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ALL EYES: Michael Huston (right) and Kahla, with Summit To Sound Search and Rescue, look for Kenny White Tuesday as Ed McCaffery of Whatcom County 4X4 Search and Rescue drives the boat on the Nooksack River in Marietta. MAME BURNS HERALD PHOTO

Closest thing to a good moment was thanks from family

John Stark, The Bellingham Herald

For the past two days, scuba diver Justin Thompson's volunteer spirit put him in a situation he compared to a childhood nightmare: underwater, in the dark, in the cold, looking for a child's body.

Thompson and two other divers were among more than 100 volunteers who gathered Monday in the cold rain on the muddy, brushy banks of the Nooksack River, hoping at first for a rescue and then resigning themselves to a search for a body.

Each diver worked with partners on land who kept hold of their tether lines and stood ready to go into the water to help when needed.

At midafternoon Tuesday, Thompson wrapped his numb fingers around a cup of vegetable beef soup and shared a little of his experience in the muddy waters behind the Marietta home of 2-year-old Kenny White, who strayed outside Monday morning clad only in a diaper and apparently fell into the river.

"It's probably the hardest diving you can do," Thompson said.

Dark, cold

Thompson said the river's silty water is so opaque that he could not see his air pressure gauge when he held it right in front of his mask.

But keeping track of his air supply was the least of his worries. Even clad in a protective dry suit, the river's 35-degree temperature would force him out of the water to warm up long before his air supply ran out.

On Monday night, he said, he went to the American Red Cross tent, also manned by volunteers, to get a cup of hot chili. The volunteer accidentally poured the hot stew on his thumb and apologized profusely, but Thompson told her not to worry.

"I couldn't even feel it," he said.

The closest thing to a good moment came Monday night, Thompson said, when Kenny White's family came down to the river bank to thank the divers for their effort.

"They're in the middle of grieving, and they took time to come out and thank us," he said. "That's pretty impressive."

On Tuesday, after warming himself with a bit of soup, Thompson headed back into the water for one last attempt, groping in the murk. At one point, he became entangled in a submerged fishing net, and one of his assistants, also clad in a dry suit, waded in with a knife to cut him free.

No luck

But it was all for naught. Before loading up his gear as search efforts ended Tuesday, Thompson gave a hug to Carolyn Jewell-Jenkins, Kenny White's great-aunt.

Thompson is a member of the volunteer, nonprofit Whatcom County Dive Rescue, and makes his living as a firefighter for Whatcom County Fire District No. 8. He's part of the search-and-rescue network that's mobilized whenever someone in the county is in trouble in the mountains, the river or the sea.

A few of the many who served:

• Ron Butenschoen and Brian Boatman don't belong to a search organization, but they responded to the call for help. Boatman, owner of Beaver's Tree Service, and Butenschoen, who works for Wilder Construction Co., are avid canoe competitors in the Ski to Sea race. On Tuesday, Boatman maneuvered their canoe slowly along the riverbank, amid fallen trees and partly submerged snags, as Butenschoen probed the water with a long aluminum pole.

• Josh Nylander, a database administrator for Whatcom County, left his desk job and took some of his paid vacation to help coordinate the search. On Tuesday, he manned a two-way radio, keep communications flowing between the command post and rescuers on the riverbank, in boats and under the water.

• American Red Cross volunteers served an estimated 250 meals that helped keep rescuers going during the two-day effort. Volunteer Karen VerBurg, mass care shelter team captain, said groups of five volunteers worked in five-hour shifts, spooning out soup, chili and hot dogs.

Other nonprofit volunteer groups taking part were Whatcom County 4x4 Search and Rescue; Explorer Search and Rescue; Summit to Sound Search and Rescue; RACES ARES, a ham radio group; Bellingham Mountain Rescue; Whatcom County Swift Water Rescue Team; Bellingham Police Explorers; and Whatcom County Support Officers, a volunteer chaplains' group that provided comfort to the bereaved family.

Public agencies involved in the search, in addition to the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office and Fire District No. 8, included the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Customs, Lummi Law and Order, the Whatcom County Public Works Department, Whatcom County Fire District No. 1's swift-water rescue team and the Bellingham Police Department.

END OF SEARCH: Volunteer diver Justin Thompson hugs Carolyn Jewell-Jenkins, great-aunt of missing 2-year-old Kenny White, where White's footprints lead to the Nooksack River behind the child's Marietta house. Thompson, a volunteer with Whatcom County Dive and Rescue, was one of the many people out searching Tuesday for the boy. MAME BURNS HERALD PHOTOS

Recovery effort will wait till the next minus tide

John Stark, The Bellingham Herald

The search for 2-year-old Kenny White broke off in the gathering gloom on the muddy banks of the Nooksack River Tuesday afternoon after two days of effort by law officers, firefighters and volunteers turned up no trace of the Marietta boy.

When the search began Monday morning, searchers and family members held some hope that the boy might be found alive.

But by Tuesday, most of the search effort was aimed at finding the boy's body in the dark, roiling waters of the river, and family members were coming to grips with their loss.

"This is a tragedy beyond our wildest dreams," said great-aunt Carolyn Jewell-Jenkins. Whatcom County Sheriff's Deputy George Ratayczak, search and rescue coordinator, said the small army of searchers did everything they could think of to try to find the boy after he was reported missing at 11 a.m. Monday.

From the beginning, the search focused on the river, because deputies found the imprints of the boy's bare feet leading down a levee's steep, slippery bank to the river's side channel, known as Marietta Slough, that flows just behind his parents' house at 1853 Marine Drive.

At its Monday peak, close to 100 people joined in the search, and about 70 continued on Tuesday, Ratayczak said. Scuba divers working in shifts groped in the near-opaque, 35-degree water just downstream from the White home.

Kayakers and canoeists moved slowly up and down the river all the way to Bellingham Bay, about three-quarters of a mile, probing likely resting spots with aluminum poles.

Searchers with dogs prowled the riverbanks, and jet boats manned by law officers and volunteers cruised up and down the river, all to no avail.

As a last-ditch effort that began at about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Ratayczak told the jet boat operators to run at the fastest possible speed up and down the slough in the area near the home, hoping that would churn the water and free the boy's body if it had become lodged in debris on the bottom.

But that effort, too, proved futile. The boats' motors churned up tree branches, but nothing more.

At that point, a reluctant Ratayczak ended the search.

"We're fresh out of ideas," he said. "We're fresh out of every objective to complete. ... We don't want to just pack up and leave. It's tough to walk away from."

Ratayczak said additional search efforts might be made as soon as there's a minus tide during daylight hours. The depth of the water in the slough drops significantly when the tide is out, he said.

Tide tables indicate the first minus tide during daylight hours would occur mid-March.

Ratayczak said there's a chance the boy's body might never be found in the murky, snag-infested waters.

"There's always a chance that Mother Nature is not going to let us have what we are looking for," he said.

In seclusion

The boy's parents, April and Kenneth White, stayed in seclusion Tuesday as Jewell-Jenkins and her sister Peggy Holstine,who is April's mother and Kenny's grandmother, shared the family's story.

Jewell-Jenkins said Kenny was napping Monday on the living-room sofa, clad only in a diaper, as his parents worked on the long task of rebuilding the dilapidated home that Holstine bought for them for $10,000 just last July. The couple and their son had lived in the home as renters for about 2Þ years before that, Jewell-Jenkins said.

Just a couple of days before, Jewell-Jenkins said, the boy had learned to open doors, and Kenneth White had obtained a safety latch that he was planning to install on the front door.

"That's the part that's the most painful right now," she said.

The boy apparently woke from his nap Monday and slipped out the door without making enough noise to alert his parents, Jewell-Jenkins said.

The boy had never gone down to the river before, and his parents did not realize he could even climb the steep bank of the levee behind their home, Jewell-Jenkins said. But the attraction of the water may have been fatal.

"He loved puddles," Jewell-Jenkins said. "He was a splasher."

Scraping by

Holstine said the boy's loss was a cruel blow to parents who were scraping by, trying to build a better life for themselves with meager means.

Holstine said her son-in-law is a U.S. Army veteran of the Gulf War who was part of a local veterans' support group called "Forward." Members give one another mutual support in dealing with drug and alcohol addiction issues and other personal problems. A group of Forward members spent Monday night with Kenneth White, she said.

A number of Forward members have settled in Marietta, where land with deteriorating homes can be purchased for rock-bottom prices, Holstine said. Group members work on renovating each others' homes, contributing their skills.

The Whites' home is one of about 26 dwellings along Marine Drive in Marietta. Seven of the dwellings appear long-vacant, some no more than gutted hulks without doors and windows. Today's Marietta is a stubborn remnant of a town that, at the turn of the century, had hotels for passengers waiting for a favorable tide to board passenger boats that steamed upriver to Ferndale and Lynden.

Holstine said the Whites were renovating their 1906 home a little at a time, as they scraped together small amounts of money to buy materials. The home's exterior is mostly coated with plastic sheeting, but some new siding was in place on the west side, next to the long-empty Baker's Market building.

April White has a relatively low-wage job at the Big Lots store in Bellingham, Holstine said, while Kenneth White gets disability payments for a congenital back problem that causes fused vertebrae. He has had one surgery for the condition and is awaiting Veterans Affairs approval for a second, she said.

"Ken is absolutely the best daddy I've ever seen," Holstine said.

Jewell-Jenkins said the family was grateful for the outpouring of volunteer effort to find Kenny. She said Kenny's parents also wanted to urge other parents not to delay another minute in making sure their homes are child-safe as their little ones grow up and develop more ways of getting into trouble.

"Even though he was only here for two years, he was such a blessing in our lives," she said.

As the search wound down Tuesday, some longtime Marietta residents recalled an earlier, similar tragedy. In July 1982, a 2-year-old boy apparently fell off a dock in the same stretch of the slough and drowned. Searchers found his body several hours later, about 400 yards downstream.