Saving a life is part of the routine for the Coast Guard’s Air Station Cape Cod Search and Rescue Team.

Meeting the president of the United States is not.

Lt. Bill Bellatty, a native of Franklin in Hancock County, did both last week.

Bellatty was the commander and pilot for the rescue mission that saved five fishermen from the waters of the Atlantic last week. And, at President Bush’s request, Bellatty and his crew were on board the Coast Guard cutter Tahoma on Friday to meet the commander-in-chief when he visited Portland.

In a phone interview Saturday from his base near Buzzards Bay on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Bellatty, the son of Teddy and Paul Giles of Franklin, spoke matter-of-factly about the rescue.

It was 7:30 in the morning last Tuesday when his crew got the call that a fishing vessel with five people on board was taking on water about 120 miles from the station.

“We were in the air 10 minutes after the call came in,” he said. “We had a great tail wind – about 45 knots – and we were on scene within 40 minutes.”

On board their Jayhawk helicopter, the rescue crew delivered two dewatering pumps to the fishing vessel Covered Wagon and remained in the air at the site as its crew tried to save the boat. After an hour of pumping, the crew abandoned ship. The five crew members got into a life boat and drifted away from their sinking vessel.

That’s when the Coast Guard team went into action. With high winds and heavy seas of 15 to 20 feet, they dropped their rescue swimmer into the water. He helped the crew members into the hoist bucket one at a time. The Coast Guard crew then flew them back to the Otis Air National Guard Base near Buzzards Bay.

“Everything worked great that day,” Bellatty said. “We had the light. In the daytime, everything is a little easier. If it had been night, it would have been a bear of a hoist.”

Normally, that would have been the end of the issue, another of the more than 4,000 rescue missions that Coast Guard teams on water and in the air conduct off the Northeast coast each year. But Bush was planning a trip to Portland to speak to Coast Guard personnel and to announce plans to increase funding for homeland security, and the president had heard about the rescue.

“We got the call on Thursday, telling us we had to go up to Portland because the president wanted to meet us,” he said. “It was a great honor. I voted for George Bush; I admire him immensely. This just strengthened my admiration for him.”

The crew flew to Portland and was on board the Tahoma when the president arrived, and Bellatty doesn’t even try to keep the excitement from his voice when he talks about the meeting.

“He walked right up to us, shook my hand and called me by my first name. You get the sense that he’s a real person. He went right down the line and he said, ‘I’m going to talk about you in my speech.”‘

As Bush passed by him again, Bellatty presented him with a cap from Air Station Cape Cod and the Coast Guard men and women who work there.

Bellatty and his crew were still on board the Tahoma when Bush spoke at Southern Maine Technical College and never heard him praise their efforts.

“Right off the East Coast, the Coast Guard chopper, the Coast Guard crew from Air Station Cape Cod – Coast Guardsmen who I had a chance to thank personally today – rescued five fishermen from a 74-foot fishing vessel called the Covered Wagon that sank in heavy seas. Five human souls returned back to land because of the bravery of people who wear the Coast Guard uniform,” the president said.

The meeting on board the Tahoma was brief, but the president made an impression on Bellatty.

“He seemed to be a very down-to-earth person,” he said. “He looked you right in the eye, gave you a firm handshake. He seemed very sincere. I didn’t get the feeling he was doing this just because he had to do it. I really felt he was sincere about what he was doing.”

Bellatty, 41, also seemed to be committed to what he is doing. A career Coast Guardsman, he enlisted right after his 1978 graduation from Sumner Memorial High School. He has always worked in aviation. As an enlisted man, he was part of the crew, and then, after officer training school, he became a pilot.

His moment in the limelight was the luck of the draw, he said, and could have happened to any of the pilots and crews who fly rescue missions out of the air base at Cape Cod.

“It’s our job. It’s a good job,” he said. “What other kind of job can you go home and say, ‘I saved five lives to day?”‘

Last year, Bellatty and his crew saved 22 lives.

That’s a real good job.

“It’s a gift from God.”