It was the first time I bought a boat and if my memory serves me right he was living in Centerville Ks at the time. We meet at the river inlet to the power plant lake to try out this used 2- man bass pontoon. All of our fishing gear 2 12volt batteries for the motors to steer the pontoon. Long story short the pontoons took on water and caused the pontoon to flip over and dump us and everything we had on the pontoon to go in the water,now in the time it took for me to catch my breath and come to the surface ,I looked around and Vern was already back up on the pontoon. I couldn't believe how in the freak he managed to get back up on that pontoon that quickly. I was wondering what or how we were going to get this pontoon get back up to the boat ramp,since the batteries and a bunch of our fishing gear were somewhere at bottom of Lacyen lake, so while I'm still trying to figure out what to do next ,Vern leans down grabs the rope and throughs the rope at me who is still in the water dog paddling. I'm like what do I do with this? He says start swimming and use the rope to pull the pontoon back to the boat ramp. I then said to Vern hey buddy you going to help me swim this back? He says no I'm not getting in that water being as muddy as it is! So needless to say a couple hrs later I got the pontoon back on trailer and back home where I could clean up and try to figure what to do next,but that's another story.RIP Vern I'm going to really miss you and all of our fishing, hunting, and 4wheeling times!!!!