by Megan Montgomery
Mrs. McGarvin O’Melia, more commonly known Mrs. Mo, may make a quiet difference here at LHS, but in the Littleton community and even the rest of the nation, she is making a difference on a subject that touches so many people, yet isn’t talked about enough.
Mrs. Mo is a learning support services teacher at LHS, but outside of school she is a mother, non-profit foundation founder and advocate for drowning prevention across the country.
“I have 3 boys, I have a son who’s 15 and a sophomore, I have a son who’s 19 and a freshman in college and I have a son who would be 22. His name is Drennen, my 19 year old son is Quinn, and Sean is my 15 year old. All three of my boys are really good athletes, and grew up swimming and learned how to swim at a very young age…they all three swam at Southglenn, for the Southglenn Gators, at a young age, I think probably all started the youngest that they could which was 5 or something, so, I mean, they were really amazing swimmers and still are,” said McGarvin-O’Melia.
Unfortunately, on June 6, 2010, a horrible tragedy struck the O’Melia family, friends, and the community.
“7:00 on that Sunday, June 6, he went up to a birthday party for a really good friend of his. One of the girls whose birthday party it was, she came down our street, we lived pretty close to Southglenn, she just said ‘There’s been an accident and Drennen, you need to come up to the pool,’ but I remember thinking at the time, well he’s fine,”
“We go up there and I realize fairly quickly that he wasn’t okay. We entered there [at the gate] and he was across the pool where the tall lifeguard stand was, and he was on the ground. One of the lifeguards was with him, and a parent was with him…the ambulance just barely beat us in there and they were running over there. We went over there and they wouldn’t let us go over, and we like pretty quickly knew things weren’t great, but again I kept thinking, he’s going to be fine, he can swim, this was kind of at the shallow end of the pool anyway, he’s fine. We took him to the hospital, they wouldn’t even let me go with him in the ambulance. We got him to the hospital and he ended up passing away at 9:20.”
“I kept thinking, he’s going to be fine, he can swim, this was kind of at the shallow end of the pool anyway, he’s fine. “
After this tragedy, however, the family speculated whether things were done correctly and found out a lot of needed information about that night that caused them to take action.
“We realized that, he never had even been found by a lifeguard, a child found him. He was sitting underwater in 3 and a half feet of water at the shallow end, under an unoccupied lifeguard chair, that shorter lifeguard chair, the lifeguards had done a shift at 7:30 and missed him. There was only one lifeguard in the tall lifeguard chair, the other lifeguard was in the shed, and when they did the shift they didn’t go around the shallow end, they only went around where the starting blocks are so they missed him coming around the other way. A kid found him, got another kid, looked at him, pulled him up. Then, the lifeguard, the one that had just done the change like two minutes earlier, she stepped off the stand, yelled for the other lifeguard in the shed, and then the lifeguard who was in the chair never even deployed in the water. When she called 911 she didn’t know the address, they asked if there was an AD machine on sight, she said no, but there was one like 5 feet from her,” said O’Melia.
“…the lifeguard who was in the chair never even deployed in the water. When she called 911 she didn’t know the address, they asked if there was an AD machine on sight, she said no, but there was one like 5 feet from her “
“We also know he was under water for about 10 minutes, and we know that because we did end up going to court and everybody was found guilty, and negligent. We had a medical professional who studies drowning and nobody refuted him, and he found that he was under water for about 10 minutes, and it was cardiac arrest that ended up getting him.”
After that, in 2012, the O’Melia family decided to found a nonprofit organization called Drennen’s Dreams in hopes to prevent drowning and educate lifeguards and pool managers across the country.
Drennen’s Dream specifically focuses on working with lifeguards and aquatics managers and pool managers all over the nation
“We weren’t sure what we wanted to do, we knew we wanted to focus on water safety, and so we have a couple of things we’ve done. Drennen’s Dream specifically focuses on working with lifeguards and aquatics managers and pool managers all over the nation now, we’ve talked to over 300,000 lifeguards, my husband is the one that typically does that…he goes all over and speaks to lifeguards and shares our story and what went wrong. We don’t do it to make people feel inadequate, we do it because we know how important their job is. We put young kids up there, 16, 17, 18 even 15 I think you can lifeguard, and just how important that job is. That’s a lot of pressure on kids, and we talk to aquatics managers and pool managers, talking about the importance of them making sure their guards are ready to go.”
“We also found out through the process of our lawsuit that the pool manager at the time, he didn’t know how to manage a pool, he knew how to manage a golf course, but didn’t know how to manage a pool at all. He had not given the lifeguards the tools they needed, didn’t tell them about the AD machine, they didn’t have any of the first aid things that they needed or the equipment needed to make saves, none of that. They didn’t do any inservice training, ever, I think we found one page out in 24 years he had been there.”
Since they got nonprofit status in 2014, everyone involved in the Drennen’s Dream Foundation has been working hard to keep spreading their message and have learned so much more information to spread about drowning.
“Another thing we’ve done is partnered with American Red Cross, and two years ago they came out with a new curriculum and if anybody who goes through the Red Cross curriculum, it’s all online now and Drennen’s story is apart of that…we partner with a group called Families United to Prevent Drowning and we are a group of people that unfortunately keeps growing every year, and we’ve all lost children to drowning in different ways, maybe a backyard pool, maybe a lake, not wearing a life-jacket, fishing, falling out of a boat, just different ways we’ve lost children. We all work really hard on a national level to make awareness around drowning and how preventable it is because one thing I’ve learned about this is that drowning is the #1 cause of accidental death from ages 1-5 and it is the #2, I believe, for ages, especially males up to 17 behind car accidents, and we don’t talk about it and it’s just not out there.”
“We all work really hard on a national level to make awareness around drowning and how preventable it is”
This process has not only taught thousands of people around the nation how to be a better lifeguard or aquatics manager, but it’s also allowed the O’Melia family to see the difference they are continuing to make in their community and communities around the country by raising awareness for a cause that unfortunately touches so many.
If you’d like to learn more about the Drennen’s Dream Foundation, you can go to their website at https://drennensdreams.org/.
