Man hopes to find lifeguard who saved him at the Manitowoc-Two Rivers YMCA 50 years ago
MANITOWOC - A man who nearly drowned as a boy at the Manitowoc-Two Rivers YMCA hopes to reconnect with the lifeguard who saved his life 50 years ago.
“I don’t really remember much about that day,” said Scott Hanson, who was 9 years old on March 24, 1973, the day he came close to dying at the bottom of the YMCA swimming pool. “One minute I was playing basketball in the pool, the next thing I remember is seeing a wall with donor plaques in the entryway as they carried me to an ambulance.”
He hadn’t thought much about that day until an old newspaper article resurfaced at his mother, Janice Hanson’s, Manitowoc home. It tells the story of how (then) 19-year-old lifeguard Joan Bouril pulled the unconscious little boy out of the pool and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“As I read the article, I thought about what an amazing thing it is, really, that it happened to me, and that I almost died,” he said. “I hadn’t thought that much about it at the time because I was so young.”
Now a father of four adult kids and grandfather to 11 grandchildren, Scott said he’d like to thank Bouril again.
“That’s 15 human beings who wouldn’t be on the planet today if Joan hadn’t saved him,” Hanson’s wife, Sheryl, said. “We just hope to find Joan and tell her how much we appreciate what she did.”
After finding the long-ago Herald Times Reporter article, Sheryl has done some online sleuthing to track down the former lifeguard. The couple lives just south of Green Bay, but said they still hear the last name Bouril in the lakeshore area. They hope a relative, friend or acquaintance might know how to contact Joan, who would be around 69 years old today.
From her online searches, Sheryl learned that Joan, the daughter of William and Zita Bouril, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December 1975 with a degree in horticulture and business.
She married Daniel Cloutier a few months later — April 1976 — in Fort Lauderdale, according to a Herald Times Reporter wedding announcement.
The young couple moved to San Jose, where Joan worked as research technician for L. Castle Seen Company in Hollister, California.
Sheryl didn’t find much else until digging up a newspaper wedding announcement for Joan’s daughter, Carolyn Cattolica, from May 1993. The announcement said Carolyn was the daughter of Joan Cloutier and Gene Cattolica. Joan lived in Stockton, California.
“We don’t really know what happened with Joan’s first marriage,” Sheryl said. “Maybe he died or they got divorced? We also don’t know if she married Gene or not.”
Sheryl found one other newspaper reference to Joan. An Oakland Tribune article from about 12 years ago mentions her as a master gardener. That leads Sheryl and Scott to think she might still be living in California.
In addition to saying thank you, Scott would like to hear what the former lifeguard remembers about the day she came to his rescue.
He remembers a basketball hoop at the shallow end of the swimming pool where kids often played informal games. He likely was shooting hoops when someone or something hit him in the head.
Another player could have hit him with an elbow, Scott speculated.
“You think if someone elbowed me, they would have notice I went down,” he said. “I really don’t know.”
He also could have been hit by a brick. Back then, people played a pool game in which someone would throw a brick covered into the water and someone would dive to retrieve it.
According to the news article, Joan was the only lifeguard at the main pool that day, and there were 58 people in the pool.
She saw Scott at the bottom of the pool (Scott said he might have been right below her chair) and dived in to save him.
He was taken to Holy Family Hospital. His mother happened to be driving to the hospital at the same time for another family issue, and drove past the ambulance bringing her son to the hospital.
Scott was admitted for two days, which seemed like a long time to a child. He didn’t suffer any permanent health issues, although he thinks his lungs could have been impacted by the large amount of chlorine he swallowed.
YMCA officials at the time praised Bouril and her quick action.
William Manis, executive director at the time, credited staff “with doing the job the way it was supposed to be done,” the news article said.
“They carried out the emergency procedures as they are trained to do,” he said. “They followed the system right to the letter.”
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Contact reporter Patti Zarling at pzarling@gannett.com or 920-606-2586. Follow her on Twitter @PGPattiZarling.
This article originally appeared on Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter: Man seeks lifeguard who saved him from drowning at Manitowoc Y in 1973
