A memory - David Finitz

David Finitz


In late May, 1970, in Niagara Falls, New York, eleven year old David Finitz was playing with two other boys near the upper Niagara River. The boys found an abandoned door, or something akin that floated, and dragged it into the river to use as a raft. It drifted into fast water and the two older ones managed to swim to shore; David panicked and stayed alone on the raft as it began the terribly fast trip down the Upper Rapids and over Niagara Falls.

To stay out of the upper river was as common gospel to children in Niagara Falls as not playing in traffic, though my father, who grew up within a mile of the falls, one day pointed out a pathway one step from fast water he and his friends biked as boys. Because the Robert Moses Parkway and the factories on Buffalo Avenue constitute a physical barrier between the residential area and the upper river, there hasn’t since been a story like David’s, and that may be why his death still is a marker in my memory. To this day there are few scarier ways to die in my dreams than being swept over the falls. And yes, I occasionally have that dream, though the falls in my dreams never appear as starkly cold and rocky as they are, and I somehow linger at the rim until I awaken.

What disturbed me then and continues to are the photographs. At least one tourist was on the bridge over the upper rapids. She looked upriver and saw a boy on a piece of wood in the middle of the Upper Rapids coming downstream fast, and she aimed her camera and shot film. The clearest frames ended up in the local paper, and then in the June, 1970, issue of Life Magazine. She was paid for the photos, as is customary.

I was thirteen when this happened and the local paper printed a front page photo, grainy black and white of David on his raft and I was chilled. It wasn’t hard to conjure a scenario where I might have stumbled into the same predicament, especially if I was trying to impress two older boys with my courage; I’d endured stupid, less lethal dares. Now in my fifties, I was sifting through Ebay listings one day and remembering David’s name, typed it in. I got two hits, both for editions of Life Magazine for sale featuring four frames from the amateur movie camera.

I have to wonder how that tourist felt, and if the memory stays with her. She captured the last minute of someone’s life, both of them knowing it was the last minute. I am a photo-bug myself, as my wife can testify, but I have never been witness to sudden tragedy and don’t know what my reaction would be. Would I have shot film? Would I have dropped my camera and screamed with him? Might I have glanced around to see if there might be rope or some other flotsam with which to attempt a rescue? I like to think I would have done something besides firing a shutter – and that is unfair to the photographer, having never been in that position. There is one argument in favor of documenting the event – Mrs. Finitz did not become a mother of a missing child, wondering ever after what became of David.

There have been rescues in the upper river, people plucked from the waters, in one case a girl I knew slightly was saved near the very precipice of the Horseshoe Falls. Most of the rescues have been in the shallower rapids of the Horseshoe, which are far broader than those preceding the American, or Niagara Falls. A helicopter ride has crashed a couple times over many decades and boats drift too far downstream and shear off their props in the rapids, then usually run aground. But all of these rescues occurred in the Horseshoe Falls, in the broader, shallower rapids where victims may be able to hang on and permit rescuers reaction time. In fact, of those going over the falls involuntarily, the survivors all went over the Horseshoe.

Part of me wishes there was no photographic evidence of David’s last minute. It was, in a way, an early snuff film.