Matt Hessey was a friend to everyone.
Whether it was a loved one in need of 3 a.m. advice, a stranger whose car broke down on the side of the road or, in one notable case, a bumblebee that got trapped in the house when temperatures dipped, he was always there.
On Monday, Matt Hessey was fatally stabbed while trying to protect a dog from abuse, court records show. And on Wednesday night, an entire crowd of people whose lives he touched gathered on the pier at Battery Park to hold a vigil in his honor.
“Matt would love this,” said Jessica Hessey, Matt Hessey’s wife.
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The park was “(their) place,” she said. It was also where Matt Hessey proposed to her seven times over their 17 years together.
The two met when they were teenagers and quickly grew close. As Jessica Hessey’s older sister put it, “you didn’t see one without the other.”
They made the usual teenage “bad decisions,” she said. At one point, Matt Hessey got his last name tattooed on his forearm.
“That man’s last name was like God itself,” Jessica Hessey said.
Their friendship soon became a relationship. And then, when Matt Hessey was 17, he became a parent.
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“(Matt) loved being a father,” Jessica Hessey said. “And after everything we’ve ever been through, he was still right there, one hundred percent.”
Their daughter Khylie Hessey was the driving force behind Wednesday’s vigil, blasting a playlist of her dad’s favorite songs and wearing a “turn up for Matt Hessey” shirt. The 15-year-old also set up a GoFundMe to cover funeral costs.
“I only got 15 years with my dad, and that’s so unfair,” she said. “He won’t be able to see me turn 16 and he won’t be able to see me graduate.”
As the vigil attendees gathered and lit candles, Khylie Hessey shared some of her last memories with Matt Hessey. She recounted seeing him at work, and how he smiled when he heard her shout, “I see my dad!” Her last text from him came on the Thursday before his death, in which he told her he would take her out to the Chesapeake Inn – his favorite restaurant – in Maryland soon.
“He was a good human,” Khylie Hessey said. “Nobody will ever take that from him.”
As the supermoon rose in the sky, the crowd released star-shaped balloons into the air. Khylie Hessey joked that her dad, who cared a lot about the environment and animals, would probably hate that they were doing the release near the water.
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He always made his family cut up the plastic six-pack rings before throwing them out, and was avidly concerned about plastic straws harming turtles. So when Jessica Hessey learned her husband died defending a dog, she said that protectiveness didn’t surprise her.
“That’s just how he was,” said Matt Hessey’s mother, Patty Landreth. “He was always helping somebody.”
She said it was especially sad that her son was only 33 when he died, especially after he “overcame so much” in his life.
The crowd at the vigil assured Matt Hessey’s family that he wouldn’t be forgotten, and told his daughter that she had “a whole tribe behind (her).”
“My daughter keeps calling him the GOAT – the greatest of all time,” Jessica Hessey said. “That’s Matt Hessey. There is no other way to explain that man.”
Send story tips or ideas to Hannah Edelman at hedelman@delawareonline.com. For more reporting, follow them on Twitter at @h_edelman.
