BANGOR (NEWS CENTER Maine) -- The Fourth of July is a time to spend with family and friends. Mainers gather around the grill, at the beach or camp, or attend community parades. Five years ago, those traditions were disrupted in one Maine city.
THE STANDOFF
The day started with emergency officials responding to an armed standoff in downtown Bangor. Police received a call at 8:30 a.m. on July 4, 2013, reporting a man firing shots out of a second-floor apartment window in a building at 47 Park St.
Police would later arrest Perrin Oliver, who they say fired as many as 70 shots. No one was hurt.
In 2014, he was sentenced to five years in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
As that situation unfolded, plans for another event were up in the air. Many wondered, would Bangor’s Fourth of July parade be canceled? Ultimately the answer was that it would continue, but the route would change.
Instead of continuing straight down Main Street, the route would turn right onto Water Street, to avoid the police standoff downtown.
THE PARADE CRASH
I happened to be a witness to what would happen next. I was emceeing the annual parade, and we were set up on Water Street at the end of the route. Just as I looked up to see the “Crushstation” monster truck round the corner, a wave of people came running down the hill. It was just after 12:30 in the afternoon. People were screaming. I couldn't make sense of what it was that I was also seeing.
A tractor had tipped over. The man riding it, 63-year-old Wallace Fenlason, was thrown off and into the path of an antique fire truck. The truck's brakes broke, and he was crushed. He died instantly. People rushed to try and help, and I froze.
HELP FROM A STRANGER
I didn't know what to do, until a woman came up to me and placed her hand on my back. I still, to this day, don’t know who she is. But she said to me, “Use your microphone to tell people to clear the way for first responders. Have them meet their loved ones in Pickering Square.”
So that’s what I repeated, over and over.
Not only did I witness this horrific event, I later learned I had a closer connection to it. While I did not know Fenlason personally, I would later find out he was a neighbor of Clay Gordon and mine when we lived in Holden.
A lawsuit involving his widow and the city would later be settled for an undisclosed amount of money.
There is now, a new tradition to remember Fenlason. A man named Robert Kearns places flowers and a candle on Water Street on this day, where Fenlason took his final breath.
I spoke to Fenlason's widow, Lorena, by phone Wednesday. She declined an on camera interview but did tell me she has learned to do a lot for herself since her husband's death. She said, "I did learn to do the things he wished for me to do," and that was, to retire from her job.
And five years later the event is surely on the minds of everyone who was there that day, including the emergency officials who responded to those back-to-back incidents.