Douglas Martin was deep in the Atlantic, swept out to sea off Ocean City by a powerful riptide. He was swimming toward the shore and safety. But there, in the other direction, was his 15-year-old daughter, Amy, flailing for life.
Amy: a thin girl with braces and long brown hair. She had a cleft palate but had overcome that. Bright and curious, she had decided she would learn Arabic. Douglas: an intelligence officer and Catholic who loved his six girls. He could not bear to part with a single one.
Faced with that choice, he turned around, hoping to save his daughter. But neither he nor Amy made it back.
When the Coast Guard boat arrived, rescuers fished them out of the water. Douglas and Amy were unconscious. The rescuers gave them CPR, pounding away at their chests to get them to breathe. But it was too late. Douglas was dead by the time they returned to the station. Amy, taken to Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, Md., died an hour later.
The five other girls and Martin's wife, Jeanne, piled out of a minivan yesterday afternoon after returning to their home in Columbia's Locust Park neighborhood. The cul-de-sac was silent but for the chirping of crickets, the distant wash of traffic on Route 29 and the slap of their car doors closing.
The family needed time before they could talk, Jeanne's sister, Karen Bassler, said. "She's just absolutely distraught."
But Jeanne's brother, Mike Murphy, came out of the gray two-story house to talk. His eyes were wet, but his voice strengthened as he described his brother-in-law, a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help church who home-schooled his daughters: Amy; Emily, 17; Mary, 13; Kathy, 10; Jenny, 7; and Suzy, 3.
He worked for the National Security Agency, but Murphy couldn't talk about that.
It didn't matter what he did, Murphy said, because "his vocation as a father was what set him apart."
" 'Preach the Gospel at all times,' " Murphy said, quoting St. Francis of Assisi. " 'If necessary, use words.' That's what Doug did; he preached the Gospel with his actions."
As a light rain began to fall, Murphy moved under a tree and described what had happened. His account added details to those told by Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Brian Sullivan and the Ocean City police.
Because the daughters are home-schooled, the family can go on vacation when they want. So they ventured to Ocean City this week. The crowds had thinned, and the air was a little cooler, but the water had kept some of its summer warmth.
Early in the week, Douglas counseled his daughters on what to do if they were in danger: Don't panic. Let it wash you out, or swim parallel to the shore. Don't fight the current.
"Who wants to go jump in the water?" he asked his kids shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday. He, Emily, Amy and Mary trotted out to the beach, and Jeanne and the three other girls stayed in the townhouse.
A family friend, whom Murphy declined to identify because he worked with Douglas in the intelligence community, went along. He watched them enter the water and turned away for a moment. When he looked again, he saw that the four had been swept far out in the ocean.
Realizing immediately that they were in trouble, the friend sprinted back to the townhouse, a block off the beach. He threw the door open and yelled at the first person he saw to call 911. Then he rushed back.
The response was swift. On the beach, the friend rounded up a patrol officer and an off-duty lifeguard. The emergency dispatcher alerted the Coast Guard station in Ocean City, and a rescue team climbed into its 25-foot boat and roared over to the Atlantic side of the peninsula from its inlet on the other.
Although the boat can travel upward of 40 knots, it took 15 minutes to reach the scene. "That's actually quicker than normal," Sullivan said, noting that the station handles between 240 and 260 rescue operations a year.
Meanwhile, the three men on the shore were working to save the four people in the water. Emily swam back to the beach on her own. The lifeguard swam a rope out to Mary. The tide was so powerful that the three men hauling on it were barely able to get her back to shore, Murphy said. But they did, saving her life.
Douglas was swimming back when he saw that Amy was still in trouble, then decided to turn back.
In that choice, Murphy said, Douglas's daughters could find some comfort.
"It is very hard on these guys right now," Murphy said. "But there's a difference between losing your husband or father without knowing why, or through some weird incident, and to lose your father because he sacrificed his life so that one of his kids will live. That's something that these kids'll be able to hold on to for their whole life."