Losing a home, then losing a life

Times photo by
CHUCK WIRSHELS

Family members stand at the rear of the boat after tossing a memorial wreath -- a tribute to Melvin Petit -- into the gulf.

By RICK GERSHMAN, Times staff writer
©St. Petersburg Times, published March 18, 1993

HUDSON BEACH -- As her house filled with seawater, Donna Pettit forced herself out into the darkness of Saturday's early morning hours. Her 20-year-old daughter, Stephanie Myers, stood several steps below in the driveway, water rising over her hips.

"My house, I can't leave my house," Donna Pettit screamed, but Stephanie, cradling their poodle Scruffy in one arm, persuaded her mother to step down into the waist-high water outside the coastal Pasco County house.

"When we were wading out of our home," Donna Pettit, 43, recalled, "I was telling Stephanie it was going to be all right because Mel will be home today."

Mel Pettit did not return Saturday, and presumably never will. About 70 miles off the coast of Pinellas County, the storm that devastated Donna Pettit's Hudson Beach area home apparently took the lives of her husband and his first mate.

Mel Pettit, 55, captained the Bone Dry, a 40-foot fishing vessel finishing a weeklong expedition. He was accompanied by his neighbor, Joe Ford, who was on his third trip as Mel's first mate. With them was Deacon, Mel's 7-month-old Rottweiler. Their sister ship, the Lady B, was anchored several miles away.

Saturday afternoon, a Coast Guard C-130 plane searching for the Bone Dry sighted debris near where it had anchored. A helicopter soon arrived and found among the debris a body, which the helicopter was unable to retrieve.

Dick Brooks, the captain of the Lady B and owner of both boats, told Donna Pettit that the body described to him matched that of Mel Pettit.

Joe Ford and Mel Pettit, neighbors on Williams Street in Hudson, are presumed dead. Mel Pettit left behind his wife of eight years, stepdaughter Stephanie, five adult children and five grandchildren.

Ford, 36 and a Navy veteran, left behind his live-in partner of nearly nine years, who is four months' pregnant.

Their families are certain of two things -- Ford and Pettit died doing what they loved, and neither had any idea of the severity of the storm bearing down on them.

Mel Pettit grew up in Florida and had been fishing all his life, but only recently began fishing commercially. A former St. Petersburg police officer, he had worked in auto sales more than 20 years and later owned a fish market in Hudson.

"He found that commercial fishing was what he really wanted to do," said his son, Melvin Jr. "He was the happiest he's ever been in his life that last year or so."

Ford, an auto mechanic and store manager most of his life, had been fishing commercially far less time. His longtime girlfriend, Lou Ann Briscoe, said that although Ford served on the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier and owned boats himself, he had gotten badly seasick on his first two commercial fishing expeditions.

"It's a whole different thing out on those big boats for that long," said Briscoe, 33. "He wasn't getting sick this last time, though. He was doing all right.

"Joe was a fisherman. That was what he did, that was what he was. Catching it, cooking it or eating it. He had found a job he really liked."

On Friday, the Bone Dry and the Lady B received word a storm was on its way. But Ford and Mel Pettit never knew how bad it was going to get.

Brooks called Donna Pettit from his boat Friday and told her the two boats were going to anchor and ride out the storm. Both boats had withstood storms before, Donna Pettit said, and this one wasn't expected to be much worse.

Mel Pettit radioed Brooks later and told him he heard the seas were going to be a little higher and he and Joe were coming back in.

But Mel Pettit radioed back, telling Brooks it would take too long to get in. Then the storm hit, and the Lady B received a single mayday call from the Bone Dry, followed by silence.

At some point, the boat's "Emergency Position Indication Radio Beacon" went off, releasing the signal Coast Guard officials picked up the following morning. Coast Guard officials say there's no way to know what happened next, but family members think the Bone Dry was either struck by a water spout or a passing vessel. It couldn't have been human error, family members said.

"My husband was probably the best and most cautious fisherman in the area," Donna Pettit said.

"Me knew what he was doing," Briscoe said. "They wouldn't have stayed out if they knew it would be that bad. It was a nice day, they were going fishing, they had a great catch -- they said they were bringing back a hummer."

Mel Pettit's stepdaughter Stephanie, a student at the University of South Florida, spends her weekends in Hudson. Normally she stays at her boyfriend's house, but they broke up a few weeks ago and Myers had just moved her things back into the Pettits' house.

Donna Pettit and Stephanie weren't worried about the safety of Mel Pettit or themselves when they went to bed shortly after midnight, Stephanie said. The report of the storm on television didn't indicate its severity, she said.

Stephanie woke up about 5 a.m. to hear her mother screaming, "Stephanie, where are you?"

Donna Pettit had discovered her neighborhood in the Hudson Beach area was under water. She began to panic, and as water began to pour in through the sliding glass doors and the air vents, Stephanie took control.

"I said, "Mom, we have to get out of here,' " Stephanie said. "I grabbed Scruffy and waded out to my car."

After Stephanie convinced her mother to leave the house, they got in Stephanie's car and tried to start it. The engine started, even though water had flooded the car.

The back seat was floating, and with Scruffy hanging onto the hatchback divider, they drove down Williams Street until the car died. With water up to their collarbones, they abandoned the car and made it out to a friend's house.

They caught a ride in a van to a nearby gas station and called Sue Dalby, a family friend. Dalby brought them home and gave them a change of clothes.

In the meantime, Lou Ann Briscoe slept through the flood. Hers was one of only two homes on Williams Street that sat high enough to avoid flooding.

Donna Pettit spent Saturday calling the Coast Guard and other officials, trying to find out the status of the Bone Dry. That night, she learned of the Coast Guard's discovery, that the Guard found a body but couldn't recover it. She called Briscoe and told her what she had learned.

"The biggest battle I have to deal with now is not having a body," Donna Pettit said. "But I think I've accepted that he's gone."

"There's still that little bit of me that thinks that Joe's alive," Briscoe said. "Since we don't have a body, we'll never know. And that's so hard."

"I had a husband who could do anything," Donna Pettit said. "Now I'm going to have to learn how to do all those things myself. That's why it's so hard to believe he's gone. My husband seemed almost invincible. I loved him so much."

"Joe was a fisherman. What else can you say about him?" Briscoe said. "He was just Joe, and I loved him."

Wednesday morning, Mel Pettit's extended family boarded the Captain Al from the Hudson shrimp docks and rode a mile into the gulf, where a wreath was laid in honor of the Bone Dry fishermen and all boaters who perished in the weekend storm.

"Fishermen are all very special," said Al Beneduci, the captain of his namesake boat. "You don't go to school, you don't go to college to become a fisherman. You become a fisherman through courage. These fishermen had the courage to encounter some rough sea."

With that, the wreath was tossed. The boat circled it once and returned home.