The Name On The Rescue Plaque

Caleb and the plaque

My grandson Caleb is my oldest boy’s son. He was eighteen last spring, a senior, and he had signed on to help the county historical society digitize things before they fell apart.

Old photographs. Cemetery records. The plaques and honor rolls that hang in the courthouse and the fire hall and get walked past for forty years without anybody reading them.

He came by one Saturday to show me pictures on his phone, because he knew I love the old county stuff, and he was scrolling through and talking fast the way he does.

“This one’s from the fire hall,” he said. “It’s the search and rescue memorial. For the volunteers.”

I was at the stove. I was not really looking. I said something like, that’s nice, honey.

“It’s the swiftwater guys, mostly,” he said. “The ones who did the creek and river rescues back before the county had a real team. A bunch of them are on here.”

Something in me went still at the word creek. I came and sat down at the kitchen table across from him.

“Let me see that,” I said.

He turned the phone around. It was a photograph of a bronze plaque, the kind with a border of cast laurel leaves, mounted on a wood backing. At the top it said the county search and rescue, and under that, honoring those who answered the water. And under that was a column of names.

I did not know I was looking for anything. I was just reading, the way you read a list of names on a wall, half of your mind still on the stove.

And then I read a name, about two thirds of the way down the column, and my hand went flat on the table.