Volunteers searching for missing Lake Oconee boater want ‘to do something good’

Wallace, who lives in nearby Eatonton, is among the couple dozen volunteers who, along with officials, have been scouring this stretch of Oconee for signs of missing boater Gary Jones, 50. The body of Jones' fiancee, Joycelyn Wilson, 49, was found floating just down the lake from Riley Shoals on Feb. 9, the day after their small, empty vessel was spotted.

The Putnam County sheriff is conducting what he’s called a “death investigation” as the search for Jones, a teacher and coach at Westminster Schools, approaches the two-week mark.

During one of Wallace’s recent water sweeps, something thudded against the hull of his flat-bottomed boat.

Whap!

Wallace killed the engine.

“What,” he said, “was that?”

He steered back toward the spot where he’d struck ... something.

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com

Wallace wondered if he had happened upon a clue, some significant debris or, maybe, a body.

Wallace slowed to an idle. He scanned the surface.

Off his bow, he saw it. Nothing more than a 5-inch chunk of dock wood, a sawed-off end piece that probably plopped into the lake during construction.

But that is how it goes sometimes — a lot of times — during search missions. There are fruitless leads, false alarms, bumps on the boat.

Wallace, who worked in the kaolin industry, grew up in Bibb County in Middle Georgia. He’s the son of a volunteer firefighter who was chairman of the old Macon Motor Boat Club Disaster Unit.

Wallace often accompanied his father, E.H. “Rags” Wallace, who died in the early 1980s, on countless drowning calls. They dragged ponds, rivers, creeks.

Now Wallace, at age 77, a lifetime later, is helping to look for Jones, a stranger.

“I wanted to honor my dad,” he said. “I know the lake backwards and forwards.”

Wallace decided to venture out on the water Tuesday with his white poodle, Honey, after reading a Facebook post requesting volunteers.

“Usually, they don’t ask people to come out here and help find bodies anymore,” Wallace said. “And I said, ‘This is my opportunity to do something good for the community.’”

Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.

Credit: Joe Kovac Jr.

On Thursday, Wallace returned to the lake to look some more.

Other locals have answered the call as well, one of them a former Navy submariner.

On Wednesday afternoon, in a misting rain that deterred most searchers, Jeffrey Bahls cruised alone in his V-hulled, 17-and-a-half-foot Tracker.

He appeared at home in the foul weather. He was raised in Minnesota.

Bahls, 55, spent more than a decade in the Navy. Now he lives about five minutes from the Long Shoals boat ramp, a makeshift command post where search teams have staged for much of the past two weeks.

The ramp is less than a mile by water from where Jones’ empty boat was found the evening of Feb. 8.

Bahls has seen news updates about the incident most every day, but it wasn’t until he realized the search was centered close to his house that he decided to lend a hand.

“It’s the right thing. I live right around the corner. Why am I not out here helping?” he said. “I’m a big believer in karma, what goes around comes around. And I hope I never need it, but someday, somewhere, me or my family might need help.”

Earlier this week, he had taken a husband and wife — a couple with ties to the private Atlanta school where Jones worked — out on the lake to the search site.

Bahls said the wife told him that her husband was “torn up” that Jones was missing. Bahls sensed his concern.

“That told me what kind of person (Jones) was,” Bahls said. “I don’t know the guy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t help.”