ROME, Ga. — Shrugging off the stress of finals, eight high school students from Darlington School piled into the "Magic Bus," a converted yellow school bus with generations of song lyrics in graffiti on its walls. They were off on one of English teacher Steve Hall's adventures, a week that invited them to shed their campus personas and fall into a simple rhythm of campfires and paddling.
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Students' Florida Adventure Ends in Deaths of Two
Their bodies are found in the Gulf after a boat trip goes wrong. A Georgia school grieves.
THE NATION
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday March 03, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 36 words Type of Material: Correction
Students' deaths -- An article in some editions of Wednesday's Section A incorrectly described one of the victims of a Florida canoeing accident. In one paragraph, Sean Wilkinson, not Clay McKemie, was the towheaded boy described.
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They had been on the water near Suwannee, Fla., for less than a day when darkness overtook them. After spending Saturday night fighting five-foot swells, six teenagers and two faculty members were rescued Sunday by the Coast Guard, who hoisted two of them into a helicopter.
But two ninth-graders had been drawn out to the Gulf of Mexico. Their bodies were found Monday, 11 miles offshore; one boy had tied himself to the green canoe, as he had been instructed.
The deaths of Clay McKemie and Sean Wilkinson, both 14, have sent a shudder through Darlington School, a prep school in the foothills of northwest Georgia.
"We're just almost indescribably saddened by this loss," said James Hendrix, interim president of Darlington School, whose motto is "Wisdom more than knowledge; service beyond self; honor above everything."
If there was one kid excited about the trip, it was Clay McKemie, a skinny cutup who had the nerve to break dance at a school formal. Clay had already gone on an 80-mile canoe trip led by Hall, the school's free-spirited outdoor guru. Hall, 48, is pictured in a school catalog wearing Viking horns, and was universally known as "Meester," the mispronounced legacy of a long-ago foreign student.
Hall wrote whimsical travelogues of extracurricular trips with students, whom he hailed as the "soldiers of freedom" or "fine, young preppy cannibals." Chris Tumblin, 15, a freshman, described him as "really strange, in the best way possible."
"He loves the kids as much as he loves nature," Chris said. "And that's a lot."
Hall could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The group set out from a boat ramp on the Suwannee River -- two faculty members, four boys and four girls. They were in three kayaks, three canoes and a motorized pontoon boat carrying their gear, said Darlington's dean of students, Greg Griffeth, who had spoken with survivors. Once the group entered the Gulf of Mexico, the plan was to hug the shoreline in three- or four-foot waters and travel about three miles north to Coon Island, the nearest island that allowed camping, Griffeth said.
