For David and Chelise Fediuk, March was suppose to have been just another jam-packed month filled with kids schooling and sporting events, work and social activities, and everything else that goes with the day-to-day grind of a household of six.
Raising four children is tough enough, but especially tough when they attend four different schools.
Their eldest daughter, Maile (18), currently attends Dixie State University in St. George, Utah, and majoring in pre-med. Seventeen-year-old Kailey is a junior at Kealakehe High School and on the girls swimming and water polo teams. Their son, Tavis (13), attends Konawaena Middle School and in the seventh grade, and their youngest, Makili (10), is in the fifth grade at Holualoa Elementary School.
Finding balance and putting family first has always been the key to the Fediuk’s success in making it all work. Yet as busy as things can be, somehow David and his daughter Kailey were gearing up to compete in the Lavaman Waikoloa Olympic Distance Triathlon scheduled on April 5.
Then COVID-19 hit the Hawaiian islands.
Navigating the chaos of a pandemic
“It was absolutely crazy,” David Fediuk said. “Maile flew back for spring break but then they told her that all of her classes were canceled and would be online except for her anatomy lab. Kailey had just finished off her swimming season and had her first water polo game when they pulled the plug right before spring break. Tavis is heavily into baseball and their whole season was canceled as well as Makili’s — she was just starting her softball season.”
As the state rushed to implement social distancing standards and shelter-in-place mandates, Fediuk witnessed a community go into full-blown panic mode. Yet panic was the last thing he wanted his family to feel. He needed them to be strong, especially during a time of uncertainty, and drew upon his faith in God and experience as a competitor.
“It was such an odd feeling,” said Fediuk, a four-time Ironman World Championship finisher and a 15-time Lavaman competitor who has competed in local swim-bike-run races for the last twenty years. “There were people telling you that there is this invisible danger out there, and then we would wake up and it would be typical Hawaii.
“I think my kids were looking for some kind of direction and they were looking at us, as parents, to be cool, calm and collected and to be able to give them some advice. Around that same time, there were people who began to hoard items at stores. I wasn’t taking it lightly — in fact, it reminded me of when we had the war break out in the Gulf. I remember my mom taking me to Sack-N-Save at Lanihau and seeing shelves were empty. So I had to think about our situation realistically and not put so much attention into the hype that was happening around us.”
Yet, Fediuk said immediate action was needed especially for his daughter Maile, who was scheduled to return to college after spring break.
“When they canceled her class, I purchased a ticket to fly back to pack up all of her things at the dorm,” said the 45-year-old Kailua-Kona resident. “Just about that time, the State was discussing plans on implementing the quarantine. So that made us feel concerned about flying there and whether we would be able to get back.”
His daughter spent the following week contacting a few friends from her dorm to pack and store her belongings in her car.
“She came home with only a backpack thinking she would head back to school,” Fediuk said. “So literally, all of her possessions are sitting in a car. Right now her life is on hold packed up in a car.”
Finding a new norm
With schools closures in effect across the nation, household distance learning for his four children became the new norm. The family also began a weekly routine of walking or running 3-miles after dinner around their neighborhood and a few ocean swims out to the ½-mile buoy. And luckily, Fediuk is a general contractor of Fediuk Homes — a business he runs with his brother Dale Fediuk. General contractors have been deemed “essential” during the pandemic.
“I feel really lucky,” Fediuk said. “I’m getting calls from people who have been at home for the last month who want to renovate or wanting to do an addition to their house. So people are home and now realizing that it’s time to do things and finish projects they’ve put on hold.”
Fediuk said there were activities they were looking forward to that are now postponed. Like competing in Lavaman Waikoloa, organizing a four-day summer camp for over a 100-youth from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and sending his daughter, Kailey, to a summer camp at Brigham Young University to help with acing her ACT (American College Testing).
Fediuk added that what helped toward finding a balance was having many open discussions with his family and not being so glued to watching the news 24/7. The pandemic also brought his family closer on many levels with a renewed appreciation for what is truly important – family, health, and their faith.
“I feel like we’ve had a family reset,” he said. “We’ve always spent a lot of time as a family doing a lot of family things, but now, we appreciate our time together even more. I think it’s constantly trying to find things to do as a family that has helped us to keep balanced. So find something you enjoy and then do it together as a family.”
