By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Don’t mind her and the awkward position she’s in. She knows what she’s doing. It’s just part of the process. If you can, take a snapshot of her lifting up her prosthetic leg and dumping the water out of her fishing boot. But to do that, you’ll have to be quick with your camera because she moves quickly through her post-fishing rituals.
She has a friendly smile and giggles a lot, which offers those around her a sense of her own acceptance of her reality. With her ease and happy spirit, there is no room for pity or sadness in her presence.
Born in Detroit, Michigan and raised in Texas, Marguerite Berger, aka Marguerite TigerMarue, is a woman who won’t let the obstacles life has thrown into her path keep her spirits and quality of life from soaring.
She loves to fish and grew up fishing in Galveston on weekends with her mother. She can rattle off the impact that the barometric pressure dropping and rising has on the fishing experience, and she freely expresses her frustration with the fall run flounder season being over.
There isn’t much about fishing that Marguerite can’t discuss or say she’s experienced while wade fishing, shore fishing or fishing on a boat.
“I clean my fish and get them cooked,” Marguerite explained. “They’re a meal for me.”
If the fish is too small, she’ll throw it back in the water, as she did with the one she caught on the day I was out with her.
“I love to eat fish,” she added. “That’s why I go fishing, I’m not much of a tournament fisher.”
Marguerite can’t just wake up and decide she’s going out fishing on any given day. She’s got to do a little bit of planning, which includes wrangling up a fishing buddy.
“I can’t go out fishing alone. It’s just not safe,” Marguerite said. “It’s not a good idea for a woman to go out fishing alone period, but for me, especially, I need a buddy to go fishing with me.”
One of her fishing buddies is Eileen Ironstar, an Army veteran. Together the two of them have a comradeship that centers on the joys of fishing. Eileen assists Marguerite as they wade out into the water, making sure to avoid the deep holes and navigating high tide waters.
Though she loves her new life wading into the water to fish out on the shores of Galveston, she was once a motorcycle mechanic and passionate motorcyclist.
“I worked as a motorcycle mechanic at Stubbs Harley-Davidson and rode bikes for 11 years,” Marguerite said.
Turning wrenches on a bike, making repairs for customers and herself, was her life — until June 2018, when she crashed her motorcycle and lost her leg.
In the minutes after her crash, her friends have told her, she tried to get up and walk around, but Marguerite doesn’t have a clear memory of the accident or the post-accident trauma.
EMS rushed her to the University of Texas Medical Branch, and all she remembers is what she was told and what she discovered after waking up from a coma.
While she was in a coma, unaware of her condition, her medical team determined her leg required amputation.
Marguerite recalls the day she woke up from her coma.
“I was so happy to be awake and out of the bad, nasty nightmares, I didn’t even notice I was an amputee till the next day,” Marguerite said.
She had been in a coma for three weeks.
Thinking back to that day and her motorcycle, she said, “I built my own bike,” Marguerite said. “I had taken it down to the frame and made it mine. I miss it about as much as I miss my leg.”
But her fishing buddies don’t want to hear her talk like that, she reported.
After another week at UTMB Marguerite was discharged to go home and figure out how to live with one leg and a damaged arm.
Doctors used part of her leg to rebuild her left arm, leaving her arm with scars and less function.
Her wrench-turning days were over.
Though she has diminished use of her arm, she is thankful the doctors were able to save it, as it comes in handy in fishing and life’s other tasks.
While Marguerite lived with her new reality, an infection in the bone of the amputated leg developed and required that she lose four more inches off her already shortened leg. This meant her first prosthetic was no longer a match for her, and that she needed a different prosthetic.
She spent two years adapting to life with a wheelchair because of the bone infection and the changes in prosthetic size. But the day she got her properly fitted prosthetic and was able to stand up on her own and walk is a day she will never forget.
“I got around okay with a wheelchair, and I’d hop on my good leg, but nothing could compare to the feeling of being able to stand on two legs and move around,” Marguerite explained.
Her current prosthetic an Ottobox C-4 cost $70,000, but she can’t take it in the water.
To go fishing, she switches to a leg used for going into the water.
The leg she really wants, which, in her words, is “the Ferrari of prosthetic legs,” is an Ottobox X-3 with a microprocessor knee. But her insurance won’t pay the $120,000 price tag for the top-of-the-line prosthetic leg. She could wear this higher priced leg on water and on land. She wouldn’t have to switch legs.
Even though she has to switch from one man-made leg to another to go fishing, and she has to ensure she has a buddy for her days out on the water, Marguerite keeps her spirits positive and has even been able to go beyond fishing for herself.
“The fishing community is like a family, and they have all helped me out so much — to the point that now I am able to help others,” Marguerite said.
Realizing she had something to give to others, Marguerite took training from The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and is now an Angler Education Instructor.
This qualification allows her to spend some of her fishing time giving back by teaching others to fish. Some of her students don’t have disabilities and others, like her, are living with some type of physical impairment.
She keeps an active social media account of her fishing experiences, and if you would like to follow her and her you can find her at https://www.facebook.com/marguerite.tigermarue
Does she miss her motorcycle days? Sometimes but, she can’t afford to look back for too long. She has to look forward, and so far, she reported, she has not driven a motorcycle. Fishing is now her passion.
