By WALLYCE TODD
Staff writer

I drowned. CPR saved my life. Let me explain.

I’m the youngest of four children. My mom declares I came out of the womb talking. If you’ve ever met me, you’ll soon discover I talk fast. I promise, I don’t talk as fast as my mind moves. If there was some kind of digital imaging for how quickly brain waves hop, skip and jump from one topic to another…the picture of my thoughts would be a bit like a pogo stick, I’m sure.

Well, I can walk fast as well…and I started that practice early on. I think rambling is nice, but oft’ times running is better…O.K., not literal running, but you know what I mean. If you get there fast, you can sit and relax sooner. Or at least, in theory. I’m not sure I’m very good at that practice.

I also enjoy eating. When I was a child, I’d already developed a sweet tooth. Apparently, by two or three years of age, I already had a fondness for cookies, or “biscuits” as they’re called in England.

So, if you combine my walking fast, with my bouncing brain waves and my love of sweets, you’ll begin to paint of picture of how it ended up that I drowned.

The story is true. I don’t remember the details, so I’ll share with you the way I understand it to have happened.

I was 3 years old. My mother took my siblings and me to North Myrtle Beach. We went with family friends. Apparently, I was running a slight fever, so while my brothers, sister and friends were playing in the water and on the sand, I took a nap.

When, I woke up – as the story goes – I grabbed a cookie in each hand and walked off in search a cool adventure. I say cool because I laid face down in the cool water of a gulley going into the ocean…probably to lessen the heat of my fever-flushed cheeks. I mention adventure because that’s what developed when I breathed in water instead of air. God didn’t make me amphibious.

No, as my lungs filled with water, a frightening situation developed.

But to one of my brothers (just a few years older than me at the time), it wasn’t frightening – it was funny. Of course, he and his friend wouldn’t have laughed at me if they knew I was dying, but they were little, too; and when they saw my body jerking up and down in convulsions, they just thought I was acting silly.
It’s a good thing they thought so, because they ran to show my mom my “shenanigans.”

As one who has lived more than three and half decades with my mother being lovingly protective of my goings and comings (it’s a family tradition to say “go prayers” before every journey) – I know she wasn’t delinquent in her duties as a Wallyce Watcher.
Instead, she was likely keeping her eyes on the cavorting of the other children, and I woke up and walked fast to the shallow water making its way into the sea.

So, when my mom saw that I was convulsing, she rushed to pull me up from the gulley and then started screaming for help. A small crowd gathered, but at first, no one did anything.

Not because they were apathetic. Ornery as I can be, I am very loved. But no one knew how to help me. And as much as my loved ones wanted to keep me earthbound, I was heading for heaven.

Why? Because at the time, no one in my family or in our friends’ family knew CPR.

But Don Hoover did.

Who is Don Hoover? He’s the man who saved my life.
We’d never met him before and we never saw him again after that day, but God used him to keep my water-laden lungs from letting me die.

Don was from Florida at the time. He was vacationing at the beach, and I believe he was just taking a jog on the Grand Strand when he came upon a distraught mother begging for someone to help her little girl.

He heeded her cry and breathed air into my body and proceeded to keep me perched on earth rather than entering into eternity.

From what we gathered, he had not known how to administer “rescue breathing” for very long. If I understand correctly, he’d just completed a course to be CPR certified within days or weeks before being on the beach.

Law mercy, am I glad he teamed up with my guardian angel(s) that day. I mean, I’m really looking forward to the space God’s preparing for me in His heavenly home; but, selfishly, I’m right thankful I’ve been able to grow up and get to know all my family and friends. Life is hard sometimes, but I’m grateful I’ve been given the gift of living it.

For years, I would write Don Hoover a Christmas card and include a school picture in it. Somehow, by my early teens, we’d lost touch. He moved, the card was returned and there weren’t so many ways to find lost friends at the time.

Now, with Google and all those “reconnect” and “reunion” websites, I might could find him again. It would be a privilege for me to give the man a hug. There’s not really any payment I, or my family, could give him that would express enough gratitude.

So, suffice it to say, I think learning CPR is a good idea. I’m sure glad we have so many rescue squad members around the county who are the “Don Hoovers” of their community.

Today’s special section highlights our local heroes.

In addition, our local Red Cross will facilitate classes for businesses, civic groups, churches, etc. that would like to train people to be able to administer CPR. There’s no substitute for knowing how to save someone’s life.

As an adult who would have died in her childhood without having someone give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, I can only say, Gracias. Dakujem. Merci. Danke.

Indeed, thank you, Don Hoover. You saved my life. It’s a gift that keeps on giving when a person is able to keep on living.
I’m ever grateful. Forever thankful. And really pleased.