This week’s Valley Sun All-Star is a leader, role model and skilled artisan.
Matt Whitham, 18, a senior at La Cañada High School, is what many who know him consider a “great kid” with a “great personality” and a “great attitude.”
Whitham is an Eagle Scout, co-founder of the La Cañada High School engineering club, and hopes to someday become an architect.
Whitham was nominated to be an All-Star by one of his scoutmasters at Troop No. 507, Ron Connelly.
“Matt is a very reliable young man, who has taken on a lot of leadership and does his best at everything he does,” Connelly said, adding, “He works hard and does an exemplary job at everything. He’s someone that the other kids look up to.”
Whitham is the son of Marci and Steve Whitham of La Cañada. He has a sister, Stephanie, 15, a sophomore at La Canada High School.
Matt Whitham was born in Pasadena and grew up in La Cañada. He attended La Cañada Elementary School and La Cañada High School 7/8.
As a small child, he became known as the “boy with the persimmon stand,” his mom said, as she recalled her young son beginning his entrepreneurial skills by setting up a “Matt’s Persimmons” stand on the street corner, to sell fruit off their backyard tree.
He began playing baseball with La Cañada youth baseball when he was about 5 years old and went on to play for three years with the high school baseball team.
He began his scouting experience with Troop No. 507, while he was in the seventh-grade. While in the ninth-grade, Whitman earned the Jimmy Stewart Good Citizen award.
He has since gone on to earn other awards, including most recently his Eagle award, which he earned for creating an outdoor education garden for the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sunland.
The garden is designed to teach elementary school students about California native plants. After discussing the project with foundation staff, Whitman cleared the land, created trails and built two redwood benches for the garden.
Whitman said he enjoyed the sense of accomplishment he felt in creating a garden that will be used by so many for education and enjoyment.
Photography also is a passion for the youth, who began taking pictures through a media arts class at the school during his sophomore year. He won an award for outstanding student in that class.
