Lisa MacDonald didn’t plan to be an advocate for water safety.
But all that changed in August 2022 when her 19-year-old daughter, Emily MacDonald, and Emily’s boyfriend Kory Ernster, 22, drowned in Lake Michigan at a beach in South Haven. The two were going for a swim when a current carried them toward the pier, and they were pulled under. A bystander pulled both out of the water but neither regained consciousness.
McDonald was a student at MSU at the time; Ernster was a recent graduate.
“I had to know why [this had happened] so I really started investigating,” said MacDonald. “How could this happen to two good swimmers?”
According to Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, as of Aug. 22, there have been 76 drownings in the Great Lakes in 2024, with 43 of those drownings in Lake Michigan.
“Since they’ve removed lifeguards from that beach [South Haven] there’s been 12 plus drownings and several lawsuits,” said MacDonald. “Community pools, they always have lifeguards. Community beaches, it’s becoming less and less.”
According to the CDC, drowning related deaths are on the rise in the U.S. More than 4,500 people died due to drowning each year from 2020-2022, which is 500 more per year compared to 2019. Almost 40 million adults (15.4%) in the United States do not know how to swim, the CDC reports.
Jacob Hazewinkel, pool supervisor at Mason Aquatic Center, didn’t have issues staffing his facilities with lifeguards this summer. Neither has Jim Jennings, operations and projects manager for the city of East Lansing. Both are able to recognize the importance of having lifeguards on duty.
“Being properly staffed [with lifeguards] is highly important,” said Jennings. “The value of having lifeguards is for the people that come to your pool.”
Jennings has worked for the city for 22 years and has been a certified lifeguard himself for 39 years. He started lifeguarding in high school, and after taking a break from aquatic operations, he entered back into the industry, full time, in 2004.
“If you’re fully staffed, that also means that your staff is attentive and responsive to anything that could, and does, happen at the facility,” said Jennings.
Hazewinkel, a lifeguard himself since 2016, said that you could “never have too many lifeguards, especially not in this state.”
While not a lifeguard herself, MacDonald has learned a lot about water safety since the incident in 2022. She now has a website, Save Lives, Hire Lifeguards, which is dedicated to advocating for lifeguards at beaches like South Haven.
“Lifeguards are one of the best [buffers] to prevent drowning in the Great Lakes, in any body of water, actually,” said MacDonald. “Having a lifeguard there is the first layer of protection when you’re talking about drowning protection.”
According to the South Atlantic Lifesaving Association, the chance a person will drown while attending a beach with properly trained lifeguards is 1 in 18 million or .0000055%.
Despite the added protection of having lifeguards on duty, getting adequate staff at beaches like South Haven may be a whole different issue.
“There are different lifeguarding certifications for shallow water pools, deep water pools, waterfronts, and waterparks,” said Jennings, who had lifeguarded at a lake at the beginning of his career. “It was a smaller lake, so we were able to control the swimming area.”
While Jennings recognizes the importance of lifeguarding, he states that it may not be realistic to lifeguard such a vast area. He states that accounting for aspects like boaters or kayakers would require a level of training that the average lifeguard doesn’t have.
However, MacDonald is adamant that when you build the lifeguard chairs, the lifeguards will come.
“It’s hard to get people into that field if there’s no jobs at the end of it,” said MacDonald. “Why would these young people who aspire to be lifeguards do all that training knowing that there’s very few lifeguard opportunities?”
Despite the tragedy of losing a loved one, MacDonald said that there is something good that came from it.
“I didn’t know 90% of the stuff I’ve learned since she [her daughter] drowned,” MacDonald said.
Along with partnering with nonprofits, she now goes around and educates all ages on how to make safer choices in the water.
“I’ll never know if I’ve prevented anyone from drowning,” said MacDonald. “But I’ve educated them to maybe make a better choice when they’re on the water or taking their kids to the water.”