“Come on!” he shouted. “Paddle! Swim, swim, swim! You can do it!”
Fully clothed and tiring in the cold water, Michael couldn’t make headway against the strong undercurrents. Each time he came up for air, he would be sucked back underwater, unable to touch bottom, growing more exhausted with each futile stroke.
Larry reached out his hand. “Swim harder,” he yelled. “You’re almost here!”
Pausing for what Larry assumed was a quick breather, Michael disappeared, sinking into the cyclone of white water. Larry leapt off the ladder, grabbed the kid’s wrist, and pulled him onto the ladder. “Stay here,” he demanded while knotting Michael’s weak arms around the ladder rungs. Larry then focused on the second victim, Aaron Levanduski, who continued to drift farther from the concrete barrier. “Come on, kid! Swim, swim, swim!” Larry cried.
Seeing the boy’s arms stretched over his head, Larry thought Aaron was going to push down, lift up his head, and take a big gulp of air before swimming toward the pier. After only taking a few uninspired strokes, the boy’s arms went limp, and he was pulled under, swirling around in the strong current like a toothpick. Once more launching off the ladder, Larry swam to the struggling boy and brought him to the ladder alongside his friend.
The waves pounded against the pier’s far side, arcing overhead as Larry held onto both boys with his left arm and leg clenched around them while he wove his right arm through the ladder rungs. The waves crashing around them formed a wall of water receding off the pier, and the longer they held onto the ladder, the more they felt enclosed in a watery tomb. Shaking from fear and too scared to cry, Aaron stared into Larry’s eyes with a look of defeat. “I can’t hold on anymore,” he said.
“You don’t have to hold on, I’ve got you,” Larry said. “Help’s on the way.”
The boy said, “But I can’t breathe anymore.”
He was beginning to hyperventilate, growing limper and heavier in Larry’s arms. The kid didn’t have much time left, and Larry, for a moment, was unsure what to do. Wondering if someone—the Coast Guard, police, fire department, anybody—was ever going to help them, he said nothing, knowing anything he said could demoralize the boys. Convinced they wouldn’t survive without him, Larry refused to consider that he might die that afternoon. His son Tanner was almost the same age as Michael and Aaron, and Larry hoped that an adult in this same situation wouldn’t give up, but would do everything possible to save his son.
Weaving their limp arms around the rungs of the ladder, Larry shouted, “Hold on, and don’t let go,” above the barrage of crashing waves. “When I tell you to come up the ladder, climb as fast as you can!”
The boys nodded.
“I’m going to see what’s headed our way. Just hang on!”
After swallowing a mouthful of water, he climbed up the ladder and glanced over the top of the pier to estimate when the next set of waves would strike. A wave smashed him in the face with a force comparable to a fire hose, folding his eyelids backward and stretching all the tendons in his arms.
From his brief peek above the pier, Larry realized the same treacherous waves that were holding him and the boys prisoner were probably hampering the rescue efforts the Coast Guard and fire department were attempting from shore. Just as Larry’s vision cleared, Aaron’s screams pierced through the noise of crashing waves. “I can’t hold on! I can’t hold on! I’m going to drown.”
Believing he likely would lose Aaron during the rescue, Larry told Michael, the stronger of the two, to follow right behind him up the ladder. The water washing over the surface of the pier made everything slick and weakened Larry’s grasp on the boys. It would be only a matter of time before he could no longer hold onto either of them, leaving all three to freefall into the churning waves below. When the waves subsided for a brief moment, Larry shouted, “Let’s go! Follow me up the ladder. Hurry!”
Interlocking all of their arms, Larry formed a chain between him and the boys. Rushing up the ladder as fast as he could, Larry pulled both boys onto the pier just as another wall of waves crashed into them. Scrambling to their feet, the three reformed their interlocking chain of arms and ran toward land. Although they were only a hundred yards from safety, it felt like miles. With barrels of water arching over the pier, spray and mist fell from the sky, hampering their visibility as much as their ability to gain traction on the slick cement.
Larry ran alongside the open water, taking the brunt of the shattering waves. Understanding a chain was only as strong as its weakest link and resigned to the fact Aaron probably wouldn’t survive, he had Michael linked between him and Aaron, who ran along the leeward side.
As the three trudged across the pier’s slippery surface, the rumblings of a monster wave roared over their shoulders. When they turned to see it, the wall of water smashed into them, knocking them to their knees and pushing them toward the edge of the pier. Just as quickly they got back on their feet and headed toward shore again.
“Stand still and lean into it,” Larry directed. When another huge wave engulfed the group, Aaron was almost washed off the pier, his legs dangling off the edge.
Larry reached down and pulled him up with one swift motion. “We have to be faster,” he demanded. “Move with purpose and efficiency.” With waves sideswiping him, Aaron couldn’t gain his balance, causing him to shuffle and stumble across the slick concrete. But he slowly progressed toward shore, with only the interlocking chain keeping him from plunging into the harbor.
Then, through the mist of crashing waves and spray, Larry saw emergency lights from fire trucks, ambulances, and squad cars. When he saw silhouettes of rescue workers and concerned citizens standing by helplessly at the foot of the pier, he realized the conditions were still too hazardous for a rescue attempt from shore. Summoning up their last remnants of strength, the trio hustled across the pier’s last fifty yards.
Realizing they were out of immediate danger, though still twenty yards short of the parking lot full of spectators awaiting their arrival, Larry and the boys paused to catch their breath.
“We’re going to make it,” Larry told them.
The boys gushed, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved our lives.”
Larry said, “I don’t take thanks. I only take hugs.”
Michael and Aaron embraced their rescuer in a group hug. They squeezed each other tightly as their tears of relief mixed with the spraying mist from the waves that continued to crash around them. Still dizzy from the shock of the experience, Larry and the boys collected their emotions and headed toward the crowd awaiting them. As he watched the two eleven-year-olds disappear into the crowd, a police officer walked over to him and draped a blanket over his shoulders. “Are you all right?” the officer asked.
Suddenly overcome with the power of the experience, Larry said, “No,” while beginning to sob. “No, I’m not.”
The officer led Larry to the same rocks where less than an hour earlier he had first discovered the boys running on the pier. “What’s the matter?” the officer asked.
Larry could only reply, “I almost died out there.”
“Do you need anything—medical assistance?”
With adrenaline subsiding, Larry now felt pain lashing through his bruised hip. He started to tell the officer when Tanner, who was navigating his way through the crowd, called out for him. As Tanner reached the rocks at the base of the pier, he wrapped his arms around Larry in a bear hug. “Dad, I can’t believe you just did that!”
Larry turned to the officer, cracked a smile, and said, “I’ll be okay.”
After his story appeared in nearly every newspaper as well as television and radio broadcast throughout Wisconsin in the weeks that followed, Larry became recognized in Sheboygan as the hero who saved those two boys. Restaurants gave him free meals, the bakery didn’t accept his money, and even the local Sheboygan Press newspaper disregarded a late subscription payment, giving him the paper gratis for a couple of months.
Larry appreciated
the attention but more importantly, he felt he survived the ordeal in order to serve a greater purpose. Since his friend Doc Beaton had lived through a similar experience, Larry began contributing to Doc’s Great Lakes pier watch safety program by educating people about the dangers surrounding the 108 piers located throughout the five Great Lakes and collaborating on a pier watch safety video for the US Army Corps of Engineers. For his efforts, Larry received the second-highest life-saving award in the United States—the Silver Lifesaving Award from the United States Coast Guard.
When the Secretary of Transportation honored him during a ceremony at the Kohler Company, Larry joined a very small fraternity. As one of the oldest medals in the United States military, the honor can be bestowed to a member of the US military or to a US civilian who rescues or tries to rescue anyone from drowning or other peril of water at the risk to one’s own life. Since it was established by an Act of Congress on June 20, 1874, the Lifesaving Medal has only been awarded to approximately seven hundred individuals—whereas the Medal of Honor, established approximately ten years earlier, has been awarded to nearly 3,500 recipients. Holding the heavy silver medal, Larry couldn’t keep the tear welling up in his eye from rolling down his cheek. It eventually found its way down his chin and neck toward his proudest memento from the occasion—a shark-tooth necklace Tanner gave him only moments before the ceremony.
“Nobody’s tougher than you,” Tanner told him. “Not even a shark!”
As the year-end holidays approached, Larry saw a lot more of his brother, who was itching to undertake a new challenge.
“I’m going to surf the reef,” he told Larry, referring to the limestone outcropping that sat in the middle of Sheboygan Bay. “Some guys from Illinois are talking about surfing it first, and that just wouldn’t be right.”
Lee surfing Sheboygan in 1992
The natural reef, part of the Niagara Escarpment, was quite the geographical temptation for local surfers. Because it forked out of thirty feet of water to create its own six- to eight-foot pool of shallow water, waves passing over it tripled in size under the right conditions, peeling off beautiful barrels that would last a city block. But because it was located nearly three-quarters of a mile off the shoreline, nobody had risked surfing those open waters, knowing that if something went wrong, they’d never make it back.
On Sunday, December 1, 1991, Lee stood on the frozen Sheboygan beach in very inhospitable weather conditions with surfboard in hand. “No flatlander is going to lay claim to surfing that reef first unless I freeze to death getting out there,” he proclaimed to his friend Pat Brickner, who brought a camera in hopes of capturing the historic moment.
The surf was up that afternoon as Lee paddled out toward the eight-foot-tall Nunn Buoy that notified boaters of the shallow reef below. The brisk wind cutting across his face in the open waters turned his runny nose into an icicle. The exposed hair peeking out from his wetsuit hood had become sharp, frozen daggers. He knew the window of opportunity to surf the reef was limited since the time it took to paddle out was enough to bring on hypothermia.
Awaiting the right wave, he chose a glassy six-foot barrel that lasted nearly one hundred yards. Orphaning the wave before it dissolved into the Sheboygan Bay, he immediately turned back around and paddled toward the buoy. After riding out a couple of shorter waves, he returned to shore to catch a quick breather before venturing back out again.
“Did you get that?” he asked Pat, who seemed preoccupied with licking the accumulating frost off his telephoto camera lens.
Pat nodded. “It looked great,” he said. “Do you want me to get a few more?”
“Just let me warm up a minute,” Lee said while rubbing his hands together in a futile attempt to dry them in the frozen, whistling winds.
As the two men stood on the iced-over Sheboygan beachfront that frigid December afternoon, the faint thumping of helicopter rotors began echoing in the distance. Lee smiled. “You didn’t have to arrange an aerial photo shoot,” he said with a chuckle.
Pat just stared back at him.
“I didn’t think so,” Lee shrugged.
Since the helicopter was heading straight toward them, they grew concerned. “That’s the Coast Guard!” Pat said. “They don’t fly around here unless they’re looking for someone.”
Specializing in short-range recoveries, the orange-painted H-65 Dolphin Eurocopter swooped down toward the reef Lee had just surfed. “I think they’re looking for you,” Pat said. “Someone must have seen you heading out to the reef and thought you were committing suicide or something.”
When the helicopter circled back for another pass, Lee decided it was time to leave. As stealthily as a grown man in a black wetsuit carrying an eight-foot surfboard on the frozen Sheboygan beach in December could, Lee loaded up the car. Without putting his foot on the gas, Pat rolled it out of the parking lot, as if revving a car engine would’ve been heard over the helicopter rotors. Like guilty school children absconding with the answers to an upcoming test, they made their getaway, watching the helicopter circling above the reef through the car’s rearview and side mirrors.
Lee and Pat didn’t discuss the events at the reef that day with anyone—not even Larry or their wives—fearing their attempt to earn some local bragging rights would turn into a legal nightmare, possibly even landing them in jail.
The incident was forgotten until three weeks later, when Lee was bagging groceries for a customer who happened to be a Coast Guard cook. “Did you hear about that guy over Thanksgiving weekend riding around the lake on a surfboard?” the officer asked the checkout girl. Lee said nothing as he bagged the groceries. The checkout girl said she hadn’t heard about it. “The Coast Guard spent over ten grand bringing a helicopter up from Chicago. And they never even found the guy.”
“Oh,” was the only response the checkout girl could muster as Lee loaded the last packed bag of groceries into the cart. When the cook walked out the door, the checkout girl could no longer contain her grin. She looked at Lee and asked, “Do you know anyone crazy enough to do that?”
“Not at all,” he said. “Not at all.”
Word soon spread around Sheboygan’s surfing circle that somebody had actually surfed the reef. Although everyone knew it was Lee, he wasn’t about to bring any attention to it. “I appreciate the congratulations,” he’d reply, “but this has to stay among us. No bragging rights are worth ten thousand bucks. The Coast Guard might want their money back.”
For Lee, keeping quiet about such an accomplishment was torture. Fearing arrest for daring such an act wasn’t all that pleasant either. As he always did when he was upset about something, he focused on his lawn, looking forward to the spring thaw. Pushing a mower, clipping hedges, and trimming branches brought instant gratification whenever things weren’t going well. He had spent so much time on his lawn the past few years that his neighbors could no longer compete in the friendly rivalry of dueling lawns, conceding his victory.
Following another festive Fourth of July, Mitch’s favorite holiday, Lee spent an entire weekend packing up her red, white, and blue party favors, themed streamers, and firecracker lawn ornaments. He knew the task of organizing the next Labor Day weekend surf party with Larry would soon be his next task to tackle.
By 1992, the Dairyland Surf Classic had evolved into a fullblown event, just five short years since its inception. No longer just a dozen friends looking for an excuse to drink beer and watch surf movies, the event had taken on a life of its own. Lee and Larry struggled to keep control of it. The increased attendance meant organizing more events, ordering more food, and working with the city of Sheboygan to reserve and permit the space accommodations on the beach since the Dairyland Surf Classic was large enough to be considered an “organized event” by civic leaders. While a lot of people saw the playful side of Lee and Larry during the Labor Day weekends, nobody quite understood how much stress was involved as they spent nearly every July and August weekend in Larry’s basement planning and prepari
ng.
The stress led to arguments between them, sometimes to the point where they were ready to start throwing punches. Then they would calm down, and the moment would be just as quickly forgotten. They moved on as only brothers can.
As this Labor Day weekend approached, Lee found himself manicuring his lawn on a daily basis, sometimes tending to it after breakfast as well as right before going to bed. His grass-stained hands were a sure indication he was feeling pressure over the weekend’s growing popularity.
“Why do we keep encouraging more people to attend every year if all it does is cause us to fight?” Lee asked Larry. “Why should we put ourselves through this year after year? Why can’t we keep it exclusive? You know, a surfers-only party like we originally intended.”
“It’s not about us,” Larry replied. “It’s about the love of the lifestyle. And we’re responsible for bringing new people into it.”
Lee nodded in silence.
“When all those kids race into the water to catch their first wave of the day,” Larry continued, “that’s why we do it.”
Lee smiled. “Even the people who irritate the crap out of us can’t ruin that.”
“It can be a pain, sure, but you have to admit it’s cool getting all the surfers back together every year.”
Lee agreed. They had the same conversation every year—expressing their frustration but concluding that all the time and trouble was worthwhile.
A few weeks later, with the Dairyland Surf Classic in full swing, a San Diego couple arrived at the beach, fully equipped with surfboards and wetsuits rented from the local surf shop. “We’ve never surfed freshwater before,” they told Lee and Larry, “and when we heard about Sheboygan, we planned our whole summer vacation around this weekend.”
Some Like It Cold Page 15