ON ISLAND
Gone Fishing - Wounded Vets Fish the Derby
By Anne McCarthy Strauss
Almost two years ago, Bob Nixon was reading to his then eight-year-old son Jack from The Big One: An Island, an Obsession, and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, David Kinney’s instant classic about Martha’s Vineyard’s five-week long Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby. An avid fisher-man and a patriotic young man, Jack commented to his father that it would be nice if some disabled veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could participate in the Derby.
Jack’s words stayed with Bob who, along with his wife Sarah, owns the Home Port Restaurant, the Beach Plum Inn and the Menemsha Inn. Within days, Bob was on the phone with Retired Navy Capt. Ed Nicholson, founder of Project Healing Waters, an organization dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and veterans through fly fishing, fly tying education and outings.
While recovering from cancer surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2004, Capt. Nicholson witnessed wounded and disabled men and women – many of them amputees –struggling with their injuries. “My recovery was nothing compared to what they were facing,” he said. “It planted the seed that maybe there’s something I could do.”
The solution was obvious to Nicholson, an outdoorsman, whose goal was to get the wounded veterans out of the hospital and into nature. Bob and Sarah Nixon donated their facilities and worked with Project Healing Waters to bring nine vets to the Vineyard to fish the Derby last year.
Captains from the Menemsha fleet and local business owners chipped in to defray costs and show the veterans the time of their lives. Both male and female veterans from Walter Reed Army Hospital and other veterans’ hospitals along the eastern seaboard attended.
This year, the 65th Annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby will be held from September 12 through October 16, 2010, and once again, the veterans will join the group for four days in September for the Beach Plum Inn American Heroes Saltwater Challenge. This year as many as twenty veterans and their assistants will fill the Beach Plum Inn and the Menemsha Inn. Volunteers have increased by the boatload. The organizers are working with Cape Air and Jet Blue for contributions of air transportation.
Each day of fishing culminates with the nightly “weigh in” as old and young salts from around the world bring in the day’s catch and compete for fabulous prizes. Having started in 1946, the Martha’s Vineyard’s Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby is the longest running event of its kind.
“It took the veterans a day or so to warm up last year, and few fish were caught on their first day out,” said Bob Nixon. “But when some of the local participants referred to it as a bad day the wounded vets set them straight about what a bad day is.”
Retired staff sergeant Butch Freeman of New Gloucester Maine, who served in the Army for 27 years until his injury-forced retirement, described his bad day as one in Mosul, Iraq in December 2004 when his mess tent exploded as the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion was sitting down for lunch. The blast from a suicide bomber struck almost directly in the center of the dining hall where an estimated 400 American and Iraqi soldiers and civilian contractors were eating. More than 20 people were killed, and at least 60 were wounded. For Army Sergeant Dale Cherney of Wisconsin, a bad day was the one on which he lost his left leg and right eye in a rocket attack on Camp Liberty in Baghdad.
In mind and spirit the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby and fishing the waters that surround the Vineyard are a long way from the confines of a military hospital and the mental and physical struggle to recover from grievous injuries.
And for heroes like Butch Freeman and Dale Cherney, those days on the water can’t come soon enough.
Jack’s words stayed with Bob who, along with his wife Sarah, owns the Home Port Restaurant, the Beach Plum Inn and the Menemsha Inn. Within days, Bob was on the phone with Retired Navy Capt. Ed Nicholson, founder of Project Healing Waters, an organization dedicated to the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active military service personnel and veterans through fly fishing, fly tying education and outings.
While recovering from cancer surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2004, Capt. Nicholson witnessed wounded and disabled men and women – many of them amputees –struggling with their injuries. “My recovery was nothing compared to what they were facing,” he said. “It planted the seed that maybe there’s something I could do.”
The solution was obvious to Nicholson, an outdoorsman, whose goal was to get the wounded veterans out of the hospital and into nature. Bob and Sarah Nixon donated their facilities and worked with Project Healing Waters to bring nine vets to the Vineyard to fish the Derby last year.
Captains from the Menemsha fleet and local business owners chipped in to defray costs and show the veterans the time of their lives. Both male and female veterans from Walter Reed Army Hospital and other veterans’ hospitals along the eastern seaboard attended.
This year, the 65th Annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby will be held from September 12 through October 16, 2010, and once again, the veterans will join the group for four days in September for the Beach Plum Inn American Heroes Saltwater Challenge. This year as many as twenty veterans and their assistants will fill the Beach Plum Inn and the Menemsha Inn. Volunteers have increased by the boatload. The organizers are working with Cape Air and Jet Blue for contributions of air transportation.
Each day of fishing culminates with the nightly “weigh in” as old and young salts from around the world bring in the day’s catch and compete for fabulous prizes. Having started in 1946, the Martha’s Vineyard’s Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby is the longest running event of its kind.
“It took the veterans a day or so to warm up last year, and few fish were caught on their first day out,” said Bob Nixon. “But when some of the local participants referred to it as a bad day the wounded vets set them straight about what a bad day is.”
Retired staff sergeant Butch Freeman of New Gloucester Maine, who served in the Army for 27 years until his injury-forced retirement, described his bad day as one in Mosul, Iraq in December 2004 when his mess tent exploded as the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion was sitting down for lunch. The blast from a suicide bomber struck almost directly in the center of the dining hall where an estimated 400 American and Iraqi soldiers and civilian contractors were eating. More than 20 people were killed, and at least 60 were wounded. For Army Sergeant Dale Cherney of Wisconsin, a bad day was the one on which he lost his left leg and right eye in a rocket attack on Camp Liberty in Baghdad.
In mind and spirit the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby and fishing the waters that surround the Vineyard are a long way from the confines of a military hospital and the mental and physical struggle to recover from grievous injuries.
And for heroes like Butch Freeman and Dale Cherney, those days on the water can’t come soon enough.