A Veteran Unbowed by His War Injuries

John Fernandez lost his lower legs in Iraq, but he will play in Saturday’s Heroes Cup lacrosse game at Madison Square Garden |
By GEORGE VECSEY, New York Times

At Madison Square Garden on Saturday, John Fernandez will enjoy the utter normalcy of being whacked with a lacrosse stick — exactly what a West Point grad would expect from Annapolis grads, and vice versa, to be sure.

“I may not be the one taking the ball behind the crease, but I will be hanging around the crease,” Fernandez said.

“It’s hard to turn without ankles,” he added, matter-of-factly.

Fernandez lost the lower portion of his legs in Iraq in 2003. He has fought back with an inspiring amount of good will and courage. Using prosthetic limbs, he works and shares the parenting of two, soon to be three, children with his wife, Kristi — “a rock,” he calls her…

“I do everything I used to do,” he said the other day. “I ski, I hunt, I fish, I snowboard.” And he plays lacrosse with the same wicked shot he used as captain at West Point. On Saturday, Fernandez will join Army alumni against Navy alumni in the Heroes Cup at 5 p.m. before the New York Titans’ professional game.

Some of the proceeds will go to the Wounded Warrior Project, the association of injured Iraq and Afghanistan veterans for whom Fernandez is the alumni director. Thousands of veterans help one another cope with the pain, the fears, the bureaucracy.

“When we get together, it’s like a car show,” said Fernandez, 30, demonstrating how the vets roll up their pants or sleeves and observe each other’s devices, saying, ‘Hey, I tried this” or “Hey, I didn’t like that.”

Fernandez was chosen captain at West Point even though he was not a starter. (“I never had quick feet to begin with,” he said.) His leadership continues with the Wounded Warrior Project, which will hold a fund-raiser at Cipriani in Manhattan on May 1.

“We use the front-porch concept,” Fernandez said, discussing the superb World War II documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick called “The War,” which described how millions of returned veterans sat on their front porches and talked to one another. Now, the smaller band of vets keeps in touch via phone or computer or occasional reunions.

Fernandez eagerly chose West Point. His two grandfathers had served during World War II, and he understood the possibilities of war.

“I would do it again,” he said. “It made me the person I am.”

After his graduation in 2001, Fernandez was a first lieutenant commanding a field artillery unit in the early days of the Iraq invasion, south of Baghdad, being asked to perform tasks for which he said the soldiers had not been trained. On April 3, 2003, his platoon was hit by a bomb, and three soldiers were killed alongside him. Eight days later, he was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“I flew from Seattle to Washington to see him the day after the second lower leg was amputated,” said Alex Fyfe, his friend and a teammate both at Rocky Point High on Long Island and later at West Point. “He said, ‘Hey, man, it’s going to be all right.’ He has the most positive attitude.”

Later, Fernandez learned that the bomb had been mistakenly dropped from a United States Air Force jet — friendly fire, as it is known.

“We call it fog and friction,” Fernandez said. “It’s just like on the athletic field. There are so many variables. Who’s to say I would not have been shot in the head the next day?”

Accepting the loss of his feet, Fernandez had to fight off another challenge — from the military that was pressuring him to resign. He resisted, insisting on the pay and benefits to which he was entitled. He says he worries about veterans who have brain injuries or do not have a family or a West Point education to get them through what is, at best, a bureaucratic maze.

When Fernandez got home to Shoreham, his grandfather, Frank Fernandez, a Navy veteran, “talked more with me than he ever had with anybody,” the grandson said. “We had a bond between us.”

Fernandez had promised his college coach, Jack Emmer, that he would play in an alumni game. A year later, he did.

“He’s got a little hop in his step,” Fyfe said. “At first, we worried that he might fall over, but he doesn’t, and if he did, he’d just get back up.”

Fyfe has also been in Iraq, where he distributed soccer balls to children. Now working for Bear Stearns in New York, Fyfe volunteers for Soccer for Peace, which sponsors programs for Jewish and Arab children in Israel. That group will hold a dinner at Chelsea Piers on June 19.

These two friends are among America’s many best and brightest in this volunteer military, making the most of the mission they were handed. Fyfe and Fernandez spoke proudly of each other — how Fyfe climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, how Fernandez fixes up his house and plays with his children. Once in a while, Fernandez takes a whack from some Navy defender. And whacks back.

 

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