SCARBOROUGH (Sep 29, 2005): A Scarborough woman is part of a massive effort to build a new home for a lobsterman, eight years after another Scarborough man helped the fisherman survive the loss of a limb.
Mary Nablo said she was asked to coordinate volunteers for the project for the hit ABC television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." In the show, which will air in December, a construction crew will tear down a house and rebuild it in seven days.
The home belongs to a Wells lobsterman, Doug Goodale, who lost his arm in a freak accident while lobstering alone in 1997.
He caught the right sleeve of his slicker in the winch he used to haul his lobster traps up from the sea floor, and it crushed his hand, wrist and forearm, as well as throwing him overboard, according to the doctor who treated Goodale at Maine Medical Center after the accident.
That doctor, Scarborough resident Donald Endrizzi, was surprised to learn of Goodale’s good fortune Tuesday evening, but immediately remembered the situation. “It’s not something you forget,” he said.
Goodale managed to cut himself loose from the rope and get back into the boat with the use of just his left arm, shutting off the winch and then cutting himself free of it, before driving the boat back to shore with one arm.
Goodale collapsed on the dock and was taken by ambulance to Maine Medical Center. “His arm (was) completely mangled," Endrizzi remembered. “The nerves and arteries were all shredded.”
After his arm was amputated and cleaned up, Goodale “was unbelievably remarkable,” driving his truck two weeks later, Endrizzi said, calling his feat of survival “Herculean."
"I can’t imagine this guy managed to get back in the boat,” he said.
Nablo got involved through “a friend of a friend of a friend,” who called to ask if she could help organize the effort.
“They wanted someone who knew a lot of people” and had good organizational skills. Nablo, who has coordinated a number of community events, including Operation Cupid, in which Scarborough Middle School students collected donations and sent care packages to members of the 133rd Engineer Battalion in Iraq earlier this year.
“They told me a couple weeks ago to free up my schedule,” Nablo said. “A lot of us have been kept in the dark.” She did not even know the exact situation until seeing it on Channel 8, Portland’s ABC station, Tuesday evening.
“There’s a bunch of people all coming down from Scarborough” to help, and Nablo is looking for more helpers.