THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606260160
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARGO M. MATEAS, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 65 lines
The jumble of color invites the player to enter the cockpit of a fighter plane.
Throttles and gauges spin realistically. Ahead, a runway looms.
Welcome to the creative world of 13-year-old Matthew Crane, a bright, brown-eyed teenager whose towering computer savvy belies his diminutive stature.
The game is the result of two months of ``tinkering'' for Matthew, who is busy at work on a musical score for the aviation game that already has caught the attention of a computer game company.
For a year now, Matthew has been programming computers, assembling and repairing computer hardware and assisting Mark Grethen of Tidewater Information Group in unusual assignments - including crawling beneath a funeral home in the dead of night to install wiring for a network.
``We realized that the crew was just too big to fit under the building,'' Grethen remembers. He called Larry and Susan Crane at 10 p.m. and asked if he could lower Matt through the building's fire vents to install the wiring. The entire family dispatched, and despite being ``completely terrified,'' the youngster lived to laugh about it.
``Out of everyone I've worked with, Matthew comes closest to really understanding how computers tick,'' said Grethen, who alternately tutors and puts Matt to work on Saturdays in his Suffolk office. ``I have offered him an apprenticeship once he's 15.''
While most boys his age might be looking forward to the next soccer game or action-adventure movie, Matt eagerly awaits his turn at the computer helm alongside his mentor.
Doing things the unorthodox way is traditional for the Suffolk family.
While Larry works in home repair, Susan, 34, has home-schooled Matthew and his sister Elizabeth, 11, since they were six and four, respectively.
``Matthew had been declared a problem child,'' Susan recalls of his difficult first year in public school.
``He spent more time out in the hall being punished than in the classroom. They thought he had attention-deficit syndrome.''
Prompted by several friends who home-schooled their youngsters, the Cranes opted to teach Matthew at home.
``Matthew is a very tactile learner,'' his mother noted. ``He has to touch things, to take them apart and see how they work.''
The love of computers took hold in Matt the first time he played a game on a friend's computer after school.
``I thought it was the coolest thing,'' he said. ``Then I wanted to know how it worked.''
That included taking the Crane's first computer apart and putting it back together at least four times with the help of adult-aimed computer training manuals.
Beyond this, he is pretty lackadaisical about his abilities. ``I enjoy computers,'' he says in his family's quiet kitchen in rural Suffolk. ``And I think I'm pretty good with them.''
When Mom and Dad get stuck on the computer at home, they just holler up to Matt to come down and fix it.
Invariably, they say, Matt is right on the money. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
For a year now, Matthew Crane, 13, has been programming computers,
assembling and repairing computer hardware and assisting Mark
Grethen of Tidewater Information Group in unusual assignments. by CNB