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| Meredith Mattos, left, and Susan Claveria sign a banner set up at the state Capitol by radio station KRTR to convey best wishes to June Jones.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser |
 State hopes coach to be 'poster boy' for seat belts
Warriors' spring football will kick off on schedule
Diagram of the accident
 Send your best wishes to the coach and read comments sent by others
By Dan Nakaso
and Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writers
The calls have come to the Jones family like a blitz, from New York, Atlanta, Dallas and Portland. They have poured in from boyhood buddies and National Football League players.
It turns out that the friends a man like June Jones makes over the course of a lifetime in football respond at times like this, as he lies in the intensive care unit of the Queen’s Medical Center after crashing his car into a freeway pillar Thursday morning.
James Lofton, No. 9 in NFL pass receptions, offered his prayers. So did quarterback Steve Bartkowski and fullback Craig "Ironhead" Heyward. Even the NFL commissioner’s office telephoned.
Ed Rooney, Jones’ coach at Grant High School in Portland, Ore., has called no fewer than five times, said Jones’ lifetime friend Artie Wilson, who broadcasts the University of Hawai‘i’s basketball games.
One by one, the calls have added up to thousands of phone calls in a little more than 24 hours.
And the news coming back from Hawai‘i has been good.
Jones’ condition was upgraded to guarded yesterday, from critical but stable. He was moving his arms and legs and opening his eyes.
After two operations Thursday, all the bleeding in Jones’ abdomen and chest had stopped, said Dr. Neil Fergusson, trauma surgeon and Jones’ attending physician.
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| Jones is not able to speak because of a breathing tube, so he hasn't been able to say what caused him to drift off the road.
Advertiser library photo |
The UH football coach was able to nod and blink in response to questions, but a breathing tube prevents him from speaking, so he hasn’t been able to explain what caused his 1999 Lincoln Town Car to veer off the H-1 Freeway and smash into an overpass abutment.
Nothing in Jones’ medical history offers any clues, Fergusson said.
Jones, who turned 48 on Monday, left a breakfast meeting in Kane‘ohe and was by himself on his favorite drive from the H-3 Freeway back to UH. (After each victory, Jones takes a ritual H-3 ride on his Harley-Davidson, Wilson said).
He neared the Nimitz Highway off-ramp of H-1 at 10:35 a.m. when his car left the highway, police said. He traveled 78 feet on a stretch of dirt before crashing into the abutment.
The speed limit is 55 mph on the H-1, but cars often go 5 or 10 miles faster. Sgt. David Talon said it didn’t appear Jones’ car was "going faster than the normal flow of traffic."
In a one-car accident, finding the cause is not a pressing issue for investigators. But they have determined two things: Jones had a cell phone in his car. And he apparently made no attempt to stop or slow down as he approached the pillar.
Emergency workers rushed him to the Queen’s emergency room, unconscious and unresponsive, with an open head wound, apparently from hitting the windshield. But the major problems were that he was bleeding in the abdomen and had a tear in his aorta — the main artery that supplies blood to the lower half of the body.
Dr. Michael Dang, a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon, opened the left side of Jones’ chest and removed a 3- to 4-inch piece of damaged aorta, the equivalent of 10 to 15 percent of the entire descending aorta.
Dang then sutured in a synthetic Dacron graft that will stay with Jones permanently.
"Fortunately for him, even though his aorta was ruptured, there was not a free flow of blood into his thoracic cavity," Dang said at a press conference yesterday. "So it was well contained, and it was what probably kept him alive until at least he got to the operating room."
With the graft in place, blood flow returned to Jones’ lower body. Yesterday doctors said Jones was moving his legs and had an excellent pulse. He remained on a breathing machine because doctors didn’t want him working hard to breathe. They still worry about infections and would not give a long-term prognosis.
Overall, Jones "is doing surprisingly very well given all that he’s been through," said Dr. Gail Tominaga, the hospital’s trauma services medical director.
Wilson, Jones’ boyhood friend from Portland, did not hedge in his own predictions.
"June’s pretty remarkable," Wilson said. "If someone can come back in a quick way, it will be someone like June, because he’s got a real will and a real strength. I’m really encouraged and feel real positive that you’ll see the same old June Jones back here in not too short of a time."
As Wilson spoke, hundreds of people stopped by the State Capitol to sign a giant get-well banner sponsored by a radio station.
"We just want to show him that people care," said Arlina Agbayani.
Jones once gave a clinic for the Kaimuki Eagles Pop Warner football team, and Robert Caires just had to sign the banner.
The emotion behind his message was simple: "My son and I are pulling for him," Caires said.
Lisa Knutson from Maui offered her thoughts on The Advertiser’s Web site:
"He is such an inspirational person, always looking at the positive, setting an example for all of Hawai‘i’s children," she wrote. "... I’m sure Coach Jones will have more enlightening messages for us when he comes out of this — what he has learned and how others can learn from this tragic event."
They are the kind of sentiments that can blur in the wave of emotion that has come from Jones’ accident. But even though Jones’ wife, Diane, and four children have not been able to answer every telephone call and good wish, Wilson said that doesn’t mean any have been taken for granted.
"People need to continue to pray," Wilson said. "It’s going to be the prayers that will help the fine doctors and the medical people help him get better."
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