A.J. Misses his Wife Clara

We did everything to try to lift A.J.'s spirits and keep his mind off his wife who had been abducted.



Here is A.J. with his great-grandson Alexander J. Fernandez and an aging cocker spaniel by the name of Sandee.

We drove him 10 hours non-stop to Winter Haven, Florida so he could see his wife and hopefully this would break his hunger strike. Unfortunatly he was denied access to her by the Winter Haven Police Department. A.J. spent the night sitting in the car waiting to see his wife when he was told by officer J.Davis badge # 169, that he could not see his wife, her captors had succeeded in convincing the Winter Haven police that she did not want to see him, which was a lie, she had no idea that her husband was just one block away from her and her rescue was only minutes away.

Shortly after that, Dr. Fernandez passed out in the back seat of the car and we had to drive 10 hours back to Key West in a blinding rain during a heavy rainstorm as there were no hotels rooms available in the aftermath of several storms that hit Central Florida.

Upon his return to Key West, Dr. Elias Gerth tried giving Dr. Fernandez steroids to induce his appetite, but the tramatic events that he had been enduring for so very long, got the best of him.

Dr. A.J. Fernandez died on January 9th 2005, just three (3) days after the Circuit Court of the 16th Judicial Circuit for Monroe County, Florida decided that Clara G. Fernandez should live in Key West with her husband.

For A.J., - "It Was Too Little - Too Late" -