Mother channels grief into rally
When Keri Morrison saw the news this week that a child had drowned in a West Palm Beach-area lake, her heart sank.
The Palm Beach Gardens mom lost her son, Jake, when he slipped out the back door during a family Thanksgiving vacation in New Smyrna Beach in 2013. He fell off a dock into the Intracoastal Waterway and drowned just shy of his third birthday.
Since then, Morrison and her husband, Roarke, started the Live Like Jake Foundation to raise awareness about drowning prevention, provide swim scholarships for children, and offer financial and emotional support to grieving families.
“We work so hard yearround to ensure this doesn’t happen,” Morrison said. “When they’re right here in our neck of the woods, it hurts more. I feel like somehow, I didn’t reach these parents.”
The drowning of 4-yearold Wedson Paul at the Palms West apartments near Okeechobee Boulevard and Military Trail on Tuesday came just three days after the Live Like Jake 5K in Jupiter.
“It really just fuels my fire even more,” Morrison said. “I know what they’re going through right now.”
The event at Abacoa in Jupiter had close to 1,400 participants and raised more than $75,000, Morrison said.
The foundation is working on getting a brochure in every day care in Palm Beach County.
One of the foundation’s priorities is getting parents to enroll their children in Infant Swimming Resource self-rescue swim lessons. Children as young as 6 months old can learn how to survive in water by rolling back and floating. After children master the skills, they practice in their summer and winter clothes, because the vast majority fall into the water fully clothed, Morrison said.
The Live Like Jake Foundation has awarded more than 1,000 scholarships in 22 states for the lessons. Morrison started her two younger children in the program when they were 6 months and 8 months old.
Things could have been different for the child who fell into the lake, she said.
“Just knowing how to roll back and float could have bought those parents the time that they needed to find him,” she said.
Drownings occur yearround in Palm Beach County, and 70 percent of them were not witnessed, according to the Drowning Prevention Coalition of Palm Beach County. Preliminary reports indicate there were five drownings of children younger than 12 in Palm Beach County last year, according to Anna Stewart, manager of the coalition.
Lessons are one of several layers of protection to prevent drowning, Morrison said. Adult supervision is the first, but it fails all the time. It failed Jake, she said. She was nursing her 12-weekold daughter in another room when Jake slipped out.
Other layers of protection: pool fences and door and window alarms. One never takes the place of another. Parents should know cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
“Don’t let your guard down, and don’t think it can’t happen to you,” Morrison said. “Drowning does not discriminate. It can happen to any child and any family.”