Instead of parking his helicopter on the South Lawn of the While House and waiting for President Bush to arrive, Marine Maj. Martin Fisher these days waits at a Mooresville children’s center for parents to show up with their kids.

Until Nov. 14, Fisher, 34, was a pilot with the Marine One squadron, flying the president, vice president, their families and other dignitaries wherever the White House commanded.

The career Marine always tried to convince himself that each of the 45 or so trips he flew with the country’s leaders were run-of-the-mill flights. He could believe that, he says, until he was parked at the White House, watching the president advance toward his helicopter. “It changes everything. Butterflies start in my stomach.”

That’s when the realization hit that he had the safety of the most powerful man in the world in his hands, he says. “There’s a real responsibility there.”

The call of family
At Rolly Pollies in Mooresville, Fisher now handles another kind of responsibility. Along with his wife, Laura, and his sister, Kerry Tornesello, he owns and operates the new center designed to give children an opportunity to develop through structured play. Laura Fisher is a children’s occupational therapist, and Tornesello has a master’s degree in education.

Martin Fisher, an economics graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, handles the business end of things, his wife oversees the curriculum, and all three owners lead classes. The center’s goal is to help children 6 months to 6 years old develop physical fitness and social skills through classes in art and physical education.

For a Marine, Fisher says, “physical fitness is a big priority.” He wants that not only for his own children, Michaela, 3 ½, Kierann, 2, and Mary, 1 ½ months, but for other children, as well, he says.

The children and Laura are the reason for what Fisher calls his “whole life switch, not just a career.” At the beck and call of the White House the past four years, he could never be certain when that call to duty would come. Many times, his phone conversations with Laura started: “Hey, Hon. We made plans for the weekend, and guess what!”

As an example, he cites the Minneapolis bridge collapse. He got the phone call at 7 a.m., was in his helicopter by noon, and was on the ground in Minneapolis by that evening, waiting for the president to arrive on Air Force One. He ferried Bush from the airport to the bridge site and back.

He’s always felt he was serving a purpose on these trips, particularly those to disaster sites such as Minneapolis and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. And he saw a lot of the world: seven countries and 37 of the 50 states.

But the frequent absences began to wear on him. “Once children arrived, I just didn’t want to leave them anymore,” he says.

He and Laura counted up the hours he’d been away from home, and it amounted to two years out of the four he had been with the squadron.

So, after meeting the president one last time at a ceremony honoring retiring White House military personnel, Fisher left active duty in November. He, his wife and sister had established their Rolly Pollies site in Mooresville Gateway shopping center during the summer, and the Fishers moved from the Washington area to Concord. He expects to remain in the Marine Reserves and hopes to teach beginning pilots to fly on a part-time basis.

Enduring memories
He has a lot of memories to take with him. There’s the fleet of presidential helicopters, what he calls the “safest helicopter in the world.” They’re maintained daily, and if a part has a life expectancy of 1,000 hours, it’s replaced at 500, he says.

He’ll remember his prominent passengers as pleasant travelers. Before the start of a trip, Bush would visit the cockpit and make small talk. “A pat on the shoulder, a handshake. ‘How you doing today?’ ” Fisher recalls. Laura Bush he calls “a very nice woman, a very cordial Southern belle.”

He’ll remember the reception he and the other members of the squadron received around the world. “People know right away we’re the Marines.” Because of the way they carry themselves and conduct themselves, he says, “we stand out.”

At Rolly Pollies, Fisher has stopped short of having the children include the Marine Hymn in the songs they sing. “Although my daughters do,” his wife says with a laugh. “And he has them barking.”

Asked to demonstrate, Fisher roars out the famous “Oorah!” and caps it off with a sharp bark.

“I will miss it dearly, the camaraderie of the squadron,” he says. The single most striking impression he’ll carry away, he says, is “how everything comes together to move this man around the world in a safe manner. They (his fellow Marines) make the difficult look effortless.”