Ludlowe’s Feldman definition of perseverance
From car crash to knee surgery to parents’ divorce, running back has remained positive
FAIRFIELD — He fractured his right collarbone and he fractured his left collarbone. The right one was worse. That put Denholm Feldman in a sling.
His maxilla was fractured from the front of his mouth to the back of his jaw. Several of his teeth died. He needed his jaw fixed. Seven root canals, transplants and bleaching eventually would bring his smile back to life. He broke his nose. He suffered a concussion.
“Outside of that,” Feldman said, without a hint of irony, “I was pretty lucky.”
Jake Panus, his good friend and Fairfield Ludlowe teammate, was in the front seat when he died in that horrible crash on Block
Island in August 2020. He was 16. Feldman was in the back seat on the side of the impact. He was held overnight in the hospital on the Rhode Island mainland. He had swallowed so much blood from his facial injuries, the doctors at first feared internal bleeding.
“Jake was so pure,” Feldman said. “He was such a good friend to everyone. He was one of the most genuine kids I ever met. He was so good to the team, to all of us. To have someone’s life taken away like that, to happen so quickly, it seemed so unfair. That’s what we all thought.
“It’s hard to see a greater plan after something like that happens.”
As he stood there after practice in preparation for Ludlowe’s game against Wilton Saturday at Weston High School, Denholm Feldman was a picture of all that can go right for a teenager in affluent suburban Connecticut. He has some of the best grades in his class. He is handsome. At 5-foot-10, 190 pounds, he is a starting running back and middle linebacker. He is team captain. An engaging personality, it’s easy to see why his coach Mitch
Ross would say Feldman does well socially and, despite all that has happened the past year to him, is remarkably well-adjusted.
“Denholm is a good example that other people can look at him and think he is a kid who basically has it made,” Ross said. “That didn’t just happen. There was a lot behind it that he had to struggle through.
“I told this to the team, and it’s sort of a good point for everybody: People tend to compare their inside to somebody else’s outside and you’re always going to come up short in that comparison. The lesson for us was that you have obstacles along the way, persevere, get past the lowest point and things will get better. Life happens to everybody. And it’s not easy for anybody.”
In nominating Feldman for the 2021 USA Football Heart of a Giant award presented by the Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Giants, Ross used the words perseverance, determination and intelligence to describe him.
He would need all of those attributes in the months following the Block Island crash that led the young female driver to be charged with driving under the influence.
Feldman’s right collarbone was expected to need four months to fully heal, but he was ready to roll after two. He was able to play with a special mouth guard. Only there was no high school football last fall.
The CIAC canceled the sport because of COVID-19. Remember how we worried about the mental health of our boys across the state dealing with the weeks of emotional ups and downs before the season was called off ? Feldman was dealing with that, too, before a team of Ludlowe players were able to take part in a private Fairfield County league.
“Getting back became my driving motivation,” Feldman said. “I was running routes with one arm.”
Late in his third game, he would suffer a left knee injury as severe as any in the crash. He tore his ACL. He tore his MCL, his meniscus and LCL.
Feldman points to a spot on the 40-yard line. That’s where it happened. He was playing running back and caught a flare pass. He broke one tackle and was running down the sideline off balance. He tried to plant his leg as another
tackler rushed toward him.
“I felt my knee pop out and slide over,” Feldman said. “I thought I had hyperextended it and it wasn’t too serious. I showed up the next day and the trainer said something is wrong. Your knee is the the size of a grapefruit.”
If we told you it was during this time his parents Todd and Stephanie separated, would you ask yourself how much pain one young man can absorb? I did.
“It definitely was tough, I’m not going to lie to you,” Feldman said. “It was a very hard year. There were some really trying moments. One thing that got me through was continuing to look ahead. Football being gone, too, was really tough.
“Being 16, 17, 18, you are kind of expected of maturing, becoming an adult, becoming a grown-up. But there’s no real transition. All of a sudden you’re faced with these things and you have to deal with them. I had no clue how to deal with any of that. It all hit me at once. It was overwhelming. It was definitely overwhelming.”
As Ross said, Denholm Feldman is intelligent, persevering and determined. He’s also not afraid to show his vulnerability. It is hard enough for grown men to express their feelings. A teenage boy can be a steel trap.
“Having my friends there, having my parents there, having everyone around me was probably the most important thing through all of that,” Feldman said. “It’s hard when you have to think of all those things alone.
“I learned it’s important to know you have a support system and not be ashamed of those kind of things
when you’re going through tough times. I want to destigmatize the whole mental health thing and being afraid to talk when you are hurting.
“My parents have been great through it all. It was definitely hard. [Divorce] is something that is common, but no one talks about it. It’s there. I decided to share that in order to let kids know they aren’t alone. It happens.”
He would have his knee surgery performed by Dr. Megan Gleason Nov. 17 at Valley Orthopaedic in Shelton. While he raves about the job she did, the recovery process was not easy. Students had an option on attendance. Feldman had to remain online. He couldn’t walk. He had medical appointments. His brother Duncan did come home from Fordham for winter break. All Denholm could do was upper body work. So they lifted off the bench, did pull-ups. He has pictures of doing shoulder presses on one leg.
Even as late as July he had nagging problems with his left hamstring, not directly related to his knee surgery. He had exceeded his workouts to strengthen his leg. He toned down the lifting. By the time of a joint practice with Staples in August, he felt good. By the opener last week against Norwalk, he felt totally confident. He wants to play in college. Get some good senior play on video and he seems perfect for a NESCAC school.
A sound mind in a sound body, isn’t that the ancient Greek philosophical quest? Feldman works on both. He said he went to therapy three times, had a difficult time with it, although he is trying it again lately.
“I found therapy hard,” he said. “It’s not that bad
things don’t happen to everyone, but what happened is so specific. I found it easier for me to talk to people who were in the accident, friends of Jake or who were around it. I began dating my girlfriend, Ava Hanson, about a month before the accident. She was very, very close to Jake, she’d known him since like the first or second grade She was by my side and very supportive.”
Feldman remembers being in the ambulance after the crash. The four passengers were all Ludlowe teammates. One was holding his hand when he asked if everybody was OK. His teammate and the EMT looked at each other. She told him Panus was pretty banged up but didn’t know how he was.
“I started fearing the worst, that he was paralyzed,” Feldman said. “I kept asking. They hadn’t wanted me to be more overwhelmed. Finally, when my parents came, they gave me my phone and knew I’d see it. So they told me.”
Jake Panus, the kid who had gone on a church mission to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and wanted to attend South Carolina like his dad, who loved football, loved people, wanted to help others, had died at the scene.
“The next day we drove back home and there was this run to honor Jake and the whole team was there,” Feldman said. “Others, too. Some kids I didn’t even know were coming up to me, hugging me, saying kind words. It helped me that day. It helped me a lot.”