Give them a fighting chance.
Childhood drowning prevention in honor of Carter Lee Sharp.
Who we are.
The Carter Lee Foundation was founded on September 29, 2022, on what would have been Carter Lee Sharp’s 6th birthday. The goal of the Carter Lee Foundation is to honor his life by raising awareness of the risks of childhood drowning, educating families and caregivers on childhood drowning prevention, providing financial support for survival swim lessons, and providing support for families that have been affected by a childhood drowning.
Carter’s Story
Like any three-year-old boy, Carter was figuring out the world by the seat of his pants. Carter loved hard, and he also played hard. He was a protector and the glue of our family that made life complete. He adored his parents and loved his brothers and sister. Whenever Carter’s siblings got into trouble, he would throw himself in front of them and tell us no and to “be happy” to them. When Carter felt like he was in trouble, he had the way of saying, “You be happy to me?” in the form of the sweetest question that, now looking back, absolutely melts our hearts. What a great son Carter was! He loved Jesus and going to church! He was the biggest reason why our family even started going to church exactly one year before the month of his passing. Carter’s story has inspired many of our family members and friends to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. What a SPECIAL baby that we were privileged to call our son! We miss him so much!
The day of Carter’s accident started as a slow, lazy day. All four of our children had stayed with their grandparents the night before, so we went to pick them up that morning. Before we left the house, we got an invite to go fishing with the other set of grandparents, cousins, and aunt. We planned to go to a cousin’s house to have a nice family day outside. So, we went and picked the kids up, took them to the store, and bought Carter his first fishing pole and tackle. After loading up on snacks, we grabbed lunch and headed to our cousin’s house. When we got there, all the kids unloaded and began having fun playing outside together. Carter was excited to play with his best friend, his cousin Emma. All the kids continued to play while the adults finished unloading the car and getting set up to fish at the tank.
There were 5 adults at the tank and 9 kids having fun fishing. But things quickly changed. After getting several kids started fishing and casting out a few times, it became eerily quiet. I heard my wife, Emily, ask, “Where is Carter”? I could hear the panic in her voice. I immediately thought, “Oh, crap . . .the pool.” We turned and ran up the stairs to the pool that was behind us to find Carter in the pool. I jumped in, grabbed him, and began CPR. Carter stayed the next two days in the hospital, but ultimately, he went home to be with Jesus on April 20, 2020.
The thought of waking up the next day without my child rips my heart and soul out of my chest and is incredibly hard to deal with daily. We took our eyes off our child for only a short matter of minutes, and our lives were wrecked by it. We decided to try to help prevent other families from going through what we have experienced by educating families on drowning prevention and survival swim lessons, especially Infant Swimming Resource (ISR) lessons. We wished we had known about ISR Self-Rescue lessons; what we wouldn’t all give to go back and get him to lessons to keep him safe and have him here!