I hope for your successful efforts Dale. The only time I ever blew over was in C Hydro at DePue when I passed over a sudden rise in the lake bottom. I think Sean McKean was severely injured when he blew over at the same place years ago, and don't know for sure, but from what I heard, it was the same place that Jerry Drake blew over and was killed.

My Marchetti cleared the trees on the opposite shore from the viewpoint of the pits. I don't remember falling. I think I must have passed out from fear...or altitude. Nonetheless, I was lucky to have ended up feet first. My legs and lower body were in muck. From about my waist up to my neck was the water we were racing in. I had clasped my hands above my head after I had come to rest signaling the officials and rescue people that I was OK, but I could not move. I was pretty much stuck in something a little firmer than quicksand. Maybe it was my Gentex life Jacket that kept me from sinking further.

When the rescue crew got there, both of them grabbed me by each arm to pull me in. The john boat just healed over and was about to swamp. They backed off and started to pull me in slowly, but the john boat tilted over again. One of the guys jumped into the water, and he grabbed me under the armpits and pushed while the guy in the boat pulled my arms, and they were able to break the suction of the muck and get me aboard. Billy Seebold told me I wouldn't be able to race in the finals and he was right.

While I was stove up in the pits on Saturday with some cracked ribs and a stiff neck, one of the local DePue residents came up to me to tell me about the river. I wish I could remember his name. After seeing what I had gone through he began to tell me how that river, or backwater (can't remember for sure) had gotten silted up. He had told me that when he was a little boy that the water there was thirty feet deep. The discharges from the zinc smelter had filled up that body of water. Some I am sure had washed away in flooding, etc., but the heavy stuff would have settled. That was in 1972, so the guy from DePue would have been talking about 1942 when Lake DePue was deeper and much cleaner water.