Quick thinking by young BFL angler saves man from drowning
When you first meet him it’s easy to tell that 18-year-old Luke Dunkin is a composed kid, good under pressure. He’s confidant, smiles a lot and is rarely at a loss for words. He’s just the kind of guy you want on your side in a tough situation.
On a blustery day in October, one Alabama man found out just how lucky he was to have young Dunkin on his side. Dunkin saved the man’s life.
Heroic action averts tragedy
It was Friday, Oct. 26. Luke Dunkin took his boat up to Wilson Lake to do some fishing. A freshman at the University of North Alabama in nearby Florence and one of the youngest competitors in the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League’s Bama and Choo Choo divisions, he often spends his free afternoons on the Tennessee River honing his skills as a bass fisherman.
That afternoon, like many others, Dunkin launched his aluminum bass boat at Fisherman’s Resort just below Wheeler Dam. The weather had turned sour and a nasty wind was kicking up heavy waves on the open water, which kept most anglers off the lake. Dunkin noticed that his truck was the only one in the parking lot at the ramp.
“When I crossed the dam, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get out of the harbor,” he says. “There were six-foot waves coming over the jetty, so I decided to stay in close and just fish the harbor.”
The day had begun with calm, bluebird skies. But by afternoon a strong west wind combined with the current created by Wheeler Dam’s turbines to produce a nearly unnavigable soup in the main channel.
Despite the unfriendly conditions on the main lake, the young angler had a good afternoon of fishing in Safety Harbor, catching a king’s share of the famous Wilson Lake smallmouth.
“I had just lost a 4-pound smallmouth when all of a sudden I thought I heard somebody screaming,” he recalls. “I couldn’t really tell what it was because of the wind. Then this red cooler floated by.”
Dunkin looked out across the water and saw something that he will never forget. Out among the waves in the middle of the lake, the bow of a fiberglass boat was pointing straight up to the sky. Clinging to the sunken craft were two men in obvious distress. Instinctively, the young Dunkin put down his rod, directed his boat out of Safety Harbor and started heading into the chop toward the marooned boat.
With five-foot waves threatening to swamp his own 16-foot boat, Dunkin’s decision could have cost him his life. Several swells washed over the side and forced him to make his way at an agonizingly slow pace towards the stranded boat about 500 yards away.
“I didn’t panic, but I’ve never felt anything like that in my life,” Dunkin says. “It was awful hearing them scream, but all I could do was idle through the waves. I kind of started to worry when I saw that their (swamped) boat was bigger than mine.”
When he finally arrived at the scene some 15 hair-raising minutes later, Dunkin found the two men attached to the bow of the sinking craft by buoy ropes. Unfortunately, Dunkin could see that one of them, Joe Newman, 66, of Gurley, Ala., was already dead.
“He was very, very white when I got to him,” Dunkin recalls.
The other man, Robert Justice, 58, of Opelika, Ala., was still alive but was struggling mightily to hold on to the floundering, upright bass boat as waves crashed over him. The air temperature that day was a wintry 40 degrees and the water registered about 50 degrees. Hypothermia was rapidly sapping his remaining strength.
Dunkin acted fast. He tried to throw Justice a line, but the severely hypothermic man was too weak to hold onto the rope. Dunkin then tried maneuvering his boat in for Justice to grab on, but the enormous waves made it nearly impossible for Dunkin to get in close enough.
“I thought my boat was going to come down on his head,” Dunkin says.
After several passes, the waves converged just right and Dunkin deftly worked the boat in perfectly. Justice lunged and caught Dunkin’s boat by bear-hugging the lowered trolling motor. But he was still submersed in the icy water and was too weak to climb in.
“He said, `I can’t get in,'” Dunkin recalls. “I said, `I’ve got to get you in the boat.’ We wouldn’t have made it back with him in the water.”
With his last remaining strength, Justice managed to swing one of his legs up onto the gunwale. Dunkin reached down, grabbed the man – who was much bigger than he was -and with a Herculean effort heaved Justice up onto the boat deck by the belt.
At the same time, Dunkin heard a rope snap and saw Newman’s body drift away in the current. “I hated that I couldn’t go chasing after the body, but I knew I couldn’t do anything for him,” he says. “I decided the best thing I could do was to get the guy who was still alive over to the bank before my boat also sunk.”
When they arrived back at Fisherman’s Resort boat ramp, Justice was shivering uncontrollably and couldn’t move. Just by chance, Dunkin had a blanket in his truck that he had neglected to remove when he moved into his dormitory at the university just two months earlier. He covered Justice with the blanket and a coat for warmth until an ambulance arrived. By that time, an onshore witness to the rescue had alerted Tennessee Valley Police at Wheeler Dam.
“Somebody later asked me if I believe in miracles or fate. Absolutely,” says Dunkin. “I was the only truck and boat out there.”
Reassurance
Authorities learned that Justice and Newman had been fishing for several hours behind an island just downriver from Wheeler Dam. The island had protected them from the wind that kicked up in the afternoon. When they attempted to return to Fisherman’s Resort via the main channel, their boat speared a wave, spun around, and another wave washed over the stern. Then it went down. Dunkin estimates the two men probably spent close to 30 minutes in the icy water clinging to the sunken boat.
“That was as big as I’ve ever seen the water on the river,” says Dunkin, who grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg, Tenn. “It just turned nasty. With the right kind of wind blowing right down that lake, it’s awful.”
Dunkin helped direct authorities to Newman’s body, where it was discovered a half-mile downriver from the dam.
Justice, married and father of two, was treated and released from the local hospital that night. After the incident, he called his young rescuer to thank him for saving his life – and to reassure Dunkin that there was nothing he could have done to save his friend.
“It did weigh on my mind a lot,” Dunkin says. “That was reassuring to hear him say that.”
Reluctant hero
Luke Dunkin’s actions on the afternoon of Oct. 26 resonate on a genuinely heroic scale. A college freshman more concerned with business classes and catching a few bass, he suddenly found himself thrust into a situation where life itself was at stake – including his own. And he prevailed.
“I guess I could have been killed,” he reflects. “But I didn’t think about it at the time. … Everybody’s calling me a hero, but I just did what I had to do. I just hope somebody would do the same thing for me.”
While he says that fateful day on Wilson Lake has forever affected him, it hasn’t changed Dunkin’s goal of making his mark in bass fishing. Last year he missed qualifying for the BFL All-American by a mere 2 pounds at the regional competition. Not surprisingly, that minor setback doesn’t rattle him at all. If anything, it has given him even more focus. He’s just that kind of guy.
“People look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I want to be a professional bass fisherman for a living,” he says in his easy east Tennessee drawl. “But what’s great about this sport is you get to compete against your idols. I try to pattern myself after Kevin VanDam because he’s so versatile.
“I’m really going to concentrate on the BFLs next season. Then I hope to move on to something bigger by my sophomore year.”
Knowing Dunkin and what he’s capable of doing, that’s easy to believe.