Saturday marks one year since 10-year-old Ben Callahan died in a drowning accident near the Branford River.
“I’d say we are healing,” his dad Dave Callahan told NBC Connecticut Friday morning. “The wound is still open, it’s still terrible. We grieve. There are definitely days to cry, but we’re definitely healing.”
It rained Friday in Branford just like it did on July 7, 2017.
“This rain might just be his way of saying remember that, do you remember me?” Dave said.
Ben is remembered in his shoreline town and beyond as “2.”
“You see number 2s on everything, you see number 2s on students’ artwork,” Dave said. “You see number 2s on the back of people’s cars, you see number 2s drawn on the road and that number 2 has just become so special, so significant to us.”
Dave has always called his three boys by their birth order.
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“From the time they were very little it was 1, 2, 3 get in the car,” he said.
On that rainy Friday a year ago, Ben went for a swim in a swampy area near the Branford River with his older brother Cooper and his younger brother Scout.
“I hopped on the road and I got Cooper, but Ben was already under so I couldn’t go get him,” Scout said, adding he recalls, “stopping the truck to come call the cops.”
Ben drowned after being sucked into a culvert, police said. There is now a memorial garden near where the body was recovered next to the water.
“You get these mental snapshots of the day and you think where was I a year ago and you get the mental snapshot of I was racing to the river in my van,” Dave said.
The Sunday after the drowning, for the first time as a family of four, the Callahans went to their church in New Haven.
“If it was our strength, we’d be a mess, we’d be puddles,” Dave said, later telling NBC Connecticut, “Your faith without trials is worthless.”
Hundreds gathered that Sunday night after the drowning for a vigil on the Branford town green.
“I feel like people like care about us and my family and they care about my brother,” Scout said, “it’s just a really nice feeling.”
Faith has been instrumental in helping this father and his family heal after the heartbreaking loss.
“We’re going to go see Jesus in heaven,” Dave said. “Ben’s going to be there worshipping him, so that’s not a problem for us, we miss him terribly, he’s having so much more fun where he is.”
Dave said he does not want his family to be defined by the death of his second son.
“You can either be destroyed by an event like this or you can be defined by an event like this or you can be developed by an event like this,” he said, “so we didn’t want to fall apart as a family.”
In honor of their son and brother, the family started the Ben Callahan Memorial Foundation.
“We have a board and a youth board with some of Ben’s friends and me and Cooper,” Scout said, “so we have a thing called the ‘Elf Party.’ It’s December 1st, there’s a bunch of stuff, jousting and the wrecking ball and there’s bouncy houses.”
Through donations, events like the “Elf Party” in December, and selling “Warrior” t-shirts designed in honor of Ben, Dave said the foundation has already raised $90,000.
“We want to take money and funds that have been donated to us and resources that have been donated to us and spread that to help people,” Dave said.
In the last year, the foundation hired food trucks to feed the homeless in New Haven, organized a Christmas dinner for the less fortunate and the week before the holiday wrapped 400 gifts.
Ben played many sports with his brothers, such as football, lacrosse and basketball.
“There was very little he couldn’t do athletically,” Dave said. “You could pretty much create a sport and he’d be good at it.”
In places like the family gym, Shoreline Athletics, the number 2 is on display.
“Everything that we wear these days has a number two on it,” Dave said.
“If I’m like struggling on a test,” Scout said, “I usually put like the number 2 on the top right on my corner.”
On Saturday, Scout and Cooper are playing in a youth lacrosse tournament at Yale because Dave said that is what Ben would have wanted.
