Short story: Safe found after splashdown

“I told him we’re going to get that safe one way or another. Someway. Somehow.”

David Short (right) and Steve Howard wrap a towing strap around the safe after it was found submerged in Lake Conway.
David Short (right) and Steve Howard wrap a towing strap around the safe after it was found submerged in Lake Conway.

MAYFLOWER -- After the EF-4 tornado demolished Louie Short's house, most of his prized possessions had vanished.

Chief among them was Short's gun safe, which contained titles, deeds and other important documents. It contained not only his guns, but his sons' guns, too. Not to mention his life savings.

The safe should have been secure. His son, Kevin, had anchored it to the slab of Louie's house with big bolts. Big steel washers and heavy nuts held it snug, but the tornado that struck Louie's house April 27 took it away anyway.

"We thought it was going to be somewhere on the slab but in the rubble of the house," Kevin Short said. "We dug through all of that Monday morning, but it wasn't there. The only other place that it could go was in the lake."

Lake Conway is a big lake. It can hide a gun safe forever.

"There's a lot of water between our house and the Highway 89 Bridge," Kevin said. "We're thinking, 'A 30-by-24-by-70 gun safe. It's made of 3/16-inch metal and had all that gypsum fire insulation on the inside. It weighs 600 to 800 pounds with the guns in it. How far can this thing fly?' "

Failing to recover the safe was not an option. David Short, Kevin's brother, said his dad was morbidly depressed over its loss.

"My dad sat for a day and a half under that snag of an oak tree right there," David said. "He was done. He just sat there. He didn't say anything. His whole thing was the safe.

"I told him we're going to get that safe one way or another. Some way. Somehow."

That Monday, Steve Howard, Kevin's longtime fishing partner, and former Bassmaster Classic champion Ken Cook scanned the lake bottom with state-of-the-art, side-scan sonar looking for anything long and rectangular. They also poked around with a big magnet on a pole and with a telescoping lure retrieval pole.

That Tuesday, the lure retriever tapped something about 15 feet from the bank.

"Steve was standing knee deep in water we know is 6 or 7 feet deep," David said. "He said, 'I think I'm standing on it!' "

David fished out a pair of Louie's bluejeans and a pair of shoes from the rubble of Louie's house and jumped in the water. Howard groped around until he felt the door of the safe.

"When I got my hands on it, I was like, 'Yeah. That's it!' " David said.

The safe rested on a giant limb of an old oak tree that the Shorts had pushed into the lake the previous year.

Kevin fetched a big tow strap, and David wrapped it around the safe and the limb. They attached the strap to a cable and hooked it to a backhoe. David rode atop the safe as the crew inched the thing to shore.

Louie came back to life as he watched the adventure unfold.

"All day Monday and Tuesday morning, that man was down in the dumps," Kevin said. "He went from being the most depressed man to the happiest, most optimistic man, all in the span of about five minutes. There was not a happier man on planet Earth than Louie Short when we pulled that safe onto the bank of Lake Conway, put the key in the lock, spun that combination and popped it open."

They removed the door on the bank and passed the guns up the steep hill through a human chain. The wooden gun stocks were all cracked, but none of the barrels were bent and nothing rusted. They also removed all of the paper items and laid them out carefully to dry.

David Short, a detective with the Conway Police Department, called his friends and co-workers to take a few guns to disassemble and clean.

"I called another buddy and asked him if I could bring him some guns to clean," David said. "He takes them home and cleans them a day or so later. There was a little water moccasin in one of the gun barrels. My buddy's a snake guy, but that scared him to death. I mean, I'd been toting that thing around in my truck and had it in my garage."

Louie downplayed the whole thing when asked about it. He said he was just happy the safe didn't hit him on its way to the lake.

"You can't even lift a corner of that safe because it's so heavy, so what would it have done to me?" Louie asked. "I'd have looked like a pancake."

Sports on 05/11/2014

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