Photos by Bill Snead.
This article is part of a series of Durham community leader profiles.
Practicing Persistence for the Public Good
When Edmund Fernandez saw a flipped-over car in front of Lakewood Montessori Middle School, it was a chilling visual of the problem he refused to ignore: cars were speeding through school zones where families and kids walked every day — including his own 2-year-old daughter.
“That picture said everything about why we were doing this,” Fernandez noted.
I didn’t want to see a kid — or anyone — get hit by a car, because we hadn’t done anything.
-Edmund Fernandez, president of Tuscaloosa Lakewood Neighborhood Association
As president of the Tuscaloosa Lakewood Neighborhood Association, Fernandez filed complaints through Durham One Call, but requests were closed without action. So he pursued the issue by emailing officials, adding more names each time until someone finally responded.
“Anytime I didn’t hear from them for a few weeks, I’d just keep adding another person,” he said.
He teamed up with another community member to work on meeting the community’s traffic safety needs.
“It’s definitely not a sprint. It’s a marathon and it’s one of those marathons where people are trying to cross the entire country. So my advice is to create a team. You can be more efficient, share the work, and you can rest when you need to and then come back stronger.”
That persistence paid off. Eventually, the team reached the staff for North Carolina State Representative Marcia Morey (D-District 30). This was a key step because the road in question is a state-maintained road within the Durham City and County limits.
As a result, NC Department of Transportation engineers evaluated and determined a traffic-calming remedy. Stop signs were installed, traffic slowed, and the change was visible.
Fernandez reports, “I have not seen an accident on this road since.”
A community survey confirmed what many felt: traffic had calmed, and people felt safer.
Fernandez works in, not just outside, schools
It is possible Fernandez was especially attuned to safe access to schools because his career has been dedicated to supporting education. Fernandez and his partner relocated here from Atlanta for her clinical internship at Duke.
Fernandez worked on emergent literacy interventions with HeadStart programs throughout the Triangle. Now a research specialist and data manager at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine in the Department of Health Sciences, his research supports writing skills in public schools throughout the state. Education research and policy work requires the patience and persistence Fernandez is known for.
Fernandez finds benefits in Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership
Once Fernandez became president of the Tuscaloosa Lakewood Neighborhood Association, he was able to tap into new community resources he didn’t know about before. One of those is the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership (DDNP), a flagship program of Duke Community Affairs. Duke works with fourteen local neighborhoods to support their key priorities in, and between, the neighborhoods. Fernandez credits the DDNP with helping him grow as a civic leader. Once he started attending their quarterly meetings, Fernandez found value in meeting other neighborhood leaders, especially from places like Walltown and Bragtown.
The DDNP has been helpful for understanding more about the different communities in our city, how Durham has changed, and how much people care about community.
- Edmund Fernandez, president of Tuscaloosa Lakewood Neighborhood Association
For Fernandez, the DDNP as facilitated by Jesse Huddleston, Senior Program Coordinator for the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership and Community Development at Duke University, became a space to learn, connect, and share.
“Jesse can always connect you with the right people in the city or at Duke. He also met with me many times to help us apply for the Duke Doing Grants to support our neighborhood,” said Fernandez.
Huddleston notes, “Sometimes a new leader can be shy, so I appreciated that Edmund jumped right in. He wanted to understand and build on the work we’ve been doing in the DDNP over the years. He worked with us to shape a Doing Good grant that helped them expand the annual Lakewood Elementary Bulldog Block party to include Burch Avenue families, reflecting the school community as it now exists, after redistricting.”
Duke partnership continuity helps community grow its services over time
Fernandez appreciates the consistent support Duke has provided to help community projects come to fruition. For years, Duke has supported the community in making it easier for more families to attend school-based events by making it possible to provide translation services, meals, and childcare. More recently, community members worked with Duke to develop an educational butterfly habitat which is maintained by residents of TROSA, a local nonprofit.
“Lakewood is unique because we have so many community partners working together. That’s what I enjoy most: the energy and flow of community partnerships.”
Fernandez credits these projects with inspiring the start of a new cross-neighborhood committee called Neighborhood Advocacy & Engagement Committee (NAEC), composed of representatives from Tuscaloosa Lakewood Neighborhood Association, Burch Avenue Neighborhood Association, the PTA, and Lakewood Elementary’ s Community Schools Team. This committee will serve as a driving force in advocating for, and addressing the evolving needs of, the community, including working to enhance shared spaces within the school and neighborhoods. The NAEC is hopeful it will be able to apply for funding with Duke and others to further its goal of supporting vulnerable members in their community. This new group “provides a more sustainable method for neighborhoods to collaborate, building on and going beyond the DDNP.”
Fernandez’s next focus is inviting younger residents into the fold. They “are a huge part of this community so I want to make sure their needs are heard and they are an integral part of any changes.”
For Fernandez, it’s all about persistence and patience—whether pushing for stop signs, advocating for schools, or bringing neighborhoods together.
I’ve never done something like this before. But it makes me feel good. Even if I’m not reelected next year, I’ll be happy because I helped in some way.
- Edmund Fernandez, president of Tuscaloosa Lakewood Neighborhood Association
He explained, “I’ve never done something like this before. But it makes me feel good. Even if I’m not reelected next year, I’ll be happy because I helped in some way.”
Fernandez’s steady approach shows that change doesn’t have to be flashy or fast—it just has to happen, one idea, one conversation, one project at a time.