By Molly AK Connors
Concord Monitor
CONCORD, N.H. — For more than 30 years, he was known for a calm demeanor when saving lives and training hundreds of local EMTs and paramedics. But Robert Bottcher, who died in his sleep last weekend at age 65, had a Goofy side, which came out on trips to Walt Disney World, which he visited twice annually since 1992.
So yesterday, as bagpipes played “Amazing Grace” and about 40 emergency responders saluted, many of the uniformed firefighters wore Mickey Mouse ears over their caps as they guided Bottcher’s flag-draped casket into a Concord Fire Department ambulance.
“It’s our magical place, and we fell in love with Disney,” said his wife of 42 years, Nancy Bottcher, in a recent phone interview.
Bottcher, a Queens, N.Y., native and U.S. Navy veteran, applied at the Concord Fire Department in 1976 when he was vacationing with his wife and saw local fire trucks responding to an emergency. He retired from the department in 1998 but continued as a call firefighter in Loudon, where he and his family eventually settled, until 2010, when he retired as deputy fire chief.
Many, including Bottcher’s neighbor and fellow Loudon firefighter, Rob Morin, remembered their friend, who had two daughters and two grandchildren, not only for his professional competence but for the comfort he gave those he treated. When Morin, 48, suffered a seizure last year, his wife Sabrina, a Loudon call EMT trained by Bottcher, called her mentor, who lived three houses away, before she even dialed 911.
“I knew I was going to be safe, and I knew I had nothing to worry about,” Rob Morin said about waking up and seeing
Bottcher standing in his hospital room. “Bob sure was a heck of a firefighter and paramedic.”
In 1982, Bottcher was in the first group of students at NHTI to be certified as paramedics, and he thrived on training others in the field he loved.
“He was the kind of trainer that would get down and show you how to use what you learned,” said Epping Fire Chief Donald DeAngelis, who said he knew Bottcher for 33 years.
“He made you feel like a person,” said Sabrina Morin, 40, who said Bottcher held open the door of the fire truck she rode to her wedding in eight years ago. “He didn’t act like he knew it all. He got you involved.”
“He would put them at ease, and they would learn,” said Nancy, who was also taught by her husband, of his approach with students.
A confident man with a knack for drawing the best out of everyone, Bottcher told Nancy on their first date - bowling with a mutual friend - that she was his soul mate and that he intended to marry her.
“I thought he was kidding,” she said. “He wasn’t kidding. He was serious.”
They married in 1969. He was unexpectedly deployed as a mechanic on the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt a few months later, and the couple spent most of their first two years apart, Nancy said.
“We wrote each other every single day,” Nancy said. “There was not a day that we missed.” The couple never had a honeymoon, and family commitments such as 4-H Club prevented them from taking long trips, so once their daughters were grown, the couple decided to visit Disney World, thinking they’d only go once. But they kept returning.
“You walk into Disney World, and you have to be happy,” Nancy said.
The 64-year-old nurse said she isn’t ready to revisit their letters from the war. But to honor her husband, the family will follow through on a Disney trip Bottcher had next planned for January.
While there, the family might run into Esmerelda, the kind and beautiful teenager in The Hunchback of Notre Dame who captures Quasimodo’s heart. She was Bottcher’s favorite Disney character, Nancy said.
“He always says, ‘That’s my girl, that’s my girl,’ ” when referring to Esmerelda, Nancy said.
Did his affection for the gypsy ever bother Nancy, given she was, after all, Bottcher’s wife?
“It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I had my Prince Charming.”
Copyright 2011 Concord Monitor/Sunday Monitor