Six weeks after Dick Gower fell into a roadside canal and was rescued by a team of strangers, he and his wife, Ellen, celebrated what the “miracle” with a thank-you party Saturday evening at their Indian River Estates home.
Not only did the Gowers provide 30-plus guests with food and drink, but County Commissioner Bob Solari presented each of the life savers, including members of a Fire Rescue emergency crew, with “medals of honor” to recognize their efforts on May 4.
Three citizens who played crucial rescue roles – Tori Cotton, Cesar Medina and Curtis Carpenter – also received heartfelt hugs and kisses on the cheek from the survivor.
“I can’t believe this guy is alive,” said Carpenter, a 31-year-old X-ray technologist who performed CPR after Cotton saw an older man stumble over the edge and Medina went down into the canal with a rope and found an unconscious Gower face-down in four feet of water. “It’s something I’ll never forget.”
Nor will Cotton, a 20-year-old flight student who was driving north on 74th Avenue and turning right onto 26th Street when she glanced left to check for oncoming traffic and noticed Gower wobbling before falling into the canal, stopped her car in the middle of the intersection and started the rescue chain.
“I just feel blessed to have been there at the right time,” said Cotton. “I’ve gotten to know Richard and Ellen, and they’re great people. It’s wonderful to see everybody again.”
Medina, a 34-year-old Mexican immigrant carpenter, said he had to be reminded by his wife of the party. “I don’t want to remember the accident,” Medina said. “It was very traumatic.”
Gower, who turns 81 next month, said he has recovered from his injuries – including fractured ribs, a turn deltoid shoulder muscle and multiple cuts and bruises on his face, arms and hands – and feels well enough to resume daily walks.
He’s still is undergoing physical therapy and has reduced his strolls from two miles to a half mile. “And with his balance not what it used to be,” wife Ellen said, “I told him he has to stay on the sidewalks.”
Solari, who has known the Gowers for about four years, described the string of coincidences that brought the rescuers to the scene at just the right time as “miraculous.”
Gower had so much fun he proposed making the party an annual “Raising Cane” affair – a lighthearted reference to his walking stick, which, on that fateful afternoon, sank deeper than he expected into the grass along the canal embankment, caused him to lose his balance and fall 15 feet into the water.
