This is classic. News is just in that the drunken lifeguard is being honored on the first day of the RAT B*ST*RD convention in Boston. That date happens to be July 26 ---- the 35th anniversary of the trip off the bridge.
Bumping for the July 19 anniversary.
8:55 AM
- Satisfied that he had made a thorough observation of the accident scene, Farrar pulled the body of Mary Jo Kopechne out through the open window. The maneuver was complicated by the victim's hunched posture and outstretched arms made inflexible by rigor mortis.
-As he removed the body from the Senator's car, Farrar observed that it was "about one-quarter positively buoyant. There was still a little air left in her."
- Farrar tied the safety line around the victim, and brought her to the surface. The difficult recovery had taken him 10 minutes. In all, it took John Farrar 30 minutes from the time he got the call until he recovered the body from the accident car.
- Farrar repeatedly expressed the opinion that Mary Jo Kopechne had lived for some time underwater by breathing a bubble of trapped air, and that she could have been saved if rescue personnel had been promptly called to the scene. He had equipment to administer air to a trapped person directly or to augment an air pocket inside a submerged automobile.
- "There was a great possibility that we could have saved Mary Jo's life," Farrar said. "There would have been an airlock in the car - there always is in such submersions - that would have kept her alive. If we had been called, I would have reached the scene in 45 minutes. I say 45 minutes because it was dark. ( The daylight recovery had taken 30 minutes ). The lack of light might have caused a delay of 15 minutes."
- Three days before the Kennedy accident, The Boston Herald Traveler had run a story about a New Hampshire woman who had spent five hours in a submerged automobile. Amazed to find the driver unconscious but alive, police rushed the victim to a hospital where she was given respiration and treated for immersion. Doctors said an air bubble trapped inside the car had saved her life.