summer 03 / 16:2 - Grand Canyon River Guides

could call the shots. If you made a bad decision, you hadto live with it. I loved the split. I always wanted to be incharge, and I was the youngest of the family, and Ialways had somebody tell me what to do. They wereright (laughter) but I still wanted to be out there. Ithought I could do it. (laughs) But in all our efforts, likeDon says, “We’ve set river running back twenty years!”(laughter)* * *Steiger: You guys took the Kennedys down?Hatch: Bobby and Ethel and Edward. Edward went ayear or so later. Kennedys did four trips with us.Steiger: Were you on those trips?Hatch: Yeah.Steiger: How’d that go?Hatch: Good. They didn’t ask how I voted, and Ididn’t tell ’em.Steiger: Where was that story, it says in the guidebook, in Belknap’s guide book, that Bobby swam?Hatch: Badger. He was in my boat. He jumped out. Isaid, “Don’t go, this is a bad rapid.”Steiger: He said, “I want to swim”?Hatch: And he swam. The air mattress went oneway, and Bobby went the other. It really pounded him. Ithought, “There goes the business, there goes Bobby.”We chased him, and I caught him downriver, and Ethel’sscreaming. We pulled up alongside, and I helped him inthe boat, and Bobby sat down and said, “I want to apologizeto you. You were right, I shouldn’t have done that.”Which I thought was pretty darned…Steiger: Yeah.Hatch: So anyway, he was an excellent swimmer, andhe handled it, but man, talk about…Steiger: So he just wanted to jump out, and you toldhim, “Don’t do that,” he did it anyway.Hatch: I said, “It’s a big rapid.” His terms were “noone tells me what to do.” But overall, they were greatfolks. I liked Edward the best…I’ve met some really outstanding, top Americans.Though I’d just as soon go with the regular Americans.The big, deluxe trips take a lot of care and planning, andyou don’t want to offend anyone, and they’re more delicate,and I don’t relax ’til it’s over. Maria Shriver gotsome spray paint—I probably shouldn’t tell this—butshe got some spray paint out of the boat. They’d usecans of spray paint to put their names on the boats. Andon the front—George Henry ran the boat—and they put“George Raft,” for George Henry. They had stars and allkinds of paintings on the boats. Maria was just a littlegirl. She was like nine or thirteen, I don’t remember. Butwe got down to Vasey’s and she put her name on thecliff there in paint. Boy! the Kennedys were upset, andthey got her out of bed in the morning. They got somescratchers out of the dishwater to clean it.Steiger: Made her clean it up.Hatch: To clean it. And that didn’t work very well,so they built a fire and burnt it off. But there were somebig words about that.Steiger: I hadn’t heard that. I’d heard that storyabout Bobby jumpin’ in. I didn’t know it was on yourboat. I never heard that that was you.Hatch: I was there.Steiger: So they were pretty good people?Hatch: Yeah, I liked ’em.Steiger: You gotta hand it to him, to jump up thereand say, “I owe you an apology.”Hatch: Yeah, for a guy like Bobby. He was runningfor president that next year. We did the Green Riverwith ’em, and they had their campaign goin’, and theyhad all these things worked out. He would have won. Ithink he had it locked up, when he wasassassinated…and that was just before he was killed.Steiger: That trip? Well, it’s good that they got to doit.Hatch: They had all the kids with ’em. Michael, theone that got killed last year, skiing, was a little daredevil. He was a lot of fun. He grew up since then, but hewas just a little guy when he went with us. We’d be goin’along, and he’d jump out in his life jacket and swimalong a cliff. We’d say, “Don’t do that, it might beundercut.” He didn’t realize the danger. But he’d get upon the ledges, maybe twenty feet above the river, andjump in.Steiger: The water wasn’t that cold?Hatch: No, not like it is now. This was on theSalmon, this wasn’t on the Grand. But the Salmon wascool.And John Glenn, he was nice, I liked him.Steiger: John Glenn came down Grand Canyon, orIdaho?Hatch: Middle Fork. Yeah, John Glenn was great. Wegot in a water fight, and the Kennedys were justpoundin’ us. They had all the buckets, and we were inrowboats, and John said, “Get closer to ’em. I know howto fix this.” I said, “John, they’re whippin’ our ass, wegotta get across the river, get away from ’em.” “No,” hesaid, “get over there.” So I got closer, and he dove in,swam across, got in the boat with Ethel and theKennedy kids. He grabbed each one of ’em and threw’em in the river. Threw ’em all out! And then I wentover and picked him up, and we went back and he said,“That’ll slow ’em down.” “What made you think ofthat?” He said, “It’s an old Marine tradition to chargewhen you don’t know what to do.” (laughter) “JohnGlenn! you cut that out! You might hurt my kids!” Andwe just laughed.Steiger: That’s pretty good.Hatch: That was funny. I liked him. Of course I likedpage 38grand canyon river guides