Summer, 1975

To this day I can never NOT stop watching for a swimmer in trouble.

It just comes with the territory.

No matter what part of the world, what lake, what ocean, I still keep an eye out to help someone in need.

It was a long time ago.  1975.  In some ways it seems like only yesterday.  I had completed my junior year at UMM and due to funding constraints at my “regular”  summer job I attended summer school and worked as a Lifeguard at Page Lake.  The mid-summer day was windy, windy and cold.   The wind blowing out of the north-west as it does so much in west-central Minnesota.  The cool air and overcast day had kept most of the regular Page Lake swimmers at home.  Even the Healy sisters had decided to stay home and not bike over and swim!

There weren’t but maybe 3 or 4 swimmers that day.  I didn’t know if I should stay at the lake and put in my time as a guard but looking at my finances I needed the money. Tuition wasn’t cheap.  I knew I could stay warm and put in my time and do my job.  To this day, I’m thankful I did.   You see, I can’t forget you.  I never will.  Your death would have haunted me to this day.  You know who you are and if you read this, I don’t remember your name.  It doesn’t matter.  I hope you’re alive!  Between the white-caps rolling in I saw your hand, waving frantically, sticking out of the water and you weren’t coming up.  Thank the Lord I saw you and had been paying attention to you and your friends who braved the cold that day to swim.   You were young and could swim but your head was caught under the raft’s support beams at the corner of the raft.  You had jumped in from the raft and when coming up you squarely had your head and neck stuck in the structure under the water.  Yes, it was a freak situation.  I hit the water hard and got to you very fast, the adrenaline rush had kicked in. When I got to you I had to figure out why you weren’t coming up.  I had to push your head down to extricate you and you popped up gasping and crying while I swam with you into shore.  Up to that time, I had never a saw a person’s face that blue. Your lips were purple and the tears were rolling between the coughs of lake water.  You were fortunate.  It was a close-call I have never been able to forget.   I have many fond memories of Page Lake as a youth, catching 5-gallon pails full of bullheads with my late grandfather, Walter Marquart,  spearing a beautiful northern pike in college in an ice-house , trapping mink and muskrats on the shore and watching  “teams” of white pelicans work together to fish in formation. Your memory is for sure, the best of all.  We were all lucky for it was the Creator at work!