What Father’s Day Means to Me

6-16-2024

What Father’s Day Means to Me

Traditionally Father’s Day is a day to honor fathers, yours and mine and at my age of 74+ my dad isn’t here so honor him with meatloaf, cake and ice cream. I miss stopping for that huge milkshake he loved on the way home after a doctor appointment.

It’s a day I can honor family and friends who are fathers in their own right. I salute the dads who stepped up to take their rightful place as heads of their respective families. Thank you for doing your best to raise your children to be good and honest members of society.

Father’s Day has a special place in my life as that Sunday in 1976 a single incident almost put my family on a different trajectory.  

This is my story Adrift in the Panama Canal is about two lost souls were almost literally that.

It was a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon and as was my usual practice after church we’d go home where I would gather up my diving gear and change before heading over to the home of my diving buddy Sidney “Scotty” Scott an army medic also stationed at Fort Davis in the Panama Canal Zone.

As we loaded our flat bottom John boat into the back of my 1973 Pinto station wagon, we made sure we had a full load of air for the diving tanks. We were usually in the water by 1 – 1:30 pm and back home before 4 pm. This day would be different.

We backed the car down the boat ramp, unloaded the boat and all of our equipment before parking and locking up the car at Gatun Station. This was our first time heading toward this stretch of water, a man-made lake called Gatun Lake. It took us around 20-25 minutes to get to the dock where we tied up the boat and went into the water.

The water was clear with plenty of visibility and we expected to get a stringer of fish during the next hour before our air ran out. Our dives were that of exploring and/or searching for fish while looking out for anything out of the ordinary. We had fish on the stringer and as we loaded our gear we decided to take a few minutes to explore with snorkels before packing up and heading back to the car.

As we began working our way toward Gatun Station we were passed by a convoy of US Army landing craft (LCMs) taking infantry troops out for a week of jungle training. As each craft passed it left a rippling wake. When the last craft had passed and gone into the distance our boat became a submarine, totally submerged under water and flipping over. It rose to the top minus all of our diving gear.

We struggled to upright the boat (still under water), gather one paddle that floated to the surface and focus on getting to the nearest island. As we moved toward land and unseen tree branch punched a hole in the boat. Eventually we made it to a nearby beach, where we drained the water and took stalk of ourselves. Plugging the hole with a piece of wood, helped but didn’t entirely the stop water.

At first we couldn’t get the outboard motor started, but finally it began running as well as could be expected. We left the island and headed straight into the shipping lane of the Panama Canal and fell in line right behind a huge ship. By now it was after 7 pm and we ran out of fuel.

We began inching our way toward the dock where we left the car, one island at a time, and then marker buoy to marker buoy until there was nothing between us and the car except open water. It was near midnight when a fisherman with a motorized boat heard our banging on the boat with an oar. After stopping his engine, flashing a light around in the dark he found and towed us to the Gatun dock. It was now after midnight.

As we entered the gate at Fort Davis, the military police guard instructed us to report to our unit’s duty sergeant and report that we had returned. I dropped Scotty and his boat at his quarters. I then went to the company duty sergeant to get logged in as having returned. I was told to be at the 0600 morning PT formation in uniform ready to go.

When I got to my quarters my wife was being attended to by a neighbor who was a Special Forces medic and his wife. They had all been told our boat had capsized and there were no survivors at the scene. In fact a local SF company had organized a diving rescue team to go at first light and recover the bodies.

After notifying them to cancel that mission I asked them to look for our diving gear on their next training dive. They later informed me that nothing was recovered as the water was 85 feet deep in that area.

That was my very last dive in Panama before returning to the USA assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado in 1977.

That weekend was almost the weekend that wasn’t.

I’m thankful that in spite of myself God had mercy on me and kept my head above water.