Gregory Brainard
I had been searching for Greg for many years without any luck. In 2017, I wrote about him in my book (He was the subject of a story in my book on the gift of intuition). I asked a friend who is a private investigator for a favor. I asked her if she could attempt to locate him. A couple of weeks later, she told me she believed she located the family, but she was completely blown off. I wrote it off as it wasn't meant to be.
When I lecture across the country, I tell Gregory's story to my audience for three reasons:
1. It was the first experience that I recall having with the gift of intuition. That deep urge, desire, or feeling I experienced that directed me to turn around and go back to the beach house. Had I kept going to Indiantown, Gregory would have died.
2. It was also my first experience with what I refer to as "creating a blueprint," or a plan of action. Reading the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation pamphlet I received from the recreation department helped me recall a life-saving technique (mouth-to-mouth).
3. The last point is that you can never rely on someone else coming to your aid. You are your family's are it's first line of defense.
On February 20, 2017, I was teaching a two-day seminar at the New Mexico State University, and I told the above story. I normally wouldn't say Greg's name, but I had just written him into the book. I jokingly said, "Yeah, I'm still looking for this kid, Greg Brainard. A woman in the class (Brenda) uttered, "I know a Greg Brainard." She pronounced his name slightly differently than I did. I said Where does he live? She responded Albuquerque, NM, with his family. She went on to say he's very religious and has a job that he never talks about. The woman in the class said, "I'm very close with his wife." She volunteered to give her a call. I told her if he had lived in PA, vacationed in Old Saybrook, and had a near-death experience as a kid, he's our guy.
At the end of the day, Brenda gets a call from Greg's wife. Greg from Albuquerque, NM, is the guy I saved. Well, Brenda starts crying; a female police officer who was helping to close up the training room is crying. Greg and his wife are crying. I was very choked up, and I said we can't do this right now. I asked Brenda to give Greg and his wife my cell number and tell them to call me whenever they are comfortable discussing Old Saybrook.
On March 4, 2017, Gregory and I had a lengthy telephone call. Greg informed me that he didn't know about me, the articles, and his family never spoke about the incident. He believed his uncle saved him. I got the impression that Greg's parents felt profound guilt.
I would come to learn that Greg is deeply religious and a brilliant man.
He asked me what happened, and this is what I told him.
In July 1975, I was vacationing in Old Saybrook, CT, with my girlfriend's family (now my wife). The house we stayed in was located on the water, and we would typically walk on the beach. I believe it was Saturday, July 12, 1975, and my girlfriend and I decided to take a walk towards Indiantown, about 20 minutes away. We had walked about a quarter of a mile, and I had a beyond overwhelming urge to go back to the beach house. I didn't know why I had this feeling, but I knew I had to go back (Intuition: knowing something without knowing why). My girlfriend originally protested. I justified the feeling by telling her that the waves were rolling in big for the Long Island Sound and I wanted to go back and take the floats out into the water.
As we were heading back and were a couple hundred feet from the beach house, I saw a woman jump up out of her beach chair. Her magazine flew into the air, and she ran to a large pile of sand, where she began digging and screaming at the top of her lungs for help. I ran over and saw two small feet sticking out of the sand. The woman managed to stutter out, "A boy is trapped underneath." Later I learned that the woman was the boy's Aunt. I pushed her aside and began digging with my bare hands as fast as I could.
It had rained the night before, and the sand was damp and heavy. The 8-year-old boy had made a large pile of sand and managed to dig a narrow tunnel at about a 45-degree angle. Once he was in all the way up to his ankles, the tunnel apparently collapsed on top of him, essentially burying him alive. The pile was surprisingly high, at about 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 6 feet wide.
In what felt like forever, I finally reached the boy's head and shoulders and pulled him from the sandy grave. Face down, his body made an impression in the sand. I remember letting out almost a victory scream. The boy was blue, his eyes rolled back into his head, and at the time I thought his eyes were bleeding, but I would later learn that this was petechiae (broken capillary blood vessels). His Aunt grabbed him from me and shook him violently while screaming his name.
By now, a group of 20 or more people had gathered. His Aunt handed him back to me, and with his lifeless body in my hands, I asked if anyone knew mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. No one answered. I laid him down in the sand and pleaded with the group, repeating a couple of times, "Does anyone know mount-to mouth resuscitation? Again, this group of 20 adults that live and vacation at this beach said nothing. They stood there in shock. I recall looking at an athletic man that resembled a young Tom Selleck, and I asked again, but to no avail, only a silent stare.
Well, I had read about performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a pamphlet sent to our home by our town recreation department. I read it several times with great interest. In vivid detail, I recalled what I had read and began doing mouth-to-mouth breathing while my girlfriend ran to the beach house to call for an ambulance.
We guesstimate that I performed mouth-to-mouth for 3 to 5 minutes. I recall hearing the police and ambulance sirens approaching. It was at that time that the young boy took a breath on his own and began coughing up bodily fluids. Later, as a young police officer, I would remember how good the sound of sirens sounded as I waited for help to arrive during a bad situation.
The ambulance took the young boy away on a stretcher, and I had to explain what happened numerous times to the police and ambulance personnel. I would later learn that the young boy was 8-year-old Gregory Brainard from Pennsylvania. He and his family vacationed in Old Saybrook in the summer. I also learned that his dad was out on the sound sailing and that Gregory was left in the care of his Aunt.
About two hours later, when my girlfriend and I were back at the beach house, there was a knock at the door. A Connecticut state trooper and the ambulance captain were standing outside the door (I thought the worst). They asked if they could speak with me outside the house. I accompanied them outside where they said that they just wanted to stop by and shake my hand. They went on to say that the doctors who treated young Gregory told them that had I not done what I did when I did, the boy would have died or worse. The ambulance captain would later be one of my instructors at the Connecticut Municipal Police Academy after I became a police officer with the Ridgefield, Connecticut, Police Department.
The Associated Press picked up the story and the incident was widely reported in the press. We received more than a dozen articles from friends and family in the tri-state area.
I asked Greg what he remembered:
He said her remembers it like it was yesterday. That he vividly remembers what occurred that day. He recalls digging a tunnel in the sand pile and the sand pile collapsing on top of him. He put his hands in front of his face when the pile collapsed. It afforded him an air pocket in which he could breathe. It took my girlfriend about 5 minutes to walk back to the beach house. He remembers thinking how stupid it was that he was going to die in the sand pile and being an embarrassment to his family that he could have died as a result of doing something so stupid. His feet were the only things that were sticking out, and he thought that he might be able to get someone's attention by wiggling and/or trying to move them. All that did was cause the pile to collapse further on top of him. He recalls that his last breath was an exhale and that he could no longer breath from the weight of the sand. Eventually, he passed out and remembers seeing black, but that he felt very much at peace and a warmth came over him.
He went on to say that he did not see bright lights or see God, but he was in an extremely peaceful place. I didn't want to interrupt him, but I said, you couldn't have been closer to death. He said, in a very matter-of-fact way, no, I was dead, and I was outside of my body. I was still at the beach, but I was dead. Gregory recalled that at some point he knew it wasn't his time and he returned to his body. He recalls waking up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and his mouth, nose, and ears were packed with sand. Gregory says that he was profoundly affected by what happened that day and goes on to say how he had a difficult time relating to other kids his age after such a near-death experience. He said it made him gravitate toward a more introverted nature, and it made him cautious. He gave the example, "I would climb the mountain, but I wouldn't go near the edge." To this day, he tells the story to his children as a reminder of how doing something so reckless nearly caused him to lose his life.
Gregory grew up, attended Penn State University and George Washington University, graduating with an engineering degree. He was hired by the Department of Defense right out of college.
The reason that I wasn't able to locate him on the internet or through social media was that he had such a high-level government clearance, working on a variety of top-secret military projects with nearly 200 people working under his guidance. He would later tell Inside Edition, when asked what he did for a living, that his job position doesn't exist. when they pressed, what would you be considered? He replied, I would be considered a fixer or problem solver in his field.
He only recently signed on with Linkedin for his new position as Vice President, Alliance Manager at PowerSecure, Inc, in New Mexico.
Greg's family was so overwhelmed with guilt that they did not share any of the printed articles, my involvement, thefact that 20 people stood by frozen.