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.