An unspeakable tragedy unfolds (2024)

We should all be proud of the way the residents of Conneaut rallied around the family of 11-year-old Hunter Ebie, the boy who lost his life in a turbulent Lake Erie a week ago.

Hunter was apparently swept away on June 7 while wading in shallow waters on the beach off Conneaut Township Park. Despite the efforts of his mother, who reportedly went into the lake after him, and dozens of rescue personnel who quickly assembled to try to save him, the search sadly moved from a rescue to a recovery.

An angry Lake Erie made those efforts difficult, and Hunter was not found until Tuesday afternoon.

The community did its best to put its collective arms around the boy’s family during the sort of tragedy no parent should ever have to experience. The outpouring of care and consolation from people here won’t fill the forever void in the lives of those who knew and loved Hunter, but we can only hope it provided a bit of comfort in his family’s darkest hours.

Can you imagine — as a parent — standing on that beach all those days, looking out into the waves and coming to the realization that your child is gone forever and that you must plan a funeral?

One minute a family is enjoying a day at the beach and in the next, their lives have changed and will never be the same.

It’s a nightmare no parents wants to think about, but one that became an awful reality for Hunter’s mother and father in a matter of moments.

As a father myself, my heart aches for them. I was reminded of standing on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in 2000. A friend and I were in California for a work-related trip and spent a day sightseeing in one of the most beautiful cities.

Well, it was then, anyway.

As we strolled across the bridge, we came upon a plaque commemorating the life of a young child whose life was lost when she slipped through a 9 1/2-inch gap between the pedestrian walkway and the bridge’s roadway.

Gauri Govil was 2 years old. She was walking with her 4-year-old sister when stumbled, slipped through the gap and fell 170 feet to her death.

Reports after the 1997 freak accident indicated that the gap between the walkway and roadway was 3 1/2 inches wider than California regulations allowed for such structures.

Eight days after Hunter drowned in Lake Erie, there are some uncomfortable questions that must be asked.

• Why are there no lifeguards stationed on that beach?

• Were visitors warned about the conditions on the lake that day?

• If the conditions were that bad, why wasn’t the beach closed?

This is not an effort to assign blame after an unspeakable tragedy. But Hunter’s family has suffered a loss that will be with them for as long as they live. He will never enter sixth grade — as he would have this fall — and will never graduate high school and go to college. He will never fall in love, marry and give his parents grandchildren.

As much as we all want to hold his family close — at least in our hearts — and try to console them, theirs is a loss that can never be eased despite our best intentions.

All we can do is hug our own loved ones close and pray that no other families experience such a loss.

And we should do what we can — whatever the cost — to make sure that such a tragedy never happens again on Conneaut Township Park beach.

By our count, at least four lives have been lost in those Lake Erie waters since 2019. Some were off the beach and others near the breakwall. Either way, that’s four too many. We ought to do our best to ensure that number doesn’t grow.

Next to consolation and prayers, it’s the least we can do.

ED PUSKAS is the Star Beacon editor. Write him at epuskas@starbeacon.com.

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