Planting the Garden of Life
June 30, 2010
Nuemen Henry
July 2, 2010
Stephanie Thibodeaux used to come home around 10 p.m., tired from a long day at work, but would always be reinvigorated by her son, 2-year-old Hayden Davenport, who would be waiting for her at the picnic table, eager for another game of “superheroes.”
“Mom, I’m ready to play!” he would say with a laugh. He was even going to be Spiderman for Halloween.
It was one of Thibodeaux’s most vivid memories of Hayden, but ever since Sept. 18, 2007, her picnic table has been vacant, and her most vivid memory has been replaced with the last moment her child was alive.
“I wish I could pull better memories out of my head,” she said. “As much as I want to remember my son because he was my best friend, my entire world, my most vivid memory of him is his last day, and I wish it wasn’t.”
Hayden’s last day started out just like any other. He wanted to go outside and play with his cousins.
“He threw a fit to go outside,” his mother recalled, who had been feeding Hayden’s younger sister, Reese, who was 8 months old. “My sister was cleaning the pool to close it for the winter, but they all got sidetracked putting up Halloween decorations. My sister remembers him putting a light-up skull into the ground.”
Thibodeaux went outside to tell Hayden it was time for a bath, but he was nowhere to be found.
“We all scattered like cockroaches looking for him, and I got on the phone with 911 because I thought he was kidnapped,” she said.
“Just send somebody, find my son,” she told the 911 dispatcher. That’s when she heard screams from outside.
Thibodeaux’s 10-year-old godson found little Hayden in the pool, not breathing.
Thibodeaux’s cordless phone fell to the floor.
After an unsuccessful attempt to give his son CPR, Kyle Davenport carried Hayden out toward the street, where firefighters soon tried shocking him back to life.
“I ran out to him, and said, ‘Hayden don’t leave me’ and he squeezed my hand, then dropped it,” Thibodeaux said through tears. “And that’s when I knew he was gone.”
The last thing Thibodeaux remembers was telling the nurses at the hospital that her baby was cold and that he hated to be cold, so they wrapped as many blankets around him as they could.
Hayden was pronounced dead at the hospital.
“There were about 20-something people in that room trying to save my son’s life,” Thibodeaux said.
The turning of events that day took about 10 minutes, but for Thibodeauxs, it was a lifetime, that all started because Hayden had climbed the pool ladder that had been left beside the pool, and fell in.
“It takes seven seconds for a child’s lungs to fill with water,” Hayden’s grandmother, Nancy Newsom said. “There was no splashing, no kicking, no screaming.”
Hayden had taken private swimming lessons, and was swimming by himself in a 5-foot-deep swimming pool just a week before he drowned.
“Swimming lessons do not make a child drown-proof,” Newsom said.
Newsom and the rest of Hayden’s family knew his story needed to be heard. His death was preventable.
And just like that, a mere two weeks after Hayden had passed, Thibodeaux and Davenport wiped the tears of grief that never had a real chance to dry off their faces – because they didn’t want anyone else to go through what they had just gone through.
“We had done some research and found out that there were many states that have a mandatory law, if you have any kind of body of water that’s 4 feet or deeper, you have to have a fence around it,” Thibodeaux said.
Terrebonne Parish has no such law.
“Learning that this law exists is when we started to fight for the law,” said Thibodeaux, who appropriately dubbed it “Hayden’s Law.”
Newsom explained that her family went back and forth for approximately nine months with the parish, working diligently to get petitions signed and fliers out to the public.
“I’ve jumped out of my car because I’ve seen a ladder in the pool unattended and handed them a flier,” Newsom said.
“We went to parish officials and started out there, but were out voted because they didn’t want to tell people what to do with their property,” Thibodeaux said.
But insurance companies tell homeowners that there has to be a fence around their pools, according to Newsom.
“There are 34 parishes in Louisiana that have swimming pool safety laws, and we are not one of them, unfortunately. I don’t understand what the insurance companies know that our parish doesn’t.”
Despite the trials and tribulations Hayden’s family endured while trying to get Hayden’s Law passed, they were, at the very least, able to declare June as Swimming Pool Safety Awareness Month in Terrebonne Parish, that still goes on today in memory of Hayden.
But the pain of losing her child still doesn’t lessen very much for Thibodeaux.
“We always had this special thing we would say to each other, ‘ I love you more than all the stars in the sky, I love you more than the sand on the beach, I love you more than all the water ocean. Around the world and back again, that’s how much I love you.’ And he said that to me the day of his accident,” she said, remembering it like it was yesterday.
Hayden passed away nearly three years ago, and Thibodeaux, along with the rest of Hayden’s family are still trying to raise pool safety awareness for young children.
“I’m going to have to relive this every day no matter what for the rest of my life,” Thibodeaux said. “So if my story can help someone else and make someone aware, I’ll tell it even though it kills me to relive it. It’s as simple as taking a ladder out of the pool, that’s all it is.”
Anyone who wishes to donate or support Hayden’s family’s cause can go to Haydenslaw.org.
Stephanie Thibodeaux sits with her 3-year-old daughter, Reese Davenport, at the Terrebonne Parish Courthouse Square Sunday at a candlelight vigil in honor of Hayden Davenport and Lauren Gros, another young child who died in a local pond last year. * Photo by JENNA FARMER
