Have fun but please be careful on the water

Returning to my car after mass Sunday evening in Yakima, I checked my phone messages and missed calls, as I usually do. There was one oddly worded text from the Grant County Sheriff's Office.

"Water search under way on Columbia River," it was tagged.

I wondered for a moment what that meant. Nobody searches for water on the Columbia. It could mean only one other thing, and the thought gripped me.

Water accidents, such as the one in which a Mr. Tomas of Mattawa died in a canal last week, always strike me deeply. My first experience with a family death involved water, and it still haunts me 45 years later.

I was 12 the day we received the phone call from Montana. My cousin Nellie, 14, and her 20-something brother-in-law Fermin had drowned in the same accident on the Yellowstone River.

Nellie decided to go swimming during a family picnic. She dove into the water and, when she didn't come up, Fermin dove in to look for her.

In a subsequent phone call we learned there was some fencing wire under water in that stretch of the river. Both were snagged and couldn't free themselves.

I didn't know Nellie. I'd never met her. Actually that day was the first I'd heard of her. Still I was stunned by her death.

Until that moment, I thought we all got to live long lives. Since then, water scares me.

Just a couple of winters ago there was a water tragedy on the S curves at Sentinel Gap, just up the river from this latest accident. A truck came through the curves too fast, slipped on ice, broke through the guard rail and went into the water.

The original email did not mention death. So I thought that, miraculously, the driver had survived. I learned differently in a follow-up phone call.

That death of a man I did not know, just like the Tomas death, saddened me. Every water accident takes me back to 1957.

The latest water scare involving a family member occurred during an outing at the MarDon Resort a couple of weeks ago. My son and grandson (uncle and nephew) went out on a Wave Runner. I was okay with it for I knew they were wearing life jackets.

Still, when their craft went still several hundred feet off shore, it got my attention. Then it tipped and both went into the water. I kept asking my wife, who has better vision, if they were both up. Shortly, they were.

The grandson told me later they had stopped to change pilots. Both stepped to the same side of the craft to make the switch and tipped the boat.

They got back on, re-started and, shortly, tipped again. This time, my grandson said, the engine stopped as they were making a turn. The boat tipped because they were both leaning into the turn.

The whole thing shook me up pretty well, even though I knew they had life jackets. I canceled my own plans to ride as thoughts of Nellie came back.

Some people scoff when I declare my fear of water. That's okay. They probably haven't had a Nellie experience.

Have your fun, I say. But do it sensibly. Be aware of the power of water, especially rivers like the Columbia.