On a Sunday afternoon in late May, 1982, Forestburg Pool Manager Betty Eskdale saved the life of six-year-old Lee Hethershaw, who had apparently jumped in the middle of the pool intending to walk to the shallow end, with dire consequences.

Nearly 40 years later, Eskdale received a message from Hethershaw, who wanted to convey his thanks for her actions.

As it turned out, life came full circle for Hethershaw in 2015, when he and two other men saved a woman whose vehicle had gone into Cameron Lake in BC.

Eskdale said when she moved to Forestburg with her family, she decided that swimming would be a good activity for her children, despite her own life-long fear of water brought on by a mischievous cousin and a lake swim.

Eskdale enrolled in beginner swimming lessons, with all the young children, and then continued her learning with adult evening classes.

Her first year ended with her Red Cross Red level, by the following year, she had reached Bronze level. Eskdale says that when Killam Pool Manager June Gair came out to test her, she asked why Eskdale was doing this. “I replied, because I like a challenge,” she says, “and then June challenged me to come work for her in Killam.”

Thus started her lifeguard and swimming instructor work, but the drive back and forth started to wear on her, so when the Pool Manager position came up in Forestburg, she jumped on the opportunity.

She well remembers the day in question. It was the first day the pool was open in 1982, and she’d spent the morning on some refresher life saving classes in Killam. She returned to Forestburg, and was just hanging up a “what to do in an emergency” poster she’d made when a youngster ran into the office yelling, “Air, air, we need air.”

Eskdale ran out to the pool deck, where her lifeguard, Kathy, was kneeling over the prone body of Hethershaw. She couldn’t get air into him.

Eskdale says her training took over, “I turned him on his side and gave him a blow on the back, and water came pouring out of his mouth.”

She says she remembers having to do that four times in all, but she was still having trouble getting air into the young boy’s lungs.

Eskdale says, “The whole time this was happening, I couldn’t believe it. This young boy couldn’t be in such trouble; the sun was shining, it was beautiful day. I thought, ‘This can’t be happening!’

“So I was talking to him the whole time. I remember saying, ‘I don’t even know your name!’”

She says at that point, his life was in the balance, as his larynx relaxed in what she feared was the ‘death rattle’ she heard a faint “Lee.”

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Leslie Cholowsky
Editor