BANGOR (AP) – A 10-day search ended Wednesday when rescue workers recovered the body of a retired minister from Hampden who had fallen into the Kenduskeag Stream.

The body of Joseph Majeau, 77, was found near a Bangor city dock on the Penobscot River. “It’s a relief, but it’s also a sudden dose of more reality,” said Susan Majeau, the minister’s 71-year-old wife.

Susan Majeau said she knew her husband hadn’t survived.

“I feel extremely grateful for the people who cared and kept on looking and didn’t give up,” she said.

Majeau, who had Parkinson’s disease and who had fallen and injured himself on April 23, was returning to a rehabilitation center on May 29 when he and his wife decided to walk along the stream by Valley Avenue. At one point, he climbed through a protective barrier on a platform overlooking the stream to get a better view of the water, she said.

After he was pulled back, Majeau told his wife, “I guess it was the little boy in me.”

As he and his wife continued their walk beside the stream, Majeau again wanted a closer look, his wife said. He slipped and fell and was pulled out by the stream’s current, despite efforts by a man who tried to pull him to safety.

A memorial service is planned for August in Westbrook, where Majeau was a Unitarian Universalist minister.

Majeau attended the Bangor Theological Seminary and took the post of minister in Westbrook in 1981. He stepped down in 1993 when his health began to fail.

The couple moved north in 1997 to be closer to family and joined the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Bangor.

Richard Bowie, director of Down East Emergency Medicine Institute, the volunteer search organization, said Wednesday, “I’m glad that it has been resolved for the family.”