What was just a family vacation outing on Aug. 13, 2022, in the Florida Keys is a day Jameson Reeder says his family never will forget.
And surely a day his 13-year-old son never will forget.
It was a picture-perfect day.
“The water was calm and clear,” Reeder, 45, was telling this story on May 21 to an audience captivated by his every word in the fellowship hall of Snyder Memorial Baptist Church. “We were at the Looe Key Reef, about nine miles offshore of the Florida Keys. It has never had a shark attack.”
So much for a father’s words on that fateful day.
“We were in the water — four kids,” Reeder said about his young children, including then 10-year-old Jameson Reeder Jr. “We talked that morning and said we would probably see sharks. When they see you looking, they don’t like it and move away.”
Allow me, if you will, to interrupt this story of this family vacation at the Looe Key Reef.
Jameson Reeder told us that you are five times more likely to be struck by lightning than to be attacked by a shark.
Not the case on this summer afternoon in the Florida Keys.
“So, a sea turtle surfaces near our boat,” Reeder said. “Jameson said, ‘Can we follow him with our Go-Pro [camera]?’ I was saying, ‘That’s my boy.’ I had always wanted to swim with a turtle, too.”
Jameson Reeder says he was distracted for a moment by a Queen Conch, one of those large marine snails found throughout the Florida Keys.
“That’s when I heard the screaming from J.J. and my wife,” Reeder said. “We see no shark.”
Reeder says he’s thinking his son probably was victim of a stingray or jellyfish.
The father rushed to his son in the water.
“He’s going white,” Jameson Reeder said. “I lifted him up, and that’s when we see from his kneecap [down] just bone.
“It’s ripped clean.
“I’m holding him in my arms,” he said, “and I’m thinking he’s bleeding to death.”
Jameson Reeder and his wife, Mary Catherine, were in shock, and so were the boy’s siblings watching a nightmare on the Looe Key Reef unfold on this Aug. 13, 2022, afternoon when Jameson Reeder Jr. had been viciously attacked by an aggressive 9-foot and nearly 500-pound bull shark.
“I put him on the back of the boat,” said Reeder, who is a pastor in his hometown of Charlotte. “I went to the captain’s chair and drove over all the reefs. We didn’t have any time. That alerted other boaters” that something had gone terribly wrong on the waters of Looe Key Reef.
‘A serious injury’
A faster boat operator transported Jameson Reeder Jr. to shore, where the youngster was airlifted to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami.
A medical triage team assessed the youngster’s leg.
“It became clear this was a serious injury,” Jameson Reeder said. “The shark had stripped his leg of tissue. They couldn’t keep his leg alive.”
Amputation of his oldest son’s right leg from the kneecap down, Jameson Reeder said, would be the only recourse.
Still traumatized from the shark attack and the surgery, days passed when young Jameson informed his parents that he could not feel his right leg toes.
“We had not told him his leg had to be amputated,” Jameson Reeder said.
You might be thinking this 10-year-old never would want to again be anywhere near Looe Key Reef.
You would be wrong.
“Four days later in the hospital, I called my dad,” Jameson Reeder Jr. told the audience that included Susie Reeder, the youngster’s great-aunt who is minister of missions at the Fayetteville church along Westmont Drive in Haymount. “I told my Dad I wanted to go back to the reef.”
OK, the boy’s father said.
“One day,” he said, “we will go back.”
Jameson Reeder Jr. wasn’t thinking about a year or two.
“No, Dad,” he told his father. “Not one day.”
Jameson Reeder Jr. did not want to be haunted by his fate of Aug. 13, 2022.
“Because I didn’t want the hospital and the shark attack to be my greatest fear,” he said.
The family did return to Looe Key Reef 10 weeks after the shark attack.
“I was a bit scared,” said James Reeder Jr., the boy with deep blue eyes, the engaging personality and a prosthetic right leg that he refuses to let define his life.
Once in the water, there was no more fear.
“We’re back!” Jameson Reeder Jr. said as he splashed in the water. “Jesus saved my life.”
Epilogue
Jameson Reeder and his son not only were telling the story to the Snyder Memorial Baptist Church audience, but Jameson Reeder and his wife are telling the story in Rescue at the Reef: The Miraculous True Story of a Little Boy with Big Faith, which is scheduled for publication on July 22. The Amazon Kindle pre-order edition is already available.
The publication is endorsed, Jameson Reeder says, by Bethany Hamilton, the 35-year-old professional surfer who lost her left arm to a shark attack at age 13 on Oct. 31, 2003, while surfing along Tunnels Beach in Kauai, Hawaii.
A grateful father says he and his wife hope the book will be an inspiration to others who are facing a crisis or struggles in their lives. He continues to hear the words of a son in the throes of the shark attack on Looe Key Reef.
“Daddy, it’s OK,” the boy told his distraught father on the boat. “Jesus is going to save me.”
Jameson Reeder’s mind drifts back to Aug. 13, 2022, when a family vacation went so wrong in the Florida Keys.
“It’s not the size of the shark, but the strength of your Savior,” a grateful father said before bowing his head in prayer. “I thank you, Father, to tell the story of how Jesus Christ saved my son’s life.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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