UMBERLAND, Maine - Working a security detail for former president George Bush during a 1993 visit, Calvin Bridges didn't know what to expect when Bush walked up to him and peered at his name tag. After all, it was Bridges who had arrested Bush's son in Kennebunkport in 1976 for drinking and driving, and the police officer wasn't exactly expecting a pat on the back.
But Bush smiled broadly. He shook Bridges's hand. And he gave him a present: a tie clip.
''He said, `You are the officer who arrested my son,''' Bridges recalled yesterday. ''And he told me that it was the best thing that could have happened to his son. It really was the crescendo of my career ... that he thanked me. I felt I had helped.''
Bridges, 51, now an equipment operator for the Cumberland Department of Public Works, was one of the most sought after men in Maine yesterday after the press reported that he was the one who had arrested presidential candidate George W. Bush 24 years ago on a dark Kennebunkport road. Bush, traveling with his sister, Dorothy, and Australian tennis player John Newcombe, had veered his car into the road's shoulder when Bridges saw him shortly after midnight and pulled him over.
Yesterday, Bridges tried to avoid the limelight, hiding out in the Cumberland DPW garage. He's not political. He didn't want to be interviewed at all. But as he dodged phone calls, he offered at least a reluctant reconstruction of that memorable night.
''After I arrested him, [Newcombe] leaned on the car and watched me put [Bush] into a cruiser and then he said, `Do you know who you just arrested?'
''And I said, `I don't care who it was, he was driving under the influence.' And then the tennis player said, `That's George Bush.' And I went `Geez, what's going to happen?'''
Nothing did. Bush paid a $150 fine and Bridges filed away the incident as a brush with celebrity, a story he told to friends that always got a good chuckle.
Those who know Bridges say he would never have given preferential treatment.. Bridges plays by the rules, friends say - he once pulling over a fellow worker.
''He is as straight an arrow as they come,'' said Adam Ogden, director of the Department of Public Works.
While Bridges expected a call to come months earlier, the first he heard that the new media had gottent wind of the story was through a Republican campaign worker in Maine who called him Thursday night to say there was a ''problem.''
''Then they called Texas and they asked me if I would speak to a reporter. I said I didn't want to, I wanted this to go away,'' he said.
The campaign eventually convinced him to speak to one reporter from the Associated Press so his story could be told nationwide. A man who treasures his privacy, Bridges said he wanted to protect his family from the onslaught of attention.
As he tiredly wiped his face yesterday afternoon, Bridges said he wouldn't have done anything differently, even if he had realized that it was George W. Bush driving the car that night.
''I'm a born-again Christian and I went into [police] work because I thought it was the best way I could do the Lord's work,'' Bridges said. ''And it was. And in this case, it was.''
