Tragic lesson: Woman tells story of son's drowning to help parents stay alert
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian
Spring runoff still haunts her.
As water in the thin creek out back starts to rise, the dread rises with it.
Marti Johnson's mind tumbles back through time, through the years of tears, the years of hard-earned joy. It comes to rest 33 years ago, on the first day of summer 1975.
Marti, whose last name then was Sorenson, is in the backyard of the family's home on Miller Creek. Her two sons, Lane and Stevie, are playing hide-and-seek around a shed, running through the tall grass, laughing.
Marti Johnson stands near the stretch of Miller Creek: where her 3-year-old son, Stevie, drowned 33 years ago during spring runoff. Each spring, she goes to the part of the creek that runs through her backyard and drops three dandelions into the rushing water. Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian
Pam, Marti's oldest and just out of fourth grade, has run inside the house to get popsicles for everyone.
Marti is fighting a recalcitrant vine that has invaded the aspen trees that line the creek, which today is roaring after a spring full of rain and a few days of hot weather.
She sees the boys running toward her, maybe 30 yards away, and 3-year-old Stevie's wild brown hair is flying and the part-collie Brandy is bounding in the grass, and then Stevie is yelling about two planes flying overhead.
“Look at the planes, look at the planes,” he tells his mom.
She gives the boys a look, then goes back to the ornery vine, which will still be there 33 years later.
And then Lane, standing by a small bridge that spanned the creek, says: “Where's Stevie?”
Brandy is standing at alert, right by the bridge.
Where's Stevie?
Pam comes out of the house, and the family fans out. Check the shed. Check the neighbors. Just look around.
“You know, I think every parent has had that moment when they've looked away, caught up in whatever they're doing,” Marti said Tuesday. “But everything can change in that instant. And that's what happened.”
Stevie wasn't in the barn, or hiding in the grass, or gone to a neighbors. He was in the water, constantly unfurling and brown and, on that day, deadly.
Marti walked into the water looking for her son and was nearly swept away. A man went into the creek down lower and wound up fighting for the bank.
Stevie was found later in the evening, down by the culverts on Lost Mine Loop.
Later that evening, the sun went down on the first day of summer 1975. Marti and her husband Bob cried and raged and couldn't sleep, even with the tranquilizers a friendly neighbor left for them.
Marti cried through the summer, then the fall. The kids would go off to school, she'd go to bed and cry.
Pam came home from the first day of fifth grade that fall. She'd had to write a story about her family.
“I had to write that I only had one brother,” she told her mom. Marti cried again.
She burned with guilt and the fear of another loss, wrestled with a way to reorganize that summer day.
Eventually, though, the tears stopped. The empty hole where Stevie had been remained, but life filled up again for Marti Johnson.
“We all have a hole where we've lost something,” she said. “You learn to move on. You have to move on. But you never forget.”
Spring runoff won't let Marti forget. Over the years, a notion formed in her mind, playing itself out as insistently as snowmelt fills creeks and rivers.
Tell your story, it said. Tell your story and help another parent.
“I'm not really the sort of person to advocate for things, but I started to think that maybe there was some sort of campaign I could do that would remind parents about high water in the spring,” Johnson said.
She knew children died from time to time in the irrigation ditches that thread through Missoula. And someone falls into a wilderness creek too often, or a child tumbles from a raft without a lifejacket.
Tell your story.
This spring hasn't been as wet as the spring of 1975, but something this year pulled the trigger for Marti. Maybe it was all the snow in the mountains. Maybe it was the sound of Miller Creek in the backyard.
In part, it was the sentimental Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman movie, “The Bucket List.”
“I guess this must be the year to do some of my bucket list,” Marti wrote recently. “The list you've always thought or wanted to do before you kick the bucket. This has been on my list of things to do for a long time. So here goes.”
Then she called the newspaper to tell the story
“I just decided that it was time for me to speak up, to say to parents to stay alert, keep their guard up,” Marti said. “You can't run around living your life like you're afraid, but you can be more attentive, more alert.”
Think about one thing as you look at your children, as they laugh and cry and tell stories and wait for popsicles and look at airplanes and run through the tall grass with their brothers and dogs and play hide-and-seek and then hide again.
Think about not finding them.
“I just want parents to look at their children and think what it would be like not to have them,” Marti said. “Think about it.”
