The agonizing story about a Swansea teenager who died as a result of doing a backflip into a swimming pool has shattered hearts across the SouthCoast.

The dive caused the teen to severely injure his neck, leaving him paralyzed in the water and unable to swim. He died as a result.

The tragedy brought about memories of the last conversation I had on WBSM with the late Dr. Charles Krauthammer, a brilliant thinker who won the Pulitzer Prize for his columns in The Washington Post in 1987.

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He came to mind because Krauthammer also severed his spine in a first-year college diving accident that left him a quadriplegic. He described that he knew the moment he hit the bottom of the pool, he'd probably die there. He said that at the moment he felt his life force leaving his body, he was rescued.

Confined to a wheelchair, and paralyzed from the waist down, Krauthammer never let his disability define him. Dr. Krauthammer was a respected physician, columnist, bestselling author, analyst and news contributor, and despite his immobility, he went on to finish medical school and become a psychiatrist. He never allowed anything get in the way of his dreams.

Eloquent and with a remarkable skill to analyze politics and politicians – whether you agreed or disagreed with his thoughts – he made you think.

Thoughts and prayers are extended to the family of the 15-year-old Swansea teenager who passed away from this devastating accident.

If you listen to the conversation I had with him, hopefully you'll pick up that Krauthammer was a shining example that we can truly do anything we put our minds to even when faced with a disability.

Krauthammer died from an aggressive cancerous tumor in his abdomen in 2018. In his lengthy farewell message, he wrote, "I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life, full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended."

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