Ronnie Polaneczky: Two agonizing weeks for drowning victim's kin

MOST FAMILIES of missing loved ones are desperate to know what happened to them.

Not the family of Bridesburg's Joseph "Babe" McGeehan. They knew within 48 hours of his disappearance that his car had gone into the Delaware. Yet it took another 13 days to retrieve his body.

"He was right there; we knew it," says Stacey Hudicek, one of Babe's nine siblings. "The police wouldn't help us get him out."

On Sunday, a team of Good Samaritan divers finally brought Babe to the surface. His funeral is this morning.

Twinned with the family's grief is anger at what they say was lack of compassion by Philadelphia police for the family, who kept an anguished riverside vigil for Babe.

The McGeehans have been through hell, and my sympathy is with them. But I won't bash the police Marine Unit, whose dangerous work you couldn't pay me enough to do.

Still, the McGeehans are right that Babe, 31, might have been brought home sooner if someone had thought to steer them toward help that was available all along.

Babe, 31, was a genial guy who worked for a towing company. He disappeared Saturday night, Jan. 7, after leaving Calloway's Irish Inn, on Cottman Avenue, to retrieve a friend from the Wissinoming Yacht Club, at 5000 Devereaux Ave. He never arrived.

The next day, police told his panicked family that a missing-person report couldn't be filed until Babe had been gone two days. So they went on their own search.

Babe's dad, John, knew that Babe, whose eyesight wasn't great, wasn't familiar with the club. What if he'd believed it was on the river block of Unruh, which sits exactly three blocks north of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, instead of the river block of Devereaux, which sits exactly three blocks south?

Unruh ends at a short gravel patch, edged by a low berm, after which is a 10-foot drop into the river. The city owns the land, and there is no fence or sign warning of the road's end (City Hall spokesman Mark McDonald declined to comment about the area). I visited the dark, gritty site at night and can attest that it's hard to see the road's end.

On a hunch, John McGeehan went to Unruh Avenue and saw deep tire marks in the gravel. He says he shared this news with police, who reiterated the two-day rule about looking for a missing person.

Adjacent to the gravel is Orthodox Auto Parts. So on Monday, Jan. 9, McGeehan asked its manager to review footage from security cameras the night Babe went missing.

And there it was: Babe's Jeep, heading toward the river, its brake lights flashing before dropping over the berm. You can imagine the family's horror, seeing it.

McGeehan says he called police, but a dive team from the department's Marine Unit didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon. When Babe's Jeep was pulled from the river, it contained his cellphone and a sneaker but not Babe.

The family expected the divers to re-enter the water to look for Babe, but no-go.

"We were told, 'You'll have to wait for him to surface. There's nothing more we can do,' " says Stacey Hudicek, Babe's sister.

Capt. Kenneth O'Brien, of the Marine Unit, defends the decision. The Delaware has treacherous tides and currents, he explains, and its waters - especially at Unruh - are filled with old cars, tangled fishing wire and dumped debris. Diving it, especially in frigid weather, is so hazardous that, in 2001, a Marine Unit officer died during a dive.

"I won't risk my men's safety to retrieve someone we know has died," says O'Brien, "and who may have been carried away by the current anyway."

(A police officer familiar with Babe's case told me that the divers wanted very much to search for Babe but couldn't disobey the order to stop.)

It could take months for Babe to surface, the family learned. Cold water prevents the gassy decomposition that causes a body to float. Babe might not be found until spring, if at all.

And so began the family's daily vigil at the water, accompanied by legions of supporters.

"We couldn't leave him in the water," says Joan McGeehan, Babe's sister. "Could you? Could anyone?"

So their outreach began. A call was made to an independent rescue operation in Bucks County, which brought diver Chris Hawreny to the river. He felt it was too dangerous to dive, but stayed for days. Another rescue outfit in South Jersey offered moral support. The family put out Facebook requests for boaters to paddle the river's inlets, in case the current had pulled Babe away from them.

In the many years I have been writing this column, I have met many families whose loyalty to each other is impressive. But the McGeehans have to be among the most exemplary.

Last Thursday, Babe's sister Stacey, in desperation, contacted Gene Ralston, a rescue diver in Idaho whose website seemed compassionate. He contacted the nonprofit Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit, in Hunterdon County, N.J., whose volunteer divers move heaven and earth - for free - to recover submerged bodies.

Enter Sunny Longordo, Garden State's captain, who swiftly assembled a nine-member rescue team. They left Milford, N.J., at 4 a.m. last Sunday and were in the water at Unruh by sunrise.

Within an hour, they'd lifted Babe to the surface. He'd been on the riverbed, right where his Jeep had been.

"We had almost given up," says Stacey. "No one would help us in our own city. Then these angels who'd never even met us brought Babe home."

Longordo, whose group has worked with Philadelphia police in the past, says she knows of no public-safety organization willing to put divers at risk when there is no public-safety hazard.

"They're limited by liability concerns," she says. "Once they eliminate a risk to safety, they have to move on to the next danger that needs attention. I'd never fault the police on something like this."

She doesn't know why Philly police, because of its past work with Garden State, didn't refer the McGeehans to her group for free help in a time of anguish.

"We don't always find people," she says. "But we will always try."

Garden State's phone number is 908-995-2022. Let's hope the Marine Unit puts it on speed-dial.