Dedicated father, firefighter, ER technician mourned

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EAST SWANZEY — Fire Lt. Benjamin Tatro’s childhood home is brimming with memories.

They fill the thicket of woods behind the house, where Ben and his friends played as children. They ricochet off the black bell that still hangs outside — the one his mother rang when it was time for the friends to come home. And they reverberate through the weathered wooden garage Ben and his younger brother, Adam, helped build as teenagers.

Ben, 37, who volunteered with the Swanzey Fire Department for about 20 years, died after a scuba diving accident in Massachusetts Saturday. He was a rescue diver and a member of the fire department’s water rescue task force, but the trip wasn’t related to department activities, Fire Chief Norman Skantze said.

Sarah Tatro, 36, said her husband went diving with friends any chance he got, and Saturday’s trip to the Chester Poling shipwreck off Cape Ann near Gloucester was no different. The water was a place of serenity and rest for him, she said.

“He would come up so happy, and I always got a text or a phone call, (saying), ‘I’m up. I’m out. I’m safe. It was a great dive. Tell you about it when I get home.’ ”

But when Sarah didn’t get the usual call on Saturday, she became worried. Something was wrong, she thought, though she couldn’t quite explain the feeling. Perhaps her husband posted photos of his dive on Facebook as he always did, she thought. But there were no photos.

She got a call from a Gloucester police detective sometime after noon, she said, telling her that her husband was in the hospital.

A spokesman for the Gloucester police referred questions from a reporter on Tuesday to the district attorney’s office.

A representative of the office wasn’t reachable by The Sentinel Tuesday or Wednesday. However, the Boston Globe — citing Carrie Kimball Monahan, spokeswoman for the office of Essex County (Mass.) District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett — reported that a fellow diver “found Tatro tangled in some lines, indicating that he was having difficulty breathing.” The diver helped him to the surface, and Tatro was alert and talking when he came up, Monahan told the Globe.

He later had “some type of medical event,” she said. He died at Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, the Globe reported.

As of Wednesday, Sarah still didn’t know much about what had happened to her husband. The detectives told her it could take up to 90 days before the family would get definitive answers.

“I don’t know where it all fell apart,” she said.

‘Everyone’s brother’

Ben first became interested in firefighting when he was 4 or 5, according to his mother, Elizabeth “Betty” Tatro, a retired Monadnock Regional School District educator and longtime principal who now serves on the school board. She even made her eldest son a firefighter costume for Halloween at the time.

But it wasn’t a fleeting dream: He became involved in earnest when he was 14, first as part of a now-defunct fire explorer program in Fitzwilliam, and then volunteering at the Swanzey Fire Department alongside his father, Bruce Tatro. Ben had a deep respect for those who came before him, Bruce, a state representative since 2010, said. He’d make sure the fire department’s tribute for Memorial Day was done just so — the ladder truck had to be clean and parked neatly on one of the town’s bridges, he said.

Betty said Ben was a “wonderful, gentle, loving son” whose knack for putting people at ease served him well as a first responder.

Sarah, who grew up with Ben, said her husband of 15 years was driven by a need to help people. He dedicated himself to everything he did, be it coaching youth baseball in Swanzey, diving or spending time with his daughters, Maddie, 8, and Mia, 12.

“Wherever he went, he put his whole heart into it,” she said.

A few years back, Ben set his sights on a new dream: He wanted to become a nurse. He got a job working in the emergency department at Cheshire Medical Center in 2015. Last year, he got his Licensed Nursing Assistant certification through LNA Health Careers, a Manchester-based organization that also offers classes in Keene. He also started taking classes at River Valley Community College last summer.

At Cheshire Medical Center, Ben was known for his easy smile and his gift for training coworkers.

“Ben was like everyone’s brother,” coworker Sarah Thompson of Jaffrey wrote in a Facebook message. “He had the biggest heart, the biggest smile and the best sense of humor.”

An emergency department technician, Ben was known throughout the department for the red shirts he’d wear on Fridays. He was passionate about honoring military service members, and the red shirt was a call to remember those deployed, according to Thompson. The gesture was part of an Internet phenomenon with roots at least as far back as the early 2000s.

Others in his department followed suit, Thompson said.

Ben’s coworkers and others he knew are selling red shirts in his honor, with proceeds going to the family. Sign-up sheets are available in Cheshire Medical Center’s emergency department, at the Swanzey fire stations and at DiLuzio Ambulance in Keene, Thompson said.

A GoFundMe page has also been set up to help support his loved ones.

“Ben loved being an active member of his community, and he loved helping people,” the page reads. “As a family we are trying to relieve the financial burden on his wife and daughters.”

Thompson said she already misses Ben, who used to lighten difficult shifts by reciting movie lines and sharing funny animal videos. When she came to work Wednesday, she missed Ben immediately.

“Anyone who knew him knows how wonderful of a person he was,” Thompson wrote. “… It’s a huge loss to the community.”