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In 1975, his senior year in high school, Joseph Taylor, now a real estate developer who heads Monroe's Matrix Development Group, traveled to Port Nolloth, an impoverished fishing village near South Africa's Namibian border. He spent six months there, living in a rectory with Francis Dougherty, a missionary who ran the village church and school. Seventeen-year-old Joe helped the children with the lessons and played with them for hours. Among other things, he introduced them to the frisbee, which they had never seen. "I'm sure there are people in Africa who remember that long ago a lumbering white guy came to Port Nolloth and for some weeks became their best friend (text missing) says today. "If they don't remember (text missing) they remember the frisbee."
Taylor, 39, remembered his African sojourn during a service at his West Windsor parish church three years ago. That Sunday Thomas Hagen, the priest who delivered the homily, spoke about work that his organization, Hands Together, was doing among Haiti's destitute children. When Taylor saw the children's photographs, they set off echoes of his days in Africa. Taylor met Hagen after the mass and asked how he could help Hands Together.
During the past three years Taylor has become Hands Together's most active champion. His wife Leslie, a Matrix vice president, has joined the organization's board. For two years Matrix has hosted golf tournaments at its Monroe-based Forsgate Country Club to raise more than $100,000 for work among Haiti's poor and other projects. In March, Taylor went to Haiti for a week, where he traveled to the country's poorest areas, visited an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity--Mother Teresa's order--and a once-abandoned school that he and Leslie have helped rebuild in northern Haiti. "That week was the highlight of my life in 1996," says Taylor. "A week like that makes you feel more fulfilled than the other 51 weeks."
What Taylor does during those 51 weeks made Matrix one of the state's leading developers. The company this year has struck large deals, and Taylor's peers have named him president-elect of the state chapter of the National Association of Office and Industrial Properties, an industry organization. But while Taylor's activities as Matrix's CEO are well known, he is painfully...