Cathleen saved Phil from drowning when he and Mickey Rowe were newlyweds. Decades later, the couple would rescue a neglected Cathleen from sinking in a San Diego boat slip. Now the boat is saving Phil again, this time from his grief.
Phil met Mickey while the two were students at UC Santa Barbara.
She was a sorority girl. He was a “hasher,” or a cook at the sorority house.
Black-and-white photographs show a young Mickey with sporty bobbed hair and a wide, easy smile.
Before Phil asked Mickey to marry him, she left Santa Barbara to become a flight attendant for United Airlines.
“The day she left was the worst day of my life,” Phil said. “Little did I know the worst day would come 50 years later.”
The couple were working together to restore Cathleen when Mickey collapsed at a Corona del Mar postal supply store and died in April.
Boat saves man
Phil thought the ocean might swallow him up that day in February 1962, when he and Cathleen first met.
The waters off San Diego were choppy and cold, and Phil was getting tired after treading water for an hour.
He tried to keep his new Topsider shoes on for as long as he could while paddling in the frigid water. A gift from his new bride, the shoes had cost $8, and Phil and Mickey did not have much money. Phil had been piloting an old wooden, 8-meter boat in bad weather out of San Diego Bay. Both Phil and Mickey were avid sailors, and Phil spent his weekends as a crew member aboard local yachts. He had just come around the turning buoy when the mast of the old vessel broke. Phil dove over the side of the boat to avoid being hit by the large column of wood and soon lost sight of the vessel.
Although several other sailboats were racing in the area that day, no one stopped to pick up Phil. He waved his arms, but all of the sailboats had their spinnakers up, and the wind was carrying them too fast to stop.
