Goodbye, Pirate Dan
Former Bar Harbor Police Chief Lived Life With a Smile and Gold Coins in His Hands
BAR HARBOR—A lot of people can light up a room, but Dan Herrick? He could light up an entire mini golf course, a house, a community, and sometimes even a patrol car. It isn’t often that a man can say that he was a pirate, a police chief, and an angel, but Dan Herrick wasn’t a typical man.
The former Bar Harbor police chief, manager of Pirate’s Cove in Bar Harbor, and pilot who flew over 150 Angel flights died on September 6 from pancreatic cancer.
That’s just the why of Dan’s death and for those who knew and loved him, that why doesn’t matter half as much as the why of Dan’s life—a life filled with dad jokes and random mishaps, joy, humor, and interaction with members of his community and visitors as well as some tensions within the Bar Harbor Police Department and within the Bar Harbor Town Council when he was police chief in the late 1980s and early 1990s before he resigned. Herrick became a patrol officer in Mount Desert and then Bangor instead. He worked there until he retired in 2012 and then split his time between Florida and Maine with his wife, Melissa. He’d been on the beat about 38.5 years, and much of those later years were on a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
“A good man gone too soon,” said former Ellsworth Police Chief John Deleo.
Or as one woman explained, “He didn’t just tell you to be kind; he showed you how by the way he lived.”
The way Dan lived was evident in the occupations he chose, the interactions with the family he loved, and the strangers that he met. Dan Herrick lived who he was and did it with authenticity. He passed out gold coins for free games at Pirate’s Cove Adventure Golf with a hearty smile and a goofy joke. He would pretend to be a mannequin sometimes and jump out and scare employees and golfers. They’d scream and then laugh. He’d always laugh, too.
Dan was the type of police officer who’d see you do a rolling stop and instead of giving you a ticket would have you go back around and do it the proper way while he watched, said current Bar Harbor Town Councilor Matthew Hochman.
“Growing up, I wanted to be just like him,” Dan’s son, Trevor, said in a Facebook post this weekend. “I spent so many nights in my high school years riding along with him in his cruiser in Bangor, seeing the other side of his life. It was intense and made me grow up fast. I would see my hero in a physical brawl rolling on the floor with an agitated man, being in a car chase on snow covered roads to help apprehend someone at 11:59 p.m. on New Years Eve during a snowstorm, holding seized drugs while we transported prisoners to jail, patrolling and helping anyone in need, reading pilots’ exam questions to him while we ran radar along the highway, listening to talk radio and drinking coffee at Howard Johnsons.”
In 2011, Dan’s plane was called “Little Angel.”
“Dan served the town of Bar Harbor for years as an officer and as chief. He was a good man,” Hochman said.
Dan was tough; he was smart; he was stubborn and his life was filled with adventures. He fell off a lighthouse at Pirate’s Cove. Ribs broke. He got up. He fell out of a tree and ended up in a helicopter, transported to a hospital. After some time in an ICU, he was up and at it again. He was shot at. They missed.
Dan dealt with people at their worst while he worked patrol, and he also dealt with people in times of joy. His smile had the power to make even the grumpiest faces smile back.
And he saved lives in ways that were scary and obvious like when he grabbed a man trying to jump off the Penobscot River. But, sometimes, his impact was smaller, quieter, and happened in a plane ride, across the table at a diner, looking out at the beauty of a Maine lake, or heading down a ski slope.
According to Trevor, Dan survived pancreatic cancer longer than 95% of others who had that same condition.
Trevor wrote, “Dan started as a young seasonal police officer in Bar Harbor alongside his twin brother Darrell. There was a time that each officer Herrick dealt with someone a few minutes apart which thoroughly confused them thinking they were seeing double. He worked his way up to chief and dealt with many tragic and stressful crises during his career. He much preferred his role as ‘just a patrolman’ at Bangor PD, never putting in for a promotion, but enjoying his shifts riding the Harley Davidson motorcycle most of the year and engaging with people in more of a community policing style; he had a sticker on his helmet that said ‘Bad Cop, No Donut!’”
Whether riding the Harley, passing out treasure to kids at Pirate’s Cove, or flying patients and their families on more than 150 Angel Flights, Dan gave and gave. Then, he’d give some more: a pirate, an Angel pilot, a dad, a husband, a friend, and an officer.
Dan’s last days were spent at a camp near The Forks by a lake, not a hospital, but out in the world that he loved so dearly with the people who loved him, too.
“While he didn’t get 90 years of life, he packed in so much with what he had. His memory, legacy and impact will live on a long time. We love you, Dad. Fly high with the spirit in the sky,” Trevor wrote.
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