Tuesday, August 18, 2009

the Groom is a Lifesaver

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Most couples remember their wedding day, but Adam and Julie Hatfield have some unusual mementos to recall theirs. Take the holes in Adam's trousers, the ones he got while pulling a little girl and her grandfather out of the Mississippi River. The bride and groom were in Riverside Park on Friday afternoon, posing for photos just before the ceremony, when they heard a man yelling "Allie! Allie!" They saw the man looking over the wall at the water. Then he jumped in. Adam jumped the railing and ran to the edge. The photographer, Russ Konrad, of Woodbury, Minn., handed his camera to his partner and climbed down closer to the water, where the man was treading water with the girl in his arms. Julie hiked up her wedding dress and ran to get help. Adam and Konrad leaned over, each grabbing one of the girl's hands, and pulled her to safety. She was wet and cold, Adam said, but otherwise fine. Then, with the help of a passerby, they pulled the man from the water. Konrad had a white drop cloth to keep dirt off the bride's dress, which the rescued pair used to dry off. A police officer Julie had summoned made sure everyone was safe. Adam shook hands with the man but never did learn his name. "We were kind of on a strict time schedule," Adam said. "These people are OK. We've got to be on time to our wedding." It wasn't until after the ceremony that the day's events sank in. Someone pointed out the knee holes in Adam's black pinstripe suit - his, not a rental - and his best man incorporated the rescue into his speech, coining the phrase "save a life, get a wife." "I don't think it hit me until that point," said Adam, a 28-year-old editor at WKBT. "It definitely made for an interesting story." Said Konrad, "I've never had to save anybody's life during a wedding before." Adam and Julie, a 27-year-old preschool teacher, always had spent time in the park. In fact, that's where Adam proposed. "Now the park means even more to us," Julie said.

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