Poignant Memorial Service Closes Week of Loss for Lakeside Community

The two widows--one young, one older--clutched each other in a tearful embrace. Strangers before this moment, they were now bound by tragedy.

“Be brave,” a frail Ruth Anderson whispered to Terry Cutter. “They were both great men.”

The poignant meeting came Friday as more than 200 residents of this picturesque resort area crammed into the U.S. Forest Station here to mourn the death of Forest Service worker Clay Cutter, who, along with volunteer firefighter Vidar Anderson, drowned Monday in the icy waters of Convict Lake.

The memorial service ended a gut-wrenching week for this close-knit Eastern Sierra community that had lost two of its own. Ordinarily, it should have been a week for celebration. There was fresh snow and bright sunshine, perfect conditions for a region dependent on the ski trade.

Instead, the days were filled with grim images of lakeside vigils and efforts by divers to find the bodies of three teen-agers and the four adults who drowned trying to rescue them. All but one body has been recovered.

The memorial for Cutter gave local residents a chance to share their grief and begin putting the horrible events of the week behind them. Some arrived in dark suits; others wore faded jeans and parkas. Many listened to the service through speakers in the Forest Service visitor center because the 150-seat auditorium was filled beyond capacity.

Cutter, 31, had lived in a Forest Service home on the banks of the lake with his wife, Terry, and their three children. Last Monday, when the ice gave way beneath three teen-age boys and two counselors from nearby Camp O’Neal, he was the first to rush to their aid. But the ice could not support his weight either.

Terry Cutter watched in horror from their home as her husband disappeared into the freezing water, despite efforts by firefighter Anderson, who was 58, and others to save him.

After Cutter’s friends eulogized him during Friday’s memorial service as a brave and devoted family man with an infectious laugh, a representative from Camp O’Neal asked to speak.

She said many of the troubled youths at the residential care facility had been abandoned and abused as children. Cutter’s heroic efforts to save the boys showed other youngsters at the camp that “people do love them,” therapist Alice Birster said.

Her voice cracking, Birster added: “On behalf of Camp O’Neal, we’re very sorry this happened.”

Officials from the Mono County sheriff’s office and the state Department of Social Services investigating the drownings are focusing on whether the youths who died were being properly supervised by camp counselors.

Speaking to reporters after the service, a composed Terry Cutter said she is “bitter and angry” about her husband’s untimely death. She said the camp “needs to review its policies,” but added that she does not blame the teen-agers her husband was trying to save.

“Boys like that need help,” she said.

At sunset Thursday, Cutter said, she cast five white roses onto the lake that she and her husband called “ours.” Alone for the first time since his death, she said she sat on a large rock, reflecting on their lives together.

When she looked down, she said, one of the roses had drifted back to her feet. “It was,” she said, “like he handed it back to me.”

This weekend, Mammoth Mountain is bracing for an onslaught of skiers. They will not see the customary “Welcome” greeting standing at the edge of the village. The signboard now reads: “In Memory of Those That Lost Their Lives at Convict Lake.”