“We Are So Grateful”: Community Support Crucial To Fusaros After Accident

When Steven Fusaro got the call that no parent ever wants to answer, he wasn’t quite sure it was real. 

A few minutes earlier, he had heard sirens outside Chesnee High School, where he’s the principal. So he called his son Nolan to check on him. About half an hour later, his phone rang. It was Nolan.

“He said ‘Dad, I’ve been in a wreck’. I said come on, man,” Steven said. “And he said ‘No, Dad, I’ve been in a wreck. I’m trapped. My car’s on fire, and I think I’m gonna die.”

Steven hung up the phone and took off. 

“I asked him where he was, and he was about a mile away,” Steven said. “I hung up on him. We laugh about it now. But for the longest mile of my life, I kept trying to call him back. He wouldn’t answer, and all I could think was that I hung up on my son.”

Nolan was headed to Chesnee High to take his dad an air tank for a flat tire. 

“I remember pretty much all of it,” he said. “I was going a little bit faster than I was supposed to around a curve on Ezell. I kind of overcorrected a little bit when I got to the grass and pulled it back over. My tires spun a little, and I hit a ditch and jumped and hit a tree.”

Things got worse from there. Nolan’s dashboard fell after impact, trapping his leg. His engine caught fire, and the fuel line broke and began spraying gas. Thankfully, someone driving by the accident stopped to help.

The man who stopped had just enough water with him to douse the fire.

“He just kind of appeared,” Steven said. “I wish I could remember his name. I think I asked him 15 times, but I can’t remember it. Cars were just driving by, but he stopped to help. I’m extremely grateful.”

That’s just one of several things that Steven said can’t be credited to coincidence. He drove on a flat tire, cracking his rim. One of the people he flew past on his one-mile drive was the fire chief, in an unmarked car. Everyone, it seemed, was hurrying toward Nolan.

“Through an unbelievable confluence of events that I believe God constructed, He put everybody on site with Nolan in just a few minutes,” Steven said.

Steven’s sister Amanda was at the other end of the street, trying to figure out what was happening. The Fusaros are no strangers to heartbreak, having lost their younger sister Meg to cancer a few years ago. Amanda was searching for some shred of information or a sign of what was going on. She quickly got one.

“My sister was at the end of the street near Hwy. 221,” Steven said. “She’s upset, she’s trying to find out what’s going on. She looked to her right, and the house there had a pink and green dragonflies. Dragonflies were my sister Meg’s favorite thing. Every time we see dragonflies, we know Meg’s around. So she took pictures of that and sent it to us while we were down there. We knew everything was going to be ok. All those signs, no matter what, show us that God was with us in that moment.”

While everyone was worried, Nolan was likely in shock. Steven said he went from screaming about his foot and leg to complete calm. Nolan said his panic subsided after the fire was out.

“The fuel line broke and was shooting gas, and I thought it was going to ignite,” he said. “But once that was out I kind of relaxed. I actually started scrolling on my phone.”

Nolan suffered a laundry list of injuries in the accident. He broke a couple of bones in his foot, had a displacement fracture on the top of the foot, and required 25 stitches. He also fractured the scapula in his left shoulder. 

“It was hard,” he said of his recovery. “In the hospital I had to use a walker and a knee scooter to give my foot some time to heal, and it was painful. And the shoulder hurt.”

Neither changed Fusaro’s style of play. The physical, mobile guard was planning a move to tight end to better help the Eagles. 

“It hasn’t changed the way I play,” he said. “I tape my foot a lot more. But I play like I normally do.”

While Nolan is a rising star for the Eagles, his dad was a standout for Chesnee’s bitter rivals at Chapman. His high school career included a two-point conversion to win a thriller in Eagle Stadium over a very good Chesnee squad. Steven said his background on the other side of a small-town rivalry is something he still laughs about.

“Chesnee is an incredible close-knit community that cares about one another,” he said. “I joke all the time that I’m grateful they accepted our family coming from the rivalry growing up. But to be accepted into being part of that Chesnee family has blown us away. We have great relationships back home and we’re so grateful for out time there. But to see the outpouring here from this community who had really only known us for two years was extremely special.”

The level of support from the community is something that’s stuck with Nolan as well.

“It was kind of cool to see that the people who checked on my first in the hospital were the people we’re meeting here in Chesnee,” he said. 

That included EMS personnel, the Mayo Fire Chief, hospital personnel, and Chesnee’s team chaplain. Steven said that’s all part of the community he’s grown to love.

“When we were praying for direction for the next steps for our family, we prayed a ton for obedience and for God to show us where we were supposed to be,” he said. “I was transitioning from coaching, because in my head I needed to be a better husband and father with time. Everything kept pointing to this community. The more we visited through interviews and coming out to visit schools, the more we felt like this is where God intended us to be. Going through this has just made it crystal clear that this is the place our family is supposed to be. It’s a very special thing to live here and to be a part of this community and to be accepted here. We are so grateful.”

Nolan won’t play for Chesnee tonight. In the game following our interview, his second game back from his accident, he suffered a broken elbow. The timetable for his return is unknown.