Fair Lawn’s Joe Fernandez returns to the track after horrible car accident by Paul Schwartz of The Record
RIDGEWOOD — The first day of the spring track season was marked by uncharacteristically mild temperatures, blue skies and bright sunshine.
But the bright sunshine paled next to the brilliance of the smiles on the faces of Wendy and Jose Fernandez, the Fair Lawn track team and especially on the face of junior Joe Fernandez.
Seven and a half months after being in a horrific car accident that left his grandmother dead, his parents in the hospital and finding himself in a medically-induced coma in a Dominican hospital, Joe Fernandez returned to the track Saturday and helped his teammates take second in the Novice 4-x-800 relay at the Pawlowski Relays.
His split of 2:27 was nowhere near his personal best of 2:03 run last spring, but Fernandez understood that his triumph was merely returning to the track and racing.
“It’s a great feeling,” said Fernandez, who was the No. 2 runner on the cross country team that reached the Bergen Meet of Champions in the fall of 2016 and helped the Cutters get to the Group 3 state championships in the 4-x-800 last spring. “I hated not being able to run for months after the accident. But I always knew I’d get back.”
“It’s really a miracle,” said his mom Wendy, who herself spent several weeks in Hospital Metropolitano de Santiago after the Aug. 16 accident, before both she and her son were airlifted to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Joe spent the next six weeks at in rehabilitation at Mount Sinai and wasn’t able to return to classes at Fair Lawn High School until January 26.
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Joe Fernandez of Fair Lawn made his return to the track at the Pawlowski Relays on Saturday, March 31. Paul Schwartz/NorthJersey.com
“He had back surgery, he had jaw surgery, he had nose surgery and he has metal rods in his back,” she said. “But he never quit — none of us did.”
While at Mount Sinai, Fernandez was scheduled for rehabilitation every other day. But a helpful rehabilitation specialist, who Joe only knew as Robert, helped the 16-year-old runner by working with him so that Fernandez had active rehabilitation almost every day.
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“He was a runner too and he knew I wanted to get back to run again,” said Fernandez, who began running again on his own in mid January, on a treadmill at home. “There were all sorts of things that we did and he told me ‘you’ll be back.”
Wendy Fernandez says that the support from not only the Fair Lawn track team, but the entire community helped make a difference in their recovery and in helping make sure the future remains bright.
“We were blown away by the support from the community,” said Wendy. “Our friends and family and Joe’s teammates were amazing, but we had people we barely knew and total strangers helping us with fundraising and help and everything they could do for us. It made a huge impact for all of us and made him want to come back and run even more.”
His recovery is remarkable. When physical therapy ended, so did his treatment and Fernandez doesn’t even take any medication. His biggest complaint physically is the loss of muscle mass in his legs, but he knows that rebuilding the muscle will take time.
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Joe Fernandez of Fair Lawn made his return to the track at the Pawlowski Relays on Saturday, March 31. Paul Schwartz/NorthJersey.com
“I’m already up to five miles a day in distance workouts, and that was my goal by the end of the spring,” said Fernandez, who has set modest goals of 2:15 for the 800 and 5:10 for the 1,600 for the season, goals his teammates are certain he’ll shatter. “I want to set up to have a great senior year.”
“It seems like a miracle that he’s back,” said senior Pat Touhey. “Our old friend is back and it makes us whole again.”
Jon Marcus agrees. “He wants it so badly, that it revitalizes us and it makes us want things badly, too.”