Rock Harbor pastor returns home
Marisa O’Neil
Parishioners welcomed back Rock Harbor Pastor Mark Howerton after he
spent a month in the hospital with injuries sustained when he was
struck by a car while helping victims in another accident.
Howerton, 30, received a standing ovation as his wheelchair
entered the church’s tent Friday evening, just hours after being
released from the hospital. Friends came up and shook his hand and
hugged him as the Good Friday service began.
“It’s still a long road to recovery,” Howerton said as he was
wheeled into the tent. “But I can celebrate coming home. It will be
months before I’m walking and running.”
On March 12, he and his wife, Kristen, were driving on the Costa
Mesa Freeway near the Fair Drive exit late at night. They pulled over
to help people who had been in accident on the freeway.
As he worked to calm one of the drivers, another car struck him,
throwing him 60 feet.
Howerton suffered a fractured ankle, two breaks in the opposite
leg’s femur, a broken pelvis, a bruise on the frontal lobe of his
brain, bruised lungs, and severe road burn on his back.
“When you hear your friend got hit by a car on the freeway, the
details are sketchy,” Tim Taber said. “We were pretty freaked out to
hear he got thrown 60-plus feet and lived to tell about it. It’s by
the grace of God he’s alive.”
Howerton had surgery on his broken bones, but escaped without
brain injury. He calls it a “miracle” that he wasn’t injured even
more seriously.
“I feel like God totally protected him,” his wife said. “This
could have easily taken his life and he came away without any brain
injuries and lung injuries.”
While he started his healing and physical therapy in the hospital,
parishioners showed up in droves to wish him well. Hospital staff
members finally had to tell him to limit his visitors so he could
concentrate on getting better, he said.
Their support then shifted to give him a big homecoming.
Volunteers pitched in to clean and landscape his Costa Mesa home and
make it more accessible for the wheelchair and walker he will rely
upon for the coming months.
Fellow pastor Doug Berry also organized a team to convert
Howerton’s garage into a fully furnished office with high-speed
Internet access to help ease him back into work when he’s ready.
“Everybody was pitching in like an Amish barn raising,” Taber
said. “It was really neat to see.”
Howerton said he won’t let the accident sour him from being a good
Samaritan in the future.
“Someone joked: ‘You’ll never help anyone again,’” he said. “But
I’d do exactly the same thing over again.”
* MARISA O’NEIL covers education. She may be reached at (949)
574-4268 or by e-mail at marisa.oneil@latimes.com.
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