Remembering Brandon: Jim and Kimberly Boyle sit with their children (from left) Shayna, Katey, Anthony, Cameron and Leah on the bench dedicated to their son, Brandon, on Saturday. Brandon Boyle, 13, died on July 1, 2013, while swimming in the perilous Pennypack Creek after a heavy storm. WILLIAM KENNY / TIMES PHOTO
For more than a dozen fishermen and outdoors enthusiasts who hiked to the Roosevelt Boulevard dam deep inside Pennypack Park on Saturday afternoon, the scenery couldn’t have been much better.
The bright spring sun shone through a maze of tree limbs and, despite brisk winds, finally injected some warmth into the long-dormant woods. But that harbinger of summer arrived with mixed emotions for a different group of Northeast folks, the family and friends of Brandon Boyle. It refreshed their recollections of the Bustleton youth’s startling death on July 1, 2013, while swimming in the Pennypack Creek.
Boyle’s parents, five siblings, extended family and friends dedicated a park bench memorializing the 13-year-old on Saturday at the fateful spot. The location is next to a footbridge spanning the creek, about 150 yards upstream from Roosevelt Boulevard. Boyle died there after jumping from the bridge into a pool of creek water in the aftermath of a heavy rainstorm. Swift currents propelled him over the dam, dropping him several feet into a shallow section of the stream. Searchers found his body four days later downstream.
Although searchers initially presumed that Boyle had drowned, the boy actually perished from injuries he suffered when his head struck a boulder at the bottom of the waterfall, his father, Jim Boyle, said on Saturday, citing a medical examiner’s findings.
Those attending the bench dedication prayed and released multi-colored balloons skyward to mark the occasion. Jim Boyle’s wife, Kimberly, and the couple’s friend, Karen McBride, renewed their pleas for the demolition of the stone dam, which was built with the intention of creating a summer swimming retreat in the era before widespread development of the Northeast.
“If we could all remember our mission to get that dam removed,” McBride told the group.
“Right now, I don’t know what I can do except keeping (the issue) in the forefront and keep calling people,” Kimberly Boyle said after the bench dedication ceremony.
The idea of installing a park bench to honor Brandon occurred to McBride soon after the tragedy two summers ago.
“She jogs through the park and saw that people have different memorial benches, so she started a GoFundMe page to raise money. There was an overwhelming response,” Kimberly Boyle said.
Around the same time, a second bench-installation effort began to memorialize two other teenagers who died under similar circumstances 17 years earlier. Nicky Simonetti and Christopher Busse, both 15, jumped from the same footbridge into the creek soon after a storm on July 19, 1996, when the strong current thrust them over the dam and into swirling waters. They drowned, according to a published report at the time.
Despite the dam’s origins, swimming is now prohibited in all city waterways. Nonetheless, many young people and adults ignore the ordinance at their own peril. Last summer, the Daily News reported that 17 or more people have died in Philadelphia creeks over the last two decades. The spot where Brandon Boyle died is a particular risk because of the aforementioned configurations.
Swimmers launch themselves from the footbridge into the water, which is generally too shallow for jumping or diving, yet pools up below the bridge due to the dam. The “swimming hole” is deepest and most volatile after storms, as rainwater drains from the surrounding parkland, into the creek and over the dam on its way toward the Delaware River.
The water was a lot calmer, and presumably cleaner, when the Northeast was still mostly woods and farmland, according to City Councilman Brian O’Neill, whose district includes the site. So swimming would’ve been less perilous than it is now.
“The waterfall creates excitement, something for kids to play with,” Jim Boyle said. “The problem is when the creek swells (with stormwater).”
In response to the well-publicized recent deaths, the Philadelphia Fire Department ramped up its public education efforts regarding the anti-swimming ordinance. Fire Lt. Andrew Brown conducts Operation Stay on Shore, visiting schools and community groups to discuss the dangers of the untreated water.
A Northeast Philadelphia community activist, Elsie Stevens, coordinated a similar program in partnership with Nicky Simonetti’s mother at three local schools last year.
“Although the water is cleaner than it has been in our lifetimes, what’s in the water is unsafe, both in terms of chemical runoff, human waste and animal waste,” Brown said, adding that swimmers could also become trapped by downed tree branches and other debris, much of which lies below the water surface.
In 2013, six people died in the city’s streams, but only one died last year, Brown noted.
According to Kimberly Boyle, public officials identified the Roosevelt Boulevard dam among several similar structures in 2004 as candidates for removal. In addition to the safety and environmental hazards, the dam restricts the natural habitat of native fish.
In recent years, at least one other old dam — a former mill utility — was removed from elsewhere in the creek, but the one near the Boulevard has water utility pipes running through it. The cost of tearing down the dam and rerouting the pipes could approach $1 million, according to O’Neill. Last year, the city’s parks and recreation and water departments sought federal grant funding for the project, but were turned down. The city agencies have not re-applied for 2015, O’Neill said.
The Boyles fear that other park users may oppose demolition anyway.
“(Authorities) get a lot of pushback from people who fish here. The thing is, (demolition) would be more beneficial to the fish because there would be free-flowing water,” Kimberly Boyle said.
Now, the Boyle bench and the Simonetti/Busse bench face each other at the foot of the bridge on the northern bank of the creek. Both feature plaques with the victims’ names, birthdates and death dates. A message engraved on the Simonetti/Busse bench discourages other youths from repeating the fatal mistake. Boyle’s bench has a Gospel verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” ••
For information about the fire department’s Operation Stay on Shore program, call 215–686–1382 or visit www.freedomfromfire.com/safety/sos
