Sunday, July 15, 2001

Tarpon Rodeo tragedy relived

David Adame/Caller-Times

John Beaty, 76, still fishes the piers, but rarely thinks of the part he played in a rescue during the 1952 Tarpon Rodeo.

PORT ARANSAS - It's rare that a newspaper print a clarification 50 years after the fact.
   And that's really not what I'm attempting here.
   But the desk received a call from a determined woman who insisted it's time to set the record straight regarding an incident that occurred years ago during a mid-century Tarpon Rodeo and Deep Sea Roundup. By the end of that decade, the tournament became known as simply the Deep Sea Roundup.
   The timing of her call was not a coincidence. The 66th Annual Deep Sea Roundup was held last weekend in Port Aransas.
   The Port Aransas Boatmen sponsors this grand tradition, which has run since 1932, with time off for World War II. It's heralded as the biggest and longest running tournament on the Texas coast.
   Over the years, the event has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help finance the college educations of local students. This year's event attracted more than 680 competitors who tested their skills in bay/surf, piggy perch, offshore and fly-fishing divisions.
   But back to this woman's phone call.
   The 1952 rescue
   Her beef was on behalf of John Beaty, her ex-husband and father of her children. She said Beaty was a hero, though an unrecognized one, who had helped rescue four competitors on the last day of the 1952 Tarpon Rodeo. They had been aboard a boat that had been swamped in the surf during a storm, which produced 15-foot seas. The woman said media accounts back then had snubbed Beaty, referring to him as an unidentified fisherman.
   When I hung up the phone, I began searching our archives. I discovered reports of the rescue, but found no reference to individual rescuers.
   I wanted more.

David Sikes/Caller-Times

Ivah Jean Mircovich was a teen-ager when tragedy struck during the 17th annual Tarpon Rodeo in 1952.

   So I contacted Mr. Beaty. As far as I could tell, the 76-year-old Flour Bluff resident knew nothing of his ex-wife's campaign to make him a hero.
   Still an avid angler who prefers talking about fishing, Beaty shyly began to recount his part in the only casualty to mar the tournament's 66-year history.
   A fatal accident
   Never before or since have closing festivities been cancelled at a Deep Sea Roundup. No trophies were awarded ceremoniously that year.
   Because on July 17, 1952, a 26-foot Farley Hull carrying four passengers overshot the jetties and broke apart about a mile south of the old South Pier - no longer there - not far from where Horace Caldwell Pier is today.
   San Antonio angler Bill Wagenfehr, 48, died in the accident. News reports said he was about 55. Eyewitnesses with good memories tell me that Wagenfehr did not drown, contrary to a newspaper headline. Veteran boatman Johnie Mathews and several others said all four anglers made it to shore alive that evening and that soon thereafter, Wagenfehr died of a heart attack on the way to a hospital.
   A Caller-Times News Service story reported that "efforts of the Coast Guard, the volunteer fire department and five doctors could not save his life."
   Beaty admits to being one of two men at the end of a chain of rescuers who held hands and waded into the treacherous undertow to assist survivors of the shipwreck.
   Racing to the crash
   Most rescuers on the lifeline had a connection to the tournament, or knew at least one of the passengers on the boat. Beaty did not. He had been fishing for redfish that day on South Pier, when he noticed the wayward vessel.
   Believing the boat had lost power and would surely crumple on a sandbar, Beaty - then 27 - handed his billfold, watch and pocketknife to Frenchy, the pier manager, and jumped into the gulf. This plan seemed like a bad one almost immediately. Realizing that waves would carry the boat about a mile south of the pier, Beaty swam to the beach and ran to where a handful of people had gathered. Soon, there was a crowd.
   "I wasn't a hero," Beaty said. "I was just one of many who tried to help those people. There was a bunch of us on that chain. I haven't thought about that in ages."
   Two young ladies, the boat captain's daughter and Mary Ann Veltman, the girlfriend of Wagenfehr's son, made it to shore first. Wagenfehr followed. Newspaper reports said he had swallowed a great deal of seawater.
   "It was a struggle getting him to the beach," Beaty recalls. "He was a big man and he was in trouble. He wasn't in any shape to help himself at the time."
   Some say the boat's captain, Gaines Hicks, floated ashore on the bow of his broken vessel. But in Beaty's memory, Gaines rode in on a log.
   Today, Hicks' daughter can't recall.
   Good conditions
   Three days earlier, about 175 anglers were poised to compete on the eve of the 17th annual Tarpon Rodeo. Rodeo Committee chairman Barney Farley had predicted 10 to 14 days of "excellent fishing weather," citing recent rains in central and north Texas as the reason.
   "It always works that way," Farley told a reporter. "And if you notice, Texas has been getting some good rains inland and we have been having good fishing weather here."
   "Maybe he knows," the reporter suggested of Farley's forecast, adding a touch of morbid irony to the prophecy.
   Farley told then-Corpus Christi Caller Sports Editor Louis Anderson that the contest could have attracted some 300 contestants if there had been more boats and guides available. Imagine that, a shortage of guides.
   It's probably best that more boats were not on the water, considering the conditions at the close of the contest.
   Caller outdoors writer Roy Swann reported that 47 sailfish had been boated in the days leading up to the big event. Tarpon numbers were still good, but declining, Swann wrote.
   Day 1: a sunny start
   Day one of the three-day event found the young daughter of boatman Gaines Hicks, Ivah Jean, aboard her father's vessel of the same name. She was in a tight race with Mrs. Dale Dorn of San Antonio in the sailfish division.
   This was the first year that three-thread fishing line was used in the rodeo. Contestants using the lighter tackle received extra points to compensate for the added challenge.
   Using nine-thread line, the pretty 14-year-old Port Aransas resident had shot to second place by boating two sailfish - or blue devils as they also were called, according to Swann - during her first ever deep sea outing.
   Day 2: bad weather
   It was a beautiful day, with calm seas and light winds, which prevailed through day two of the event. Back then, day two was a time for partying, not fishing.
   Then the weather turned sour. And during the final hours of the competition, a terrible squall from the northeast formed over the gulf.
   Veltman, a teen-ager herself, had caught two sailfish that morning.
   "We were having a wonderful time until the very end, when the weather got bad," said Ivah Jean (Hicks) Mircovich, who today lives in Aransas Pass and is co-owner of Bay Area Realtors and Otto Homes Inc.
   "A boat came by and told us we'd better start back before the storm hit," she said. "But I was fighting a big sailfish at the time."
   The Ivah Jean was about 25 miles offshore, according to a newspaper report. The young angler boated her third fish of the tournament and they were underway within 30 minutes of the warning, Mircovich said.
   The boat ride back was rough, but uneventful until it neared Port Aransas.
   Mircovich later learned that her father most likely intentionally motored beyond the jettied Aransas Pass to avoid the narrow opening, which is difficult to navigate in rough seas.
   "He didn't want us to wind up on the rocks," Mircovich said. "It probably seemed safer to let us out on the beach. I was scared, but I never felt like I was going to drown. We just thought we'd swim to the beach and that would be it."
   But a wave overtook the Ivah Jean, tossing overboard all but the captain, who clung to the wheel. The trio managed to get back on the boat, only to be swept into the gulf again.
   This time, they swam for the beach as the wooden boat broke apart.
   "I remember handing Daddy a life preserver, but I can't remember if he put it on," Mircovich said. "But I do remember that Mr. Wagenfehr had one on when we got back on the boat. I don't know if he took it off himself or if it came off."
   Beaty said Wagenfehr, once known as a strong swimmer, was not wearing a life preserver when he floated within the grasp of rescuers.
   Chaos greeted the other passengers on the beach. Survivors of the accident were unaware of Wagenfehr's fate until later, according to a newspaper report.
   "I don't recall much about the rescue scene," Mircovich said last week. "All I remember is everyone on the beach, and my mother crying. I don't even remember the chain of swimmers.
   "But I certainly want Mr. Beaty to know that we appreciate what he and the others did for us. I'm not sure I would have gone out there. If you could have seen how rough it was . . ."
   In the commotion, an exhausted Beaty slipped away in anonymity, returning to fish on the pier. No one offered him a ride, though several cars were headed that direction.
   Frenchy, the pier manager, took a single snapshot of the dripping hero and later gave it to him. Beaty can't recall where he keeps it today.
   But he does remember catching two redfish that day.
  
  

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