No answers yet Boy’s family searches for signs of him after he apparently fell to his death from the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in early March

loading...

Michelle Damon regularly walks along the banks of the Penobscot River between Bucksport and Prospect searching the shore, joined sometimes by family members or friends. It is a grim but needful quest. Hoping against hope, Damon seeks some sign of her stepson Harrison.

The 17-year-old boy died last month during a snowstorm after he dropped from the deck of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge into the icy waters of the river below. His body has not been recovered.

Initial reports indicated the boy had jumped from the bridge, but Damon and the rest of Harrison’s extended family reject that idea. Suicide, they said, simply wasn’t in his nature. He was positive, optimistic and caring, kind and loving, involved in sports, Scouts and church activities, always respectful and helpful. He was planning for the future when he died.

“I don’t believe he was capable of committing suicide,” said Lisa White, Harrison’s mother.

Harrison and his 13-year-old sister, Haley, had talked about suicide. She said they had made a pact that no matter how bad life might get, they would never commit suicide.

“He would never do anything he knew would hurt us,” she said.

In a bustling kitchen at the Damon home in Orland, White and Damon spoke recently, along with family members and friends, about the boy who was becoming a young man, about Harry and Sir Harry, a nickname from a class project that stuck.

Harrison had a rough start in life, White said. Born five weeks premature, he suffered from meningitis and cerebral palsy. Doctors did not expect him to survive, she said. But he did. They said he would be a vegetable. But he wasn’t. They said he would never walk. But following the example of a younger sister, he did learn to walk. The cerebral palsy, which necessitated that a shunt be inserted in his brain to reduce pressure from fluid build-up, had delayed his development, so he was a few grades behind in school.

“He had endured so much in his life – meningitis, the shunt, cerebral palsy and learning disabilities,” White said. “For everything to end this way – it just makes you wonder.”

Despite those early hardships, Harrison persevered.

“He worked hard,” Damon said. “He was an honor roll student and was active in Boy Scouts and Sea Scouts. And he was a ‘champion’ track star. He never won any titles, but he stuck at it.”

That was just part of his character.

“And he did better than anyone else because of that,” said Kelly Bouchard, a neighbor and family friend.

Harrison was an Ordeal member of the Order of the Arrow, a national honor society for Boy Scouts, and was looking forward to other Scouting events, according to Bouchard.

“He was so proud to be a Boy Scout,” Bouchard said.

Scouting qualities of courtesy, kindness and service seem to have guided Harrison’s life. He was always respectful and friendly, family members said. At home, he was helpful and concerned, always asking, “How was your day?” or “Do you need anything?”

Harrison wanted to be involved, and he volunteered constantly, not just at Scouting events, but at home, at school and at church.

Church was a relatively new part of Harrison’s life. He had begun attending services at Orland United Methodist Church with Damon and other family members and had made a decision to join the church this spring.

“He loved it there. He wanted to do whatever he could to help,” Damon said.

March 5 was not a remarkable late-winter day. It was cold and later it started to snow. Harrison had a remedial math class after school and was scheduled to come home on the late bus. The class got out early, so he had to wait for the bus. That may have confused him a little.

“He was used to doing everything on a schedule,” Damon said.

Harrison had been ill a few weeks before, complications from the shunt in his brain, which had to be replaced. But there had been no complications from the procedure, Damon said. He was scheduled for a follow-up appointment the next day and told the teacher that he would not be in class.

“He was so conscientious. He was still making plans,” she said.

By the time the late bus arrived, Harrison was gone.

Damon reviewed the security tapes from the high school, but they gave no indication as to why Harrison left the school on foot, she said.

“He was fooling around as he left class. He was smiling, happy,” she said.

Another videotape from inside the school showed him waiting outside the front door for 10 or 15 minutes before he walked out of the camera’s view toward the gymnasium end of the building.

“It looked like he had a destination … like he saw somebody he knew,” Damon said.

When Harrison didn’t return on the school bus, family members began to look for him. They checked the school, calling teachers and bus drivers. But there was no sign of him and nobody knew where he was. They called the police, but even then, Damon said, she didn’t believe anything was seriously wrong.

White said she had driven into Bucksport to visit her mother and had thought about driving over the new bridge because her daughter had not yet been over it.

“We would have seen him if we had taken her over to the bridge,” she said. “We left at 6:30 p.m. We would have seen him.”

Instead, because of the snow, they went home to Blue Hill. That’s when they got the message that Harrison was missing.

Then came the call to police reporting that someone had jumped from the bridge a little after 7 p.m. Harrison had been wandering the streets for almost four hours. It was dark, cold and snowing. But reports to police indicated that the boy was not wearing a shirt.

Three witnesses saw the boy on the bridge, according to police reports. One of them told family members that the boy was afraid.

“He said he could see fear in his eyes,” White said. “And in retrospect, he said he didn’t think that Harry let go of the rail. He said he watched as Harry’s hand slipped from the rail.”

Harrison was afraid of strangers, according to Damon. He often had trouble recognizing people in vehicles. Strangers trying to coax him to their cars may have caused the frightened boy to become even more anxious.

Carol Damon of Brooklin, Harrison’s grandmother, believes her grandson was suffering from hypothermia and was disoriented. That, she said, would explain why he had taken off his jacket and his shirt.

“He was so confused and scared,” Carol Damon said. “When people asked to help him, he got even more frightened.”

She doesn’t believe Harrison even realized he was standing on the edge of the bridge.

Witnesses reported Harrison had said he was going home as he stood on the bridge, but pointed toward Prospect, the direction opposite from his Orland home.

His family probably will never know for sure what happened, one of the hardest things for them to handle.

“There just aren’t any answers yet,” Michelle Damon said.

Although authorities continue to monitor the river, the active search for the boy has ended.

But not for the Damons. For them – for family, friends and some members of the community – the search continues. So far, they have found Harrison’s backpack and a small, black globe, the “20 Questions” game that he played constantly.

It is important they find his body, for themselves and for him, Damon said.

“We need to find him,” she said, “to find his body, so he can be put to rest and we can have some closure. He’ll always be with us. But we haven’t had a funeral. We haven’t been able to say a proper goodbye. He deserves to be put to rest.”