A Story About Marine One

Way back in the day, Windsor Fire used to own a boat that was used primarily for cruising up and down the Detroit River during the Freedom Festival fireworks. I remember everyone looking forward to see who was going to get the much desired role of "boat duty" that night on Marine One. Can you imagine the responsibility and the intense danger of cruising the Detroit River after dinner during the July holiday? "Networking" was also a dangerous endeavor! In some cases we had to use the boat to actually rescue or go retrieve victims from the river itself. This is one such story.

Our captain was Jack Gallagher; the driver Don Hall with Greg Senay and I on the back of the squad out of # four station. It was a Friday around 11:30 PM when the call came in and we had to pick up Marine One at the dock located at the corner of George and Wyandotte (I believe). We cruised down to the foot of Lauzon Road and Riverside Drive where two boats had collided and a report of four folks in the water with one presumably drowned.

I was on the job for about eight or nine months at the time and this was my first time on the vessel and Greg was showing me how to set up the grappling hooks to drag the river. I was a little nervous but pretty excited at the same time as we slowly cruised the water in the blackness of the night. It was one of those nights where it seemed much darker than usual. The constant “tug” of the ropes was startling at first as you think that every resistance you felt could be a victim in the water.

It was then that Greg told the Cap that he thought that he had something! The boat screeched to a stop (Well, it didn't really "screech") and Greg continued pulling on the rope. He said that it didn’t feel “right” because there wasn’t much resistance but he knew had had something on the hooks.

He slowly brought the contents to the surface and swung the object in front of me. Greg said, “Wow, take a look at this!!!”. My eyes slowly got used to the darkness and then I realized what Greg was holding about 10 inches away from my eyes. It was a bag of cats!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I screamed like a school girl. I could hear Greg and the rest of the crew laughing as I tried to compose myself and struggling to stop from falling out of the boat.

Things were never the same after that : )

To this day I am still afraid of cats and plastic bags!