During Memorial Day weekend, I was listening to public radio en
route to my daily swim when I heard “A Child’s Reliquary,” a
piano trio written by Richard Danielpour in memory of the
18-month-old son of the conductor Carl St. Clair. The child
drowned in a pool in 1999 when his mother, who was in the pool
with him, suffered a diabetic seizure. A day later I learned
that a 17-year-old boy had drowned after being caught in a
riptide off the coast of New Jersey. Soon after, I heard of yet
another drowning off the Jersey Shore, this time a man in his
20s. While drownings, both fatal and nonfatal, have been
declining for decades in the United States, they remain the
second leading cause of injury-related deaths, after motor
vehicle accidents, of children of all ages. Jane Brody on health
and aging. Jane Brody on health and aging. In an overwhelming
majority of cases, these tragedies are preventable if youngsters
and their guardians have greater respect for the water and take
well-established precautions. According