My father-in-law had been fishing from rowboats without incident since early childhood. But in August 1970, at age 66, alone on a Minnesota lake, he apparently fell out of the boat and drowned. He couldn’t swim a stroke, yet never wore a life jacket.
I checked the statistics at the time: In a state with more than 11,000 lakes of 10 acres or more, plus 8,100 fishable rivers, half the adult population did not know how to swim.
Things are somewhat better today, but not enough. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 37 percent of adults cannot swim the length of a 25-yard pool, meaning they probably could not make it to shore if they got into trouble in a natural body of water.
You might think children are the most vulnerable to drowning. Not so. While drowning has declined over all from 1999 to 2010, according to new data from the C.D.C., children and young adults account for the drop. Among adults ages 45 to 84, drownings increased nearly 10 percent. More than 70 percent of those who drown each year in the United States are adults, and the percentage of drownings in lakes, rivers and oceans rises with age. Nearly 80 percent of drowning victims are boys or men.
