Sitting on a bench overlooking the spot where his 16-year-son drowned Simon Haycock told how it’s the little things that torment him.
“It’s the daft things you miss, him phoning me every five minutes. He used to blow my phone up every day, wanting to know where I am, then all of a sudden the phone was quiet – that took some getting used to that,” he told The Mirror.
His son had been celebrating finishing his GCSE when he cycled seven miles with his pals to Ulley Country Park in Rotherham. He’d jumped into the reservoir from a stone bridge on a sunny day in May.
“Those five minutes of fun left devastating ripples for his family,” Sam’s dad Simon tells the Mirror, as he pleads for the public to get behind our ‘Save Lives for Sam’ campaign .
View 6 ImagesSam Haycock left ‘ripples’ worldwide after meeting friends all over the world playing judo(Image: Haycock family)
The dad has been on a relentless crusade since his son Sam drowned almost five years ago. So far this year he has been to 30 schools to warn children about the dangers of open water and tell them about the ‘devastating’ ripples it causes.
He’s got 50 more to do before the summer holidays. “I’m exhausted,” he admits, explaining how the “horrendous” loss of life recently left him worried he was “not doing enough”.
Simon said: “When we hear about the recent events and people losing their life in water, it cuts deep. You feel like, I ain’t got that message across to them, and it hurts.”
View 6 ImagesDad Simon Haycock says it is the “daft” things that torment him – his phone went quite after his son died in a horrifying drowning(Image: © Glen Minikin)
Simon, 56, reflecting on the nightmare deaths during the record-breaking heatwave recently, told the Mirror: “It has been an absolutely horrendous, the sheer numbers who have lost their lives.
“I want to make it clear my heart is with these families, I know exactly what they are going through at the moment.
View 6 ImagesThe Mirror has launched a ‘Save Lives for Sam’ campaign to stop the horrific death toll from drowning
“I am losing sleep at night thinking of the process we had to go through when we lost Sam. How tough it has been.
“I’m very disheartened because I’ve spent four and half years doing my absolute damnedest to get a message across to kids. So this week it has knocked me and has made me feel I’m not doing enough.”
View 6 ImagesMum Gaynor with her son Sam(Image: Haycock family)
Drowning in the UK has become a ‘national emergency’ campaigners say, as we all join forces today to urge the Government to take urgent action.
“I support the Mirror’s campaign because I want the Government to acknowledge the size of this problem. Change needs to happen and it needs to happen fast. “
His son was the youngest of six boys, Simon had two before Gaynor, and his wife three. Sam was the child they had together.
Simon said of his son, who played adaptive judo for Team GB “Never in a million years would it have entered my head that he’d do anything like that.”
Gaynor, 60, said: “He’d never been in that area before, it was so out of character.”
View 6 ImagesSimon Haycock having fun pulling faces with son Sam(Image: Haycock family)
Simon, who visits his son’s bench on Christmas morning and on his birthday, finds it difficult to look at the bridge as we talk. He explains his son’s friends and brothers visit the spot every week ‘come rain or shine’.
“A few weeks after we lost Sam, another young man did exactly the same thing off exactly the same bridge. So our first thing was, out of frustration, to campaign to make that bridge safe.”
He did that, with anti-climb toppers to stop people tempted to jump into the 38ft deep water and paid for new safety throw ropes.
Giant signs now point to where this safety equipment can be found and another sign near Sam’s bench, with carved judo figures in, warns; ‘Don’t let it be you’.
He added: “Sam’s favourite saying was: ‘It won’t happen to me.’ But children are not invincible, and that’s what they need to know.”
Recalling the day his life changed forever, the dad from Sheffield told how he’d been phoned by his family to get home immediately. When he arrived there was the ominous sight of a police car parked outside.
“They sat us down and told us Sam and his friends had gone up to Ulley Reservoir and he’d jumped in and basically they were searching for him.
“After a couple of hours it had gone from a rescue search to a recovery search. Even then I didn’t accept it. I was still looking up and down the road thinking he was going to come walking down the road and I could throttle him. It’s hard to compute. But he didn’t come home to us.
“The toughest thing I’ve ever had to do was go and identify him that night.”
As he faced the fifth anniversary of his son’s death he was shocked to see the massive number of lives lost. There were 19 deaths during the heatwave in May, 13 of them were children.
“All these memories I’ve been trying to block out, they are all back in my head now. Five years has gone in absolute blink, it’s changed our lives forever,” he said.
The family founded Sam’s Army’s Mission 1 Life and are making a new water safety video to get the message across to more people.
Simon said of the Mirror campaign: “It desperately needs doing. Every time you see one it fetches it all back. ” He said the death of a teen in nearby The Rother Valley, hit home.
“That one is on my doorstep and seems to affect me more than anything,” shaking his head in dismay, he adds: “There’s too many.“
Simon has just returned from giving one of his talks to local schools, telling them about those ‘ripple effects’.
And of those ripple effects he tells them includes the emergency services, who have to try and recover the bodies.
View 6 ImagesSimon Haycock has helped supply safety equipment to high risk areas like the reservoir where his son son died(Image: © Glen Minikin)
“This policeman came to see us on the first anniversary of losing Sam. We did our first big event in Clifton Park on that day, and I didn’t know him from Adam.
“He tapped me on the shoulder, he pulled me to one side and burst out crying. And I’ve got a grown man give me a hug, crying his heart out.
“He then proceeded to tell me that he was the police officer that cradled Sam on the boat and all the things that he was saying to him. It’s heartbreaking because he then retired after 30 years of being a police officer and that’s what he took away, that scarred him.
“These people go to work to try and save lives and make a difference and that one decision Sam made to have fun – these are the consequences.
“It’s tough when I tell the children this and you can hear a pin drop.”