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Five or 10 years ago, you never would have seen Rusty Emmerton at the East Outlet of the Kennebec River, geared up and ready to spend a day on one of the state’s top fly fishing waters.
Back then, the 51-year-old Swanville man admits, about the only place you’d have been likely to find him was in his home.
“I didn’t want to do anything. All I wanted to do was sit around the house and mope and do nothing,” Emmerton said.
That was before he had the lower part of his injured right arm amputated, after years of constant pain. And that was before the new, improved Emmerton emerged.
Emmerton was first injured in the late 1970s, while serving in the U.S. Navy.
“We were right in the middle of a hurricane, and the ship did a wicked roll and a hatch slammed on my arm,” Emmerton said.
In 1991, he said he lost all use of the injured arm. And then his outlook became bleak.
“It took from ’91 until 2004 to get it taken off,” he said. “And when they took it off it was just the difference between day and night in the way that I felt. Prior to that, I was a walking corpse. My skin was gray.”
Emerton joined seven other veterans Thursday – the first of two consecutive days on the East Outlet – for the latest trip organized by Project Healing Waters.
Project Healing Waters was organized three years ago in Washington, D.C., at Walter Reed Army Military Hospital. The goal: offer wounded or disabled military personnel the chance to learn to fly fish and tie flies. The program was initiated by Trout Unlimited and Federation of Fly Fishers chapters.
A year ago, a group of veterans traveled from Washington to the East Outlet for a Healing Waters outing, and in November Project Healing Waters organizers began meeting with staffers at Maine’s Togus VA Medical Center to initiate a program there. Togus was the first VA facility in the nation to sign on, a Project Healing Waters official said.
This week’s two-day outing was the culmination of those efforts, as eight Maine veterans traveled to the East Outlet, just northwest of Greenville, for two days of guided fishing.
The guides – Dan Legere, Mike Jones, Ian Cameron, Chad Cray and John Wood – donated their time and the use of five drift boats. Lodging, meals and equipment were also donated.
And the veterans, like Emmerton, were ready to put their skills to use.
Nearby, Terri Perry, a veteran from Gorham, recounted the story of her first fly fishing success.
It happened last week, on the fabled Rapid River in western Maine.
“I caught my first brook trout with a fly rod,” she said. “I was pumped.”
Perry, who gets around in a wheelchair while not fishing, admits she might have been a bit too pumped.
“They didn’t have any backs on the seats, so after I hooked the fish I got all excited and flipped over backward,” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t lose the fish, though.”
And that fish, a 15-incher, was just the beginning.
Perry hooked and lost a nice salmon Thursday, and landed another frisky fish or two on her drift down the river.
Emmerton prepared for his day in typical angler fashion, trading quips with his fellow veterans.
As far as Emmerton was concerned, he had some top-notch fishing equipment the other anglers lacked.
“I’ve got my own grappling hook right here,” he said with a chuckle, opening and closing the fingers on his prosthetic hand, which is attached to a prosthetic forearm sporting a stars-and-stripes motif. “[I’ll] reach in and grab ’em.”
Emmerton, you quickly learn, is no longer the housebound man from Swanville. Now, he’s an eager adventurer, looking for a new challenge.
He’s also a bit of a joker.
“I have an advantage over you,” he said, eyes twinkling. “If my arm gets tired, I can go home and take it off. Plus, if the doctor tells me I’ve got to lose weight, that’s no problem: I can lose eight pounds just by taking my arm off.”
After chuckling at his own joke, Emmerton shrugged.
“As you can see, I do have a pretty good attitude toward it,” he said. “I try not to let it bother me.”
Emmerton credits the amputation for that new outlook, and the recreational therapy at Togus for giving him some outlets. And he says Project Healing Waters helps make even more activities possible.
Emmerton was already learning to play golf again at Togus when he received word of Healing Waters. And he had begun participating in (and instructing children in) archery, thanks to an attachment that secures the bow to his prosthetic arm.
And after receiving a new hand, he learned that fly casting could be an option as well.
“This one here is a new hand that they bought me with a rubber coating on it,” he said, gesturing at the fingers. “My regular hand that I usually use, the jaws come together too tight right here, and I have a tendency to cut the line. That would be horrible if I had a nice trout on there and I cut the line and that sucker took off. I don’t think I’d be too happy about that.”
Cleve Van Haasteren, the northeast regional coordinator for Project Healing Waters, said the program got off to a slow start, but has gained momentum recently.
About 30 veterans now participate in the program out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, while programs have been started at 10 other VA facilities, including Togus.
He said fly fishing is an ideal outlet for the veterans.
“Number one, it’s a very relaxing thing,” Van Haasteren said. “For people, especially who have upper extremity injuries, learning how to regain the use of fine motor skills [is a goal of the program] … [and] the physical act of fly casting, just to learn how to handle the fly rod, is therapeutic.”
Emmerton agrees. He said he has tied 11 flies by himself thus far, and continues to improve at the craft. And the more he does, the more he wants to convince others how much is possible, no matter the obstacle.
“I hate it when I hear [somebody] tell me, ‘Oh, I can’t do that,'” Emmerton said. “The first thing I’ll ask them is, ‘Have you tried it?’ Nine times out of 10, they’ll say, ‘No.'”
Beginning in the spring, thanks to Project Healing Waters, “trying it” meant fly casting and fly tying for Emmerton.
And he’s eager to make up for lost time in the future.
“[When I had my arm amputated] I felt like I got 20 years of my life back, because there was such a difference in the way that I felt,” he said.
“[After that] I wanted to go out and do everything I could to enjoy it while I can. And that’s what I doing now. I’m doing everything I can to have a good time and enjoy life,” Emmerton said. “And thanks to this Healing Waters program, it’s given me another step forward.”
John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.
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