to enjoy retirement, Mat Gaberty continues to plan and organize events that raise awareness and money to fight heart disease. Plans are already underway for the next Annual Mat Gaberty Golf Classic.

"It's a lot of work," he said, "but it's also been the greatest satisfaction of my whole life. It's a great feeling to know that we have truly made a difference here in the county."

For more than twenty-five years, Mat Gaberty has raised funds to upgrade cardiac programs at McLaren-Macomb. For his long record of service and leadership, the MCG Foundation honored him as the 2002 Citizen of the Year.

It's an honor Gaberty has enjoyed previously. The Foundation named him their first Citizen of the Year in 1987. He is the first person to be chosen for this honor twice.

Mat began his mission for better cardiac care in 1981.

"At that time there weren't any true cardiac services here in Macomb County," Gaberty said. "I was very active in county politics and I always felt there was a tremendous need for some kind of cardiac care system right here."

Heart disease touched Mat at an early age. His father died of a heart attack when he was 18 and he later lost two close friends to heart disease. Mat even underwent heart bypass surgery himself but that was at another hospital and he worried about his wife having to drive to another county each day to visit him. He was determined to fill the need for quality cardiac care closer to home, in Macomb County.

Since then, Mat and his friends (the Mat Gaberty Heart Fund Committee) have staged successful benefits each year, including the annual Golf Classic held each August. The group began by raising funds for the American Heart Association, but Gaberty wrote a letter to several area hospitals asking what they would do if he donated directly to them.

"I was impressed with the response I got from McLaren-Macomb," he said. "At that time, they said they wanted to use it for a cardiac catheterization lab."

With the help of Gaberty's annual donations, the hospital built the Mat Gaberty Heart Center, a comprehensive center that provides diagnostic testing, open-heart surgery and cardiac rehabilitation services. The center has three catheterization labs to help meet growing demand for this diagnostic service.

The Mat Gaberty Heart Fund makes a donation each year to the hospital, presenting a check to Robert Milewski, hospital president and chief executive officer. Mat believes that the Heart Fund Committee and the Golf Classics are the catalysts that have moved the hospital ahead in cardiac services.

Hospital officials agree that Gaberty's financial support, as well as his friends in the community, have allowed the hospital to continually provide state-of-the-art cardiac care.

Gaberty's partnership with MCGH has had "a ripple effect" on other hospital programs as the high-quality care at the Mat Gaberty Heart Center has helped attract new patients to the hospital, as well as new physicians and specialists to the medical staff.

A long-time resident of St. Clair Shores, Mat served as Macomb County Road Commissioner for 18 years and he was elected to the Macomb County Board of Commissioners for four terms. Prior to his work for the county, Mat was a national sales manager for a chemical company and served on St. Clair Shores Planning Commission.

He and his wife, Dorothy, have been married for almost 60 years. They have two grown children, Mathew and Linda, and five grandchildren.