Swim-a-Thon

The McGovern Foundation will host an annual Swim/Tread-a-Thon event during the week of August 3rd to August 10th.

Participants can swim or tread from any location, any time, between August 3rd and August 10th. We ask you to register to swim, tread, or sponsor this event to show your support for water safety. Every dollar raised helps to provide more resources to our state. 

We choose this date because August 3rd started off as a regular day for our family. We did some work early, followed by lunch, popsicles by the pool, and some swim time. Little did we know that day was about to turn our entire life upside down. 

Our baby girl was fighting for her life at 3:15 pm as I watched helplessly a few feet away. A short 29 minutes before I was shopping for dinner at Publix. A short 29 minutes changed our lives forever!

August 3rd was the day Em’s incident occurred, our baby girl fought to stay with us for an entire week. At the end of that week, we made the decision to donate her organs, trying to pull together some sort of good from this nightmare. We kissed our baby girl for the last time on August 10th. 

We choose this week to make a big impact on water safety because this week changed our family and since Em’s death- we have unfortunately met so many families that are just like us. We didn’t know drowning is the number 1 cause of unintentional death for children 1 to 4 years of age. We didn’t know that we should never have used floaties. We didn’t know that she could have learned to swim early. We didn’t know to check the water first. 

We ask you to help us educate our community about the risk factors related to drowning prevention and help to make the week of August 3-10th #ALL4EM WEEK.