Story Photos
 Photo by Greg Ebersole Donn Fendler tells Castle Rock Elementary fourth-graders about the time he was lost in the Maine woods for nine days in 1939. |
Students hear tale of boy lost for 9 days in wilderness
Friday, April 14, 2006 7:18 AM PDT
By Tom Paulu
Printable version
E-mail this articleCASTLE ROCK --- Donn Fendler calls a mountain-top action he made 66 years ago "the dumbest decision in my life."
But he loves all the time he spends talking about that poor choice to young people these days.
Because of Fendler's decision atop that Maine peak in 1939, he spent nine days wandering lost, barefoot and nearly naked. In retirement, he's spent hundreds of days visiting schools and telling children not to do what he did.
This week, he visited Castle Rock Elementary School for the second time.
"It's amazing how much the story means to kids," said Fendler, 79.
"I never met an author before," said 9-year-old Kaleb Nelson.. What did he learn from Fendler's story "It's hard to survive."
Fendler's adventure is told in the book "Lost on a Mountain in Maine," which was published a few months after the 1939 ordeal. A chapter was included in an anthology book Castle Rock children read, and about 15 years ago, teacher Suzanne Bierlein tracked down the whole volume.
In 1995, the school invited Fendler to come visit. Since then, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" has become required reading for all CR elementary kids, Though Fendler's back was acting up and his wife isn't well, he still made the trip here to share the story with a new generation of children.
The story he's retold so often started on a hot July day at the base of 5,267-foot tall Mount Katahdin, the highest point in Maine. Fendler, his family and friends were on vacation from their home in Rye, N.Y.
The 12-year-old Fendler, his father and three other boys set off on the five-mile hike up the peak.
Draping his still-lean frame over a chair in the school library, Fendler focused on the bad decisions he made that day.
"We were not properly attired," he said, with only sneakers on their feet and light clothing. "We had nothing in the way of survival items."
Fendler's father agreed to let him and a friend, who was four years older, go ahead on the faint trail. When they got above timberline, the boys looked back and "coming at us were these huge black clouds," Fendler said. "Boy, that wind hit us and it was wicked bad. We couldn't see anything. It started to sleet."
Fendler wanted to go back down the trail towards his father; the friend wanted to stay put. The life-changing dumbest decision: "I took off."
Fendler soon lost the route, which was marked with paint slashes on the slate.
"In the storm, I panicked. I started screaming and running around. I should have sat down in one place, and before long someone would have found me."
Then Fendler made another bad decision. "I saw a man over in the distance but I ignored him, which was a dumb thing to do."
Fendler decided to plunge down through brush, thinking he would find a camp. But he spent the night --- and eight more --- alone in the woods.
After the first day, he lost his sneakers. Later, the tip of one of his big toes was so badly cut that it fell off.
He lost his dungarees trying to throw them across a stream, leaving him with only a shirt, heavy coat and a burlap bag he found that he slept under..
Fendler's eyes nearly swelled shut from all the bug bites and the only food he found was strawberries.
His second day lost, he saw his friend's head sitting on a tree, a man riding by on a horse, a black sedan with no driver but his father riding in the back. But his hallucinations passed --- and Fendler never gave up, which he realizes was a key factor in his survival.
After nine days, he spotted a cabin across the broad East Branch of the Penobscot River and yelled for help, and the caretaker paddled a canoe over.
A few years ago, one of Fendler's brothers discovered an 8mm film that an uncle had shot the day after Fendler stumbled upon the cabin. The film's existence was long forgotten.
The grainy images show a very skinny but animated Fendler being carried down to a canoe for the 18-mile ride to the nearest road, then carried to an ambulance. "It looks more like a hearse," he remarked while showing the footage to the children.
Fendler waves to the camera and looks remarkably strong for someone whose weight had dropped from 74 to 58 pounds.
It turned out that as many as 300 searchers were about 10 miles away from his route through the woods, assuming he hadn't made it far off the summit.
Fendler's survival made the front page of the New York Times and Page 3 of the Longview Daily News on July 28, 1939. He got to meet President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Five years later, Fendler joined the Navy, spending time in the South Pacific and China at the end of World War II. He went to college, then spent 28 years in the Army, including special operations during the Vietnam War. After retiring as a lieutenant colonel, he moved to Tennessee. He and his wife of 54 years, Maryrose, have four children and six grandchildren.
Fendler said he's surprised that "Lost on a Maine Mountain" keeps selling.
The book is part of that state's elementary curriculum, so Fendler makes plenty of visits to schools there. "Anywhere you go in Maine, people know who Donn Fendler is," Bierlein said.
"I get a lot of letters," Fendler said. "I answer every one of them. I don't use word-processing. I've got 23 letters to answer when I get back."
But Fendler rarely travels this far, he said. (He doesn't charge for appearances though the Castle Rock School District paid for his plane ticket.)
The most common question he gets is whether his toe healed (it ended up fine.)
As he predicted, that question came up in Castle Rock along with dozens of others.
"I liked when he lost his britches and he found a hollow tree and he slept in there," said 8-year-old Michael Kimball. Also lining up for an autograph was 9-year-old Tiauna Ranta. "Me and my dad got lost once for about 15 minutes," she shared.
Fendler advised the children to take a survival kit with such items as a knife, matches and whistle when they go hiking.
Mount Katahdin and the woods around it haven't changed much in the past 66 years, he said --- but new technology can help prevent what happened to him.
"We didn't have GPS. We didn't have cell phones." In the past few years, several hikers in trouble on that Maine mountain have been rescued after a cell phone call, he said.
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