The university surprised the Jaimes family with an invitation to come up to the commencement stage to accept Matthew James Jaimes’ degree on Dec. 14.
Matthew received his bachelor’s degree of science in public relations posthumously to recognize his contributions and achievements during the commencement ceremony celebrating the class of 2024. Julie Jaimes, Matthew’s mother, said TXST President Kelly Damphousse and Senior Associate Dean Laramie McWilliams reached out and wanted to know who Matthew was and made sure that she and her family were comfortable.
Mark Jaimes, Matthew’s younger brother, said being invited to the ceremony was a surprise. He compared it to an event similar at the school he graduated from.
“Whenever I graduated a couple years back, [the school I graduated from] did something similar, but they had the family in alphabetical order,” Mark said. “None of us really knew the moment for that family, but for us we had our own two-to-five-minute acknowledgement of my brother. We were all very grateful.”
Although Matthew isn’t here, Mark wants to carry out some of the traits his brother had and strives to work on being present, understanding and patient like his brother.
“My brother wasn’t necessarily a planner; he was going with the flow so not to take everything seriously,” Mark said. “He was definitely the peacemaker of the family. [Matthew] was the one to be more levelheaded in certain situations.”
Mark, Julie and Jennifer Ybarra, Matthew’s cousin, said Matthew had compassion for others and would act selflessly, putting others first over himself. They admired his charm, his ability to cheer someone up and his presence.
“You can put [Matthew] in a room with anybody and he would just light up the room,” Mark said.
Ybarra said she admired his ability to see the beauty in everything and let others express themselves freely around him and would prioritize everyone around him before himself.
“He would make sure that you feel beautiful, smart or whatever you needed in that moment,” Ybarra said. “He would make sure you feel beautiful and think that you don’t have any flaws.”
According to Mark, Matthew enjoyed helping others and wanted to make a career out of it with his bachelor’s degree. He loved working with young teens,” Mark said. “He always expressed on helping others that are going through what he did at that same age.”
Mark said Matthew had a very strong relationship with his mother because Matthew would most likely be socializing with his mother if he were with his family. He believes Matthew would’ve continued to explore what he could do with his bachelor’s degree.
“He started working for the Texas attorney general’s office,” Mark said. “I know he was starting to do more relations with consumers and part of the state products and services. He would have done something with that type of background.”
Ybarra said Matthew enjoyed photography and that after he was finished with school, he would have picked his interest back up.
“He would always be taking pictures of people and random things,” Ybarra said.
According to Mark and Julie, Matthew’s personal interest he had while growing up was to be a film director.
“We would do home videos like VHS, you know [Vintage-style],” Mark said. “He would write scripts and have us act. He loved horror movies, so we did a lot of reenactments of scream.”
Ybarra said when Matthew was growing up, he would take on his dream role as a director and assign everyone participating in his homemade movies a role.
“He would get us together, and he’s like, ‘you’re going to be the killer, you’re going to be the damsel in distress,'” Ybarra said. “Even as an adult, he was trying to make sure we felt seen.”
