Scott Williams swilliams@wolfrivermedia.com
Leader photo by Scott Williams Shawano firefighter Dave Nelson scans the water from shore during the Shawano Lake rescue effort.
Searchers on Shawano Lake recovered the body of a man Thursday who vanished one day earlier in a boating accident.
The man was identified as Norman L. Robertson, 45, of Kensington, Maryland, who drowned after jumping into the water to help his 10-year-old son.
“He was just trying to save his son,” Shawano County Sheriff Adam Bieber said.
The boy, Norman Robertson Jr., survived the accident and was located about an hour after disappearing into the water.
On the second day of the search for the father, a private pilot spotted the man’s body about 8 a.m. near an island in the center of the 6,000-acre lake, far from where search teams were looking with boats.
“Something told me I should just go over by the island and look a little closer,” pilot Bruce Milavitz said, adding that he was gratified to help bring the Robertson family closure on the tragedy.
“My heart is just broken for this family,” he said.
The Maryland family had been visiting their vacation home on Cedar Court on the lake’s southern shore.
According to officials, the father and son were boating with the boy’s younger brother and their grandfather when the incident occurred shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday. The 10-year-old had been tubing behind the boat but slipped underwater as he tried to climb back into the pontoon-style boat.
After the father jumped into the water to help, they both disappeared as high winds and strong currents caused the pontoon to drift away. Neither was wearing a life jacket.
The sheriff’s department also said the boat became temporarily inoperable when a tow rope got entangled in the propeller.
Police were alerted to the situation after the younger brother, John Robertson, who is 8 or 9 years old, used a cellphone on the boat to contact his mother in Maryland and then his stepmother, Laura Matthews, who was back at the lakeside vacation home.
Meanwhile, the 10-year-old boy was able to swim back toward the lake’s southern shore, where rescuers found him standing in shallow water, the sheriff said.
The search for the father ended at dusk Wednesday and resumed early Thursday morning. For the second day, Milavitz used his private airplane to help with the search.
Bieber said the pilot located Robertson’s body far from where searchers were looking and far from where the boy had been located the day before.
“We weren’t even close,” the sheriff said.
Other agencies that helped with the rescue and recovery operation included the Shawano County Dive Team, Shawano Area Fire Department, the Brown County Dive Team, Oconto County and the state Department of Natural Resources. The sheriff’s department also thanked a private pilot for assisting with an aerial search.
Milavitz, a Shawano business owner who also serves on the Shawano School Board, said he joined the search as one father trying to help another father.
“I’m glad I could be of assistance,” he said. “I just wish it could’ve been a different outcome.”