
A fun day at Long Beach, Washington, took a sudden turn for the worse when
Paul Doumit, while watching his son and his nephew, both about ten years old, saw
them go farther from shore than they should have gone, and then they begin
to panic. So he ran though the pounding surf and waded
about forty or fifty yards through ever deepening water where the boys
were having trouble. His nephew, the stronger swimmer of the two, seemed to
be holding his own, but he saw his son was flailing with his arms and
gasping for breath. He reached his boy and held onto him, holding him
above the shoulder high water.
Running through the bitter
cold water had tired
him, but the important thing was his son whom
he loved more than anything was safe. Because of his love, he was willing
to put himself in harms way to protect his son. He never stopped to
consider the danger to himself. This is the way love works.
He was holding onto his boy when he discovered his feet were trapped in the
sand. Evidently he had stood for a few seconds sinking in a patch of soft,
shifting, sand, that some locals call a crab hole. He couldnt pull his
feet free from the suction of the sand and the more he struggled, the lower
he sank. Soon the waves were crashing over him and he was no longer
able to catch his breath.