If you ask Eli Lipsey what he remembers about July 12, 2004, he can’t tell you much.
The Indianola Academy senior was only 3 years old then, and like most people, memories of those early years are a little hazy.
His parents, Bill and Dana Lipsey, as well as his older brothers, Wyatt and Hank, remember that day very well. It was a day that changed their lives, and it nearly altered the course of their family’s future.
It was a typical summer day for Dana Lipsey, who was a stay at home mom, raising three sons, ages 3, 6 and 9.
The pool near their home had once belonged to a then-shuttered country club, and it was daily routine to go swimming around 10:30 in the morning, go home and eat lunch and return to the pool in the afternoon.
“Summers were really sweet with my kids,” Dana said.
That morning, a host of family, including cousins, were there to swim. Eli had gotten out of the pool and had taken his floaties off.
“I don’t remember much,” he recalled. “I remember I was going to sit down on the first step, and I was like, this isn’t very deep, so I stepped down on the second step of the pool. I remember slipping off the second step. The third step was too deep, and I remember trying to grab onto the pole and not being able to grab it.”
Eli was fully submerged in the pool, and he looked up and saw the sun through the water and said he just got sleepy.
Dana had been playing games with the other kids in the deep end when her niece asked “Where’s Eli?”
She looked outside the pool fence and in the yard, and she didn’t see him.
And then she remembered. He did not have his floaties on.
“He was floating facedown in the shallow end,” she said. “He had drifted into the shallow end.”
She jumped in to save her son, who by that time was not breathing and did not have a pulse.
“I carried him out of the pool and sat him on the side and started to do CPR,” she said.
Dana said she expected Eli to cough up the water in his lungs and to wake up, but she said, unlike the movies, it was very different.
“After I gave him CPR, I got a pulse,” she said. “His chest started to rise a little bit.”
By this time, her sons had gone to the neighbor, Alan McPhearson’s home, and he loaded them up in his truck to drive them to the emergency room at South Sunflower County Hospital.
“He was still breathing very shallow, and he had a pulse,” she said. “On the way to the hospital, I would freak out, and Alan would shake me and say ‘breathe into the baby.’”
By that time, he had started to make noises, but Dana still feared the worst.
“I thought he had brain damage, but then I started yelling out,” she said. “I just started saying the name of Jesus over and over again, and he started to cry, but he was still really not breathing well.”
The Call
Eli’s father, Bill, was working at his shop when his oldest son Wyatt called him, moments after his wife had pulled their youngest son from the pool.
“I think he either said ‘daddy, Eli fell in the pool or Eli drowned in the pool,’” Bill said. “I can’t remember. I think I just asked, is he alive? Wyatt said ‘I don’t know.’”
Bill jumped in his 1989 Isuzu Trooper, and he went as fast as he could go in the truck.
“On the way down, all I could think to do was call my friend, Andy Daniels,” he said. “I called Andy, and I told him what had happened. I said, I need you there.”
When he pulled up to the emergency room, Eli had already been taken back, and he was showing signs of recovery.
“Andy was standing outside, waiting on me,” he said. “I jumped out of the truck, and I said, is he alive, and Andy said ‘yes.’ Then I said, is he going to be okay, because I knew that even if he was alive, he could still have brain damage, and he said ‘yes.’ After that, I was okay, but that was a ride to hell.”
More than a Doctor
Dr. Eddie Donahoe still remembers the moment Dana Lipsey shoved her limp son into his hands through the window of her neighbor’s truck.
He had been alerted to the fact that an incident had taken place at the pool, but due to a miscommunication, he thought he would be tending to Dana and Bill’s middle son, Hank.
Donahoe had delivered all three boys, and he was close friends with the family, so he was not prepared for what happened when they drove up to the hospital.
“I thought he was dead, but when I got him and ran into the hospital with him, he was breathing,” Donahoe said. “He was just kind of grunting, and he was pale and just limp.”
Dana had been furiously giving her son CPR in the truck all the way to the hospital, and she had hoped that the efforts were paying off.
“I’ve known Eddie a long time,” she said. “He delivered all of my children, and I’ve never seen him make that look before. It was so human. With him, it’s always been like ‘it’ll be okay,’ and he’s always been good in crisis (situations).”
Donahoe grabbed the toddler and rushed him back to the ER, and that is when he finally coughed up a lot of the water that had been in his body.
Thirty minutes later, Eli was awake.
“When he woke up, he woke right up,” Donahoe said. “It was pretty impressive.”
Donahoe was still fearful he had been without oxygen long enough to have caused significant brain damage, but Eli was resilient.
“He immediately recognized everybody,” Donahoe said. “He starts describing the whole thing. He said, ‘I jumped in the water, and I dwonded and I dwonded and I dwonded.’”
After a couple of hours in the intensive care unit, Donahoe released Eli to go home with his parents.
An All Around Good Person
Just hours after being found facedown in a pool, Eli Lipsey was back to his old, playful 3-year-old self.
“We were leaving the hospital, and I said, what do you want to do, and he said ‘I want to go ride the 4-Wheeler,’ so we went home and rode the 4-Wheeler all over the place,’” Bill Lipsey said of the aftermath of what could have been a tragedy.
That was Eli, though, and he really has never changed, according to his parents.
“He was always a very easy child,” Dana said.
Bill described him as “one of the most pleasant people I know.”
Aside from being “furious” that he could not get back in the pool for a week after the drowning - due to pneumonia - Eli wore the same smile he always had, and to this day, he is neither challenged nor traumatized by the event.
He scored a 31 on his ACT, and he plans to attend Mississippi State University next fall on an academic scholarship.
On top of that, he recently helped the Indianola Academy Colonels reach the AAA State Championship game for the fourth consecutive year.
Wearing No. 80 for the Colonels, Eli has been a steady player for Coach Tommy Nester’s squad throughout his high school career.
His favorite game this season, he said, was the playoff win over Central Hinds – not because the Colonels were so dominant, but because it was so muddy on the field.
Both Eli’s parents and his doctor that day believe it was a divine miracle that brought him back from the brink of death.
He was a blessing to them up until that day, and thanks to his mother’s quick actions, he has been a blessing ever since.
