Saturday I went fishing. I know, we live on Cape Cod, we all go fishing, right? What made this trip special was WHY I got to spend a day on the water casting lures.
Several months ago, Arthur Johnson reached out to the Wounded Warrior Project. He wanted to create a day on the water for our veterans. “Operation Reel Heroes” was conceived. Approximately 30 fishing boats and captains volunteered to take a group of veterans out for a day of saltwater fishing.
I, along with Matt Pitta (news director for CCB-Media) was invited on one of the boats for the day. I was honored and overwhelmed. I watched quietly and smiled as men and women of all ages were invited to board boats, maybe four to six on each boat.
This was not a tourist charter fishing event. This was humble and personal. Matt and I were directed to a boat named Yoshki which is owned by Captain Phil and his co-worker Simeon from The Goose Hummock. Also on the boat with us were a Marine veteran and an Army veteran. As it turned out, Ryan and Ben were the Project Odyssey Coordinator and Outreach Coordinator for Wounded Warrior Project. As we each introduced ourselves, I wanted to blurt out “I don’t deserve to be on this boat with these men!”
It was very early (6 a.m.) cloudy and a little windy. I layered up as we pulled away from the ramp at Smugglers Beach. We met up with the rest of the boats who were circling and drifting just outside the entrance to the river. Radios were coordinated and through a scratchy boat speaker the National Anthem was aired. All stopped and paid their respects to our flag, even a couple boats not with the group slowed down and tipped their hats. A horn sounded and there was a brief scramble like the start of a scavenger hunt.
Anybody on the boat know how to fish? Matt Pitta claims to be quite the amateur fisherman; Ben and Ryan have both fished a bit… Me? Well, I can cook anything that comes out of the water, and I was quite good at pulling perch out of Long Pond when I was 6… So….
I will spare you the stories about how Simeon and I BOTH caught two black sea bass on the same hooks, and how Matt was the champion at hooking sea robins or how I had a monster that snapped my line and got away with the lure (it was easily a three-footer…) or that Ben had another monster on the line that got away, too. The highlight of my day was when I overheard Ben talking with Ryan: “This is so great! I didn’t have to think about anything today except fish.”
It was true. We did very little talking. There were no battle scar stories. There were no discussions about politics. No one was on their cell phones (except for Captain Phil when he needed to check where the next good fishing spot might be)… We joked about bait and fish. We got our lines tangled. We ate cold fried chicken and braced ourselves against the waves and wind and accepted the rain showers. No one really complained about the long bumpy wet ride from the far side of Nantucket (where no one caught a single fish) back to the Cape. I was cold and achy and soaked to the bone… My hands had gone numb and my contacts were so full of salt water I couldn’t see very well. No reason to complain. We were all in the same boat (literally)… Oh, and we were on the water off Cape Cod. There weren’t Somali pirates terrorizing the other boats. We were not in a dry desert someplace with extreme temperatures. Nothing was exploding around us. There was just the sound of the engines and the waves slapping against the hull of the boat as we raced to our little sand spit. Once the beach was in sight, we stopped to drop a few more lines. We laughed a little more. We caught a few more fish. We threw several back.
We didn’t catch the most fish, or the biggest fish, but between the six of us, we got a cooler full of black sea bass that Captain Phil and Simeon took back to Orleans to clean.
I was invited to the dinner, raffles and awards at Skippy’s. Again, I looked around, humbled. I finally worked up the courage to talk with Ryan about his role with Wounded Warrior Project. Project Odyssey is named after Homer’s epic story of a man who goes off to war, his fantastic and frightening adventures and his attempts to return to a normal life. Ryan coordinates adventures for our veterans that will help them cope with adjusting to “normal life” after battle. Sadly, so many of these men and women carry their battles with them every day. Project Odyssey helps them find safe adventures that eventually help them connect with a normal life. Hiking, cycling, fishing…
When Jason Brasse from Wounded Warriors Project started to speak at the dinner, he said how injuries from an IED to his leg had stopped him from doing “maybe a dozen things so far.” He went on to say it was the injuries in his mind that had stopped him from doing “a thousand” things. Wounded Warrior Project was helping men and women like him (and the dozens in that room) overcome their injuries on every level. As Ryan said: “Getting them off the couch.”
I am aware Wounded Warrior Project has recently come under fire in the public eye. I make a point to stay out of politics and I will admit I have never worked with this specific veterans support group before, so I do not know much beyond what I was seeing at that moment. Honestly, as I looked from table to table filled with men and women, veterans, wives, fishermen and crew, all I saw was a group of satisfied and happy people swapping stories at end of a day of fishing.
To the long list of people and volunteers who put Operation Reel Heroes together: job well done!
To the veterans and their families: thank you for all you have done. You are not fighting your battles alone. Ever.
Right now, I am waiting for my grill to heat up so I can cook one of the black sea bass we caught yesterday. I am not sure who actually caught the biggest or the most fish on our boat. Doesn’t matter. We were just fishing.
For more information, please visit:
http://reel-heroes.com/
About Cat Wilson
