Judah’s legacy: Grieving family pushes for swim safety
With summer in full effect, parents intensify effort to prevent drownings
Judah Brown wanted his mother’s seat by the pool.
“Mommy, move,” he said, pushing her with his 3-year-old hands.
It was a typical, lighthearted conversation for the family — Judah was a sparky kid with eyes as clear and blue as the water, a little rambunctious and always the life of the party.
Instead of giving Judah her chair, however, his mother Christi sat him next to her, took off his swim floaties and gave him a towel while they waited to eat. Maybe a minute later, she did a headcount. One child was missing. Where was Judah? “He got away from me — I didn’t see it,” she said recently. “He somehow got in the water.”
Judah Levi Brown died Sept. 26, 2016, two days after his family pulled him from an apartment pool in west Houston.
He was one of 18 children who drowned that year in Harris County, which leads the state in child drownings almost every year. So far this year, 12 children have drowned in Harris and the surrounding coun-
ties, including seven children age 4 and younger.
Christi and Mark Brown are tired of it. Just months after Judah died, the family created a foundation to spread awareness of drowning prevention to help other parents avoid grieving the loss of a child. With summer now in full swing, the Browns are redoubling their efforts with local authorities.
“There’s still part of me that won’t fully accept it,” said Mark Brown. “Your brain, the ability to think and do simple tasks, disappears for a season. I think some of it has lingered.”
Silent killer
This year has already gotten off to a rough start.
Four children dead in Harris County. One in Fort Bend, three in Galveston, two in Liberty, one in Montgomery, one in Waller. In a little over a month, six children have died in swimming-related incidents in Greater Houston. Five drowned in pools, and one drowned in the San Jacinto River.
Just two weeks ago, a 2year-old boy drowned in Santa Fe after being found face down in a family’s pool. He died at the hospital, the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed.
The Browns closely follow the stories. Through the Judah Brown Project, they try to contact the families and help them feel less alone.
“It makes me want to work harder,” Christi said. “It’s shocking and heartbreaking. I know what they’re going through.”
Drowning is a persistent problem in Houston and across the nation. It’s the No. 1 cause of death in children, ages 1 to 4, aside from birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s almost literally a silent killer, and it takes just seconds.
Children can be submerged in as little as 10 seconds — a walk to grab a towel, perhaps — and they can lose consciousness in two minutes, according to the YMCA, which teaches water safety.
Most children drown in backyard swimming pools, but it can happen in any body of water with enough density to cover the mouth and nose. That includes apartment swimming pools, lakes, rivers, oceans, ponds, bathtubs, septic tanks — even buckets.
“It’s the misconception that there’s going to be loud splashing and all that stuff,” said Afet Mesigil, associate director of aquatics at the YMCA of Greater Houston. “They are most likely not going to make the noises that you see in the movies.”
Marilyn Christian, manager of environmental health programs at Harris County Public Health, said the deaths are preventable.
“We have way too many,” she said. “You have other counties around the country that have zero, but we have them every year.”
‘It was just bedlam’
The Browns discovered this firsthand.
The apartment pool had a water feature with jets so loud, Christi didn’t hear her son go under.
She spotted Judah quickly. He was face down, about halfway under the surface.
Christi screamed. Mark performed CPR for about four minutes, during which Judah vomited on his father, an auto reflex.
While Mark, an Episcopalian priest, was focused on saving his son, the pool area became chaotic.
“Christi is standing next to me, screaming, the children are standing next to her, screaming,” Mark said. “It was just bedlam.” Someone called 911. Paramedics arrived and pumped Judah with drugs to save his life.
The CPR had been crucial in keeping Judah’s heart going while first responders were en route. But the Browns couldn’t do anything to get the water out of Judah’s lungs, which had cut off oxygen to his brain.
While Judah’s heart was working again, his brain began to swell and hemorrhage.
Paramedics rushed him to Memorial Hermann hospital. Doctors there gave him a 30 percent chance of survival.
‘Way too many’
It’s an all-too-familiar narrative for many Houston-area families.
The panic of realizing you can’t find your child. The desperation of trying to save them. The long hours of waiting in the hospital. Then, overwhelming denial and grief.
On May 24, a 6-year-old boy drowned after slipping unnoticed into a gated apartment pool area in Baytown. He and an 8year-old girl, believed to be his cousin, were unsupervised and jumped into the deep end of the pool.
A 4-year-old boy died less than a week later after making his way unattended to an apartment complex pool in Spring. He was pulled from the pool and died at the hospital later that night.
Two more children died on June 3 in separate incidents. One, an 8-yearold boy, was found underwater on June 2 at a neighborhood swimming pool in Richmond. He had been at a friend’s house and wasn’t supposed to go to the pool. He died the next day.
A 12-year-old girl drowned while swimming in the San Jacinto River in northeast Harris County. She was with a group of people, including her mother, when she became “distressed while swimming,” authorities said. Her mother, also distressed, made it back to shore. Her daughter didn’t.
The most recent incident involved the 2-yearold boy in Santa Fe, where he was found in a backyard pool. The child was pronounced deceased shortly after being taken to the hospital, said Galveston County Medical Examiner spokesman D.J. Florence.
‘This is serious’
Mark and Christi Brown spent two days in a veritable “underground bunker” at the Memorial Hermann Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.
The couple sat through endless medical conferences and waited as Judah lay hooked up to machines.
“You know it’s bad when you turn and the nurse is crying,” Mark said. “You’re like, ‘OK, this is serious.’ ”
At the beginning, Judah showed minor signs of brain activity. If he survived, he would have likely been in a vegetative state, which is not uncommon for children who survive drownings, according to the CDC.
Even as the family held on to hope, the prognosis grew more grim by the hour.
Eventually, the doctors declared Judah brain dead after running a number of unsuccessful tests for bodily response.
Mark and Christi were talking about donating Judah’s organs when they overheard someone in his hospital room. “Calling it at 9:51.” He had gone into cardiac arrest for the third time. The couple heard the flatlining of one of Judah’s machines.
He was buried a week after he died. He was the youngest of seven children; a blond-haired boy who loved “Paw Patrol” and dancing; an ornery kid who almost always had a stuffed animal named Kakua — his pronunciation of koala — under his arm.
The Browns were unable to donate his organs because of the drugs used to try to save him.
‘We didn’t understand’
The Browns had signed Judah up for swim lessons earlier in 2016. He was comfortable in the water and had taken about six weeks of classes at the YMCA.
But Judah took lessons that perhaps were too advanced for someone his age, with a larger emphasis on learning swim strokes than on survival, Christi said. The Browns know that now.
“We didn’t understand how dangerous it was,” Christi said.
Each year, the YMCA of Greater Houston provides free swimming survival lessons at certain apartment buildings through the Houston Apartment Association.
More than 20,000 children have learned to swim through the lessons in the 11 years of the program, Mesigil said.
And in those 11 years, the number of drownings at apartment complex pools in the Houston area have decreased, she said, citing state data.
Recently, drownings in backyard pools have been more frequent in the county than in apartment pools.
Teaching parents proper swim safety tips is key, Mesigil said. Children should never swim alone and should be supervised at all times, she said.
Still coming to terms
The Judah Brown Project had its roots in a fundraiser that one of Judah’s teachers, Annette Courtney, held for the Brown family.
“It hit me hard. I didn’t know the statistics of drowning, so I figured he was going to be OK,” Courtney said. “When my boss told us in the circle, I immediately started crying.”
By January 2017, the Judah Brown Project was a full-fledged foundation. Much of the group’s mission is to persuade doctors to talk to parents about the importance of drowning prevention.
The group also helps put on CPR classes and sponsors swim lessons for students who can’t afford them, Courtney said.
Judah lives on through the foundation’s work, his parents said.
“It’s his legacy,” Mark said.
Almost two years later, however, the family is still coming to terms with what happened.
Anna Brown, 16, the oldest of Judah’s siblings, said her brother’s death has altered her perception of life.
“The illusion of safety is gone,” Anna said. “This is what life is like.”
The family celebrated Judah’s life on June 10, when he would have turned 5 years old.
At his gravesite, they held a picnic featuring some of his favorite foods, including jelly beans and Funyuns.
They know Judah would have loved it.