FRITZ DAVID

Permanently disabled man raises daughter solo

Fritz David, 47, is a single parent who has cared for his daughter Mariyane David, 9, since she was 1.

By CARLOS FRÍAS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Fritz David just can’t get his daughter’s hair right.

If he could do that one thing, maybe it wouldn’t be so obvious to the other children at school that a 47-year-old man is raising his 9-year-old daughter alone with little more than food stamps and the kindness of strangers in the often forgotten Glades.

As it is, the other girls tease his daughter, Mariyane, because “her hair isn’t pretty like the other girls” and she never has the $5 to go on field trips. They don’t how much of a miracle it is that he manages to raise a child while living just at the edge.

“I’ve been on my own for a very long time,” the Belle Glade father said through a translator.

David, who came to United States on a raft from Haiti in 1984 at age 20, got his green card and worked in the fields for years. But one day while unhitching the corn train — a piece of farm harvesting equipment — the trailer ran over his head and the right side of his body, crushing his skull, vertebrae, and requiring a metal plate in his right arm.

For two years, his daughter lived with the pastor at First Haitian Baptist Church, where she still attends after-school care.

Mariyane does her homework while her father Fritz prepares dinner.

David has been unable to work since the accident and he must use a cane to steady his steps. But he still manages to walk his daughter to school and the library where she uses the computer to maintain high marks. And he walks to a local laundromat to do his laundry, when he isn’t limping around town to his many doctor appointments.

People have always seemed to help a man struggling mightily to raise a daughter. One landlord let him live rent-free for six years. Local mothers take in his daughter to do her hair and dress her for church. Every last piece of furniture in his two-bedroom apartment has been donated. He cleans up his daughter’s after-care and keeps his home immaculate.

“I could never pay back all that people have done for me,” he said.

When asked about the dreams he has for himself, he only shakes his head thinking about the daughter who dreams of being a doctor.

“I made a lot of sacrifices so my daughter can have clothes on her back,” he said. “I do have hopes and dreams, of course. But I want what’s best for my child.”

FRITZ’S WISH

What he needs most is a vehicle to take his daughter to school, to do the family shopping (now, he and his daughter buy only what they can carry from the store) and to go to his many doctor appointments.

The family can use shoes and clothes, and gift cards to purchase clothing, groceries and household items. Mariane, a growing girl, now wears a size 4 shoe, children’s size 14 shorts, 10-12 in shirts. She could benefit from a computer at home, a television, uniforms for school, play clothes and toys.

Fritz would like a job that is flexible to allow for his medical appointments and which he is able to do with his limited physical ability. He also would greatly benefit from the services of an attorney who speaks Haitian creole to help him with his appeal for benefits.

NOMINATED BY
Families First of Palm Beach County