From Tragedy to Trailblazer
A Q&A Interview with Kennette Pyles,
pediatric swim survival advocate
In the United States, drowning is among the leading causes of death for children ages 1-4, second only to birth defects. In children up to age 14, it is the second leading cause of death behind motor vehicle crashes. This month’s featured girlfriend, Kennette Pyles, is creating a ripple effect to reduce the statistics of drowning among kids of all ages.
From the moment I first met Kennette at a toddler “swim lesson” for my then 2-year old son, I was fascinated by her process of instantly engaging him in learning life-saving water skills. As I learned her story behind how this became her life’s passion and purpose, I was also deeply moved and inspired to share it with others. If you are in the aftermath of tragedy or heartbreak in your life, I hope this story will be a life preserver you can reach for!
LH: I’m so happy to share your LIFE PRESERVING story, Kennette! I’m calling this interview “From Tragedy to Trailblazer” because I see it as a great example of what the Bible tells us in Genesis 50:20 about how things the enemy intends for our harm, God uses for good. The end of this verse even says specifically that “what is now being done is saving many lives.” This is exactly what you have been doing for the last 23 years – saving many lives! You have pioneered something that didn’t exist here in our community… something that has benefited my own kids in their safety and well-being. You did this after a tragic loss happened in your family. Tell us about that loss?
KP: We were camping with friends at their property on the Tennessee River in Alabama. We were at the end of a three-day 4th of July weekend, and at one point our 3 kids were split up between me and my husband. In a moment of confusion not knowing which one of us our 3-year-old, Ryan was with, we went from thinking he was in our friends’ house sleeping to realizing he had walked out and wandered down to the river. By the time we found him he had drowned. CPR was attempted and helicopters came...it was the worst day of my life. July 4th, 1999.
LH: So heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine how you could pick up the pieces from a tragedy like that with 2 other little ones to continue raising in the midst of such heartbreak?
KP: My older son Russell was 7, and my daughter Caroline had just turned 1 year old on July 3rd, while we were at the lake. While I was still numb and in shock about a month after Ryan died, my mom mentioned a program she’d just learned about in Florida that teaches babies water survival. At first I was totally closed to it – I had decided we would never go near a lake again! But my mom kept encouraging me to go and check it out. I reluctantly did so with a lot of anger, woundedness and skepticism at first.
LH: It is understandable that a lot of people would say, “I don’t want any part of this – I don’t even want to look at it. It will just be a painful reminder of what just happened to my son.” It took a lot of courage for you to step out and go to Florida to check out this program your mom suggested.
KP: Yes! I was aggravated with her for pushing it. But here I was on a flight with my baby daughter, and we’re sitting next to a teenager who turns to me and says, “So... are you going to Disney World?” I answered with sarcasm, “Nooooo I’m taking this baby to apparently learn how to swim.” This girl immediately responded with the man’s name, Dr. Barnett, who had founded the program in Florida! I said, ‘You know Harvey Barnett?” She said, “He taught me to swim as a baby...he teaches everybody!”
LH: Wow! That seems like a divinely appointed encounter! Like an angel was sitting next to you on the plane, letting you know you were exactly where you’re supposed to be.
KP: I had goosebumps. It definitely gave me more of an open mind. Then when I met him, and I watched how he had Caroline swimming under water, then turning over and floating in a matter of just a few weeks, I was amazed.
LH: Were you scared to trust your daughter in his hands after what had just happened?
KP: I was surprised by how un-scared I was. It was just fascinating watching him. You know what I felt? I felt like here is a person who has created a cure for a disease that no one had bothered to share with me. Wait a minute...there’s a cure for this?! There’s a method...there’s a path...but yet...why didn’t I know about it?
LH: Had you been doing things for water safety with your son prior to his drowning?
KP: Yes! I had done ‘Mommy And Me’ with him at the Y; we were in the middle of 3-year-old swim lessons [where they put a floatation bubble device on his back] the weekend he drowned. I was putting floatation devices on him whenever we were near the water, which I thought was the right thing to do. Other parents I have talked to who have lost kids to drowning say the same things I felt back then. Doing what we thought was right and safe, but if it was right and safe, then why did this happen?
LH: So, it sounds like a light bulb moment happened for you with Dr. Barnett. You were seeing a solution to a problem that parents didn’t know existed with other methods?
KP: What I now know is that putting floaties/puddle jumpers on a child can give them a false sense of safety. If they walk into the water with no floatation device they haven’t learned what to do when their body doesn’t float, so they do nothing and they drown if someone doesn’t get to them quickly enough. A common name for this is silent drowning. After losing my son to this very thing, I was now watching this man train my baby girl to swim under water, then turn her body over to float and breathe, when she wasn’t even old enough to learn to swim yet! THIS is what babies and toddlers NEED TO KNOW how to do!
LH: Do you know the story behind Dr. Barnett creating this program?
KP: When he was somewhere in his teenage or college years, he learned about a set of twins in his neighborhood who climbed through a bedroom window and drowned in a backyard pool. He wanted to create something to prevent this from happening to other kids, so he got a Doctorate in Psychology that helped him experiment with steps to figure it out.
LH: Why did he need a Doctorate in Psychology?
KP: He liked the idea of the way kids think. You can’t really teach a baby or toddler something like this verbally – it’s more about muscle memory and sensory level learning. Like when they’re learning to walk, you’re not teaching them “stand on that foot, then do this...” Very similar to trial and error.
LH: So the Psychology degree helped Dr. Barnett wrap his mind around the way kids think, in order to connect the dots for how to get their body to react with survival moves in water when they’re not yet ready to swim...?
KP: Yes, the Pyschology together with great physical knowledge of the body processes.
LH: OK. So you did the program with Caroline and then returned back home. Did you go back home and tell others about it?
KP: Back then it was only offered in a few states, and mine wasn’t one of them. I was intrigued and impressed by the program, but I did not have any thought of starting one in my area. I was pregnant with my 4th child, and as the next season of summer rolled around my mom, again, prompted the idea of taking Caroline back to Florida for a refresher course. She was now 2, so she could not only refresh her 1-year old water skills but also now learn more developmentally at her older age.
LH: It sounds like God was using your mom to be His megaphone!
KP: I think it was her not giving up on my no’s. She was persistent, and she’s not even normally that way. She would start to present arguments or reasons why it made sense. Looking back, I know that she didn’t think I was going to have another child drown...she was actually looking out for me.
LH: Oh I see! Kind of like “get back on the horse right away after you fall off and get hurt....”
KP: Exactly. And I kept wanting to say NO, I’M THE VICTIM! WHY DO YOU NOT SEE ME AS THE VICTIM? WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?
LH: So you decided to take Caroline back to Florida at the age of 2...
KP: Yes, and this time I’m seeing 2-3-4 year old kids...swimming like 8-9-10 year olds. I’m seeing the next phase – fascinating! That was what really drew me in...realizing this is not just a beginner safety thing, it’s a lifestyle. And Caroline loved it, she exceled. She was a rock star in it.
LH: Did you have a swim background growing up?
KP: I swam on swim team, but it wasn’t a life career or vocation. I was about to return to my corporate job at the time my son’s drowning happened, which I never went back to even though I had planned on it.
LH: What a perfect example of the phrase, “God doesn’t call the equipped – He equips the called.” You did not have to be an Olympic swimmer to start a swim program like this, He just equipped you for it as you said yes to each of the steps. So as you came back from the second trip seeing your daughter as a rock star, seeing how the program works and is a way of living, were you starting to entertain the idea of creating a program in your area?
KP: I started learning about why it’s not offered at the Y or other existing places. Back then, the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) was saying ‘no swim lessons for kids under 4.’
LH: Kind of like when the FDA approves or doesn’t approve things for consumption?
KP: Yes. And I was now thinking about the why’s. If it’s going to save young lives, why is all the world not doing it? But it still did not spur me toward starting a program back home...even though Caroline was swimming like crazy and people were noticing at the neighborhood pool. I was just thinking about the why’s.
LH: What was the impetus for finally creating the program?
KP: We decided to move to Atlanta when I had our 4th child, Robert, to be closer to family. That spring, my mother – once again!! – expressed an idea. She said, “Why don’t you become an instructor?” I was again resistant, but she was presenting it like a way I could give back just by helping someone else set up programs in new areas. I said yes, thinking I would just be kind of a helper and spokesperson, and Mom arranged for a Colorado instructor to come and train me and 2 others using her pool. Then just as we all got through training, this Colorado trainer -- who I thought I was just going to be a helper for in setting up her program in Atlanta -- suddenly had an emergency and had to go back to Colorado. Here we were, with about 40 kids scheduled to learn this program in my mom’s swimming pool, and no instructor! Mom said, “I guess you’re going to have to follow through and do it yourself.”
LH: How did you get the 40 kids lined up?
KP: Word of mouth and some local advertising. That was even fascinating to me...how are we getting all these kids?
LH: That’s a lot of kids for something just started. So you had one plan...just to do the training and help this other person start the program and be a spokesperson – but God had another plan. He had you doing the training to be the one to do it!
KP: I remember being terrified. I even told a couple of parents, “welllll the instructor is leaving, so it’s done.” It took more persistence from mom to get me to follow through and be the one. At first, I was throwing up a lot from anxiety!
LH: Where was your faith at this point? How did you see God? Were you a praying person?
KP: Honestly, I was still feeling like a victim. I didn’t grow up in the church, and I felt like I was being punished...I saw God like an adversary. Why wasn’t I on the side of good luck? My Dad had died of cancer 7 months before Ryan passed, and there was a faith journey in that which had started and was still continuing.
LH: Are you able to now look back and see that God’s hand was arranging the path you were now on?
KP: Yes. I don’t believe God made Ryan die. I don’t think He does things like this to teach us lessons. But Dr. Barnett helped me understand another kind of tragedy that exists for parents: when their child drowns but they don’t die. The parents spend the rest of their lives taking care of these children that eventually die of something even worse because of the damage that has been done. He told me, “You have an opportunity to change lives out there.” I think he was saying that just from a place of letting other people know this program exists – neither one of us knowing I would carry it forward by creating a program in another part of the country where it wasn’t available yet. I now live in the Nashville area and have continued teaching a revised version here.
LH: When this tragedy happened, Ryan’s life and his destiny were cut short. Yet...God made a plan from it and said “I’m going to turn this for good.” You, Kennette, were part of that plan that is having a ripple effect. You were a pioneer.... taught by Dr. Barnett who was the original pioneer.
KP: I’m so grateful for what I learned from him. Now 23 years later, I refer to what I do now as “survival swimming.” At first my efforts were solely focused on teaching babies and toddlers how to survive in the water. Over time, I’ve now expanded my program to continuing to teach further skills as the kids get older – move them into strokes, get them onto swim teams and triathalons. So we are now teaching survival skills to the youngest ones and increasing their knowledge of water through the teenager years. It is something that can be not just a survival skill, but foster a life-long passion.
LH: Have you been able to “rest” in knowing that there may be an untold number of lives saved after Ryan’s death from what you are doing now?
KP: Yes - From my decades of doing this and my older son, Russell, and his wife Megan, now working with me. Russell is now 30 years old…he was only 7 when Ryan died, and it really put an imprint on his heart. I love that we now have a legacy to carry on together for Ryan.
LH: I’ve read that in recent years the AAP has now revised their earlier stance of recommended swim lessons from 4 years of age to, now, 1 year of age. This is good news! In closing, do you have any real-life stories you can share of your lessons saving a lives?
KP: Several families have shared with me how their young children use their survival skills to help prevent drowning. One of those stories is a family who had a 1 ½ year-old daughter. Her mom had moved here from California and had been bringing her daughter to lessons. She took her child back to California for a BBQ at her parents’ house, and the child had wandered away from the party. There was a search for her and she was found by someone floating with her clothes on in a pond type of fountain… face up in the water, alive and well and waiting for someone to come and find her. This was what I had trained her to do at that part of the program — turn herself over and float/breathe. This mom believes her baby being conditioned to do that through those lessons saved her life.
LH: Wow! What a blessing to be able to hear stories like that of the difference you have made in forging this pathway that honors your son’s life by saving others! Is there a way that people can help you in your mission?
KP: Construction is under way of our new facility that will house a heated indoor commercial pool for year-round pediatric water safety and swim lessons. We are in need of volunteers, and donations are welcome to help us open our facility and/or help families with lesson costs. Checks payable to Ryan Pyles Aquatic Foundation, or Venmo donations sent to Kennette-Pyles.
About Kennette Pyles
Kennette Pyles has taught water survival skills in the Atlanta and Nashville areas for over 20 years to more than 8,000 infants and young children. After l using her 3 1/2 year-old son in a drowning tragedy, Kennette founded the Ryan Pyles Aquatic Foundation — named in his honor — to educate the community on ways to help prevent pediatric drowning. A new commercial indoor pool building is now under construction by the foundation in Nolensville, Tennessee. Its purpose is to ensure that families will always have a year-round place to go, for kids from infancy on up, to learn survival skills, grow in swimming skills, and participate in swim teams and triathalons. As the new website is under construction, you can reach Kennette for more information at 615-397-7124 or by email at kennettepyles@earthlink.net.
Kennette’s reSOURCEs:
Video - WilliamsonSource.com
Article – WilliamsonHerald.com
Facebook - Ryan Pyles Aquatic Foundation