Fisherman shadowed by 9/11 death

Jerusalem Post ^ | Jul. 11, 2003 | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

[yonif]

When he's fly fishing this week, Foster Hetherington will be in good company. "It's emotional for me, doing this, fishing with Pete's rod," Hetherington said. "He was my best friend. We did everything we could together."

Peter Goodrich died at 33 in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Hetherington, his younger brother, was forever robbed of his longtime fishing partner and best friend.

"Pete was down in Boston and headed to California on a business trip," Hetherington said by phone last week. "He was on United Flight 175, the second plane to hit the Towers. Unfortunately, it was the worst way he could have died. He just hated to fly."

Hetherington will be using one of Goodrich's rods when he competes this week as one of 12 finalists in the fly fishing competition at ESPN's Great Outdoor Games.

Hetherington qualified by landing a 22-inch trout in March at the ESPN Eastern Fly Fishing Challenge. He said he couldn't stop thinking about his brother as he hauled in the winner on Goodrich's 8 1/2-foot, four-piece Sage fly rod.

The brothers grew up in Williamstown, Mass., along the Vermont state line. Although their driveway sat only 35 feet from a stream, Goodrich didn't take to the sport until after college. The brothers then became regular fishing partners.

"We were very close friends all the way through," Hetherington said. "But by the time we were about 21 it was clear as day it was pretty much an inseparable relationship."

The two were track stars in high school and even looked alike.

"At his wedding, half of the people came up to me and asked if I was the groom," he said.

Since his brother's death, Hetherington has rededicated himself. He has become director of business development for a high-end residential builder in New England and the co-owner of Stream and Brook Fly Fishing, a fishing guide operation in Vermont.

"I just thought it was important then to do what you love," he said. "A friend was selling the business, so I bought it."

Five days after Goodrich died, Hetherington, 31, and his wife decided to have a child.

"On the first try, we conceived," he said. Their son, James, is now 1.

After the brothers graduated from college, they fished together often.

"I came back and Pete met up with me for his 30th birthday," he said. "We went to Yellowstone, toured the area, hiked the park and fished all through there. From then on, we did fishing trips twice a year."

Their stomping grounds included the Salmon River outside Buffalo, N.Y., and the Deerfield River in western Massachusetts.

Hetherington, who took his wife's name when they married because she was the last surviving member of her family, said the brothers inherited different traits from their father.

"Peter was an incredible intellectual," he said. "He loved to learn about anything entomology, mathematics, religion, fixing cars, fossils, carpentry, construction. It didn't matter. He would just devour books."

"I was the outdoor person that Dad always has been," Hetherington said. "So we communicated on different levels. And together, we were full circle."

Hetherington, who lives in Brandon, Vt., has fished in 20 states. But this week will mark his first try in the Sierra.

"I think they are harder to catch in the East," he said. "There are some finicky fish out West. But, on the whole, I've had a tougher time catching trout in Vermont than out West."

But he's in the West now, and he wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

"I have one addiction and it is fly fishing," he said. "I am passionate about two things in my life right now: first is my family and second is fly fishing."