I Started Boating...

Lying on an inflatable tube being pulled by a powerboat... that was State Watercraft Officer Dawn Potter’s first boating experience. It sounds like a long way from the duties of her job at the Springfield Watercraft Office, but it’s not so far.

I grew up in Medina County in Chatham. Chatham is surrounded by corn fields and Amish communities, so staying busy was a bit of a challenge for me as a child. Lucky for me, my best friend at the time, Jen, lived about 30 minutes away in Chippewa Lake. Chippewa used to be well known for its amusement park but that closed in the 1970s. The lake that the community is named for is actually Ohio’s largest natural inland lake -- carved by the glaciers -- and home to my earliest boating and water recreation experiences.

I loved my summers at Chippewa Lake with Jen and her family. We had great fun -- lots of social activities, boating, sunbathing, and swimming. Jen’s family had a cottage that was just feet from the water’s edge. Her family’s cottage and that lake were my second home. Her parents owned an 18-foot ski boat that we enjoyed every day. If we weren’t tubing, then we were water skiing or fishing. The best part, as I fondly remember, was that at night we’d hop on the pontoon boat and hang out on the water until we couldn’t stay awake any longer.

While I enjoyed boating with Jen and her family through my teen years, I never did drive the boat. It just wasn’t something I wanted to learn how to do. It wasn’t until my college years that I learned the basics of operating a boat. My brother, Dave, let me operate his boat, and that’s when I learned more about being a boater. We mostly went to Chippewa Lake and occasionally to Lake Erie.

I eventually found myself as a wife and mother, and now I get to go boating many days as a Watercraft Officer. Thoughts of those summers with my second family aren’t totally lost. I still have family members who own cottages on Chippewa Lake, and I try to make it out there a couple times a summer for skiing and tubing. My two children now enjoy the same lake that I once did. Watching them fish and take boat rides takes me back to those summers with Jen and her family. When I need to relax, I make my way back to Chippewa and watch the stars on that great lake.