New life ring law and rescue drones help, but Lake Michigan swimmers still vulnerable

A good swimmer, Thomas Kenning waded into the Lake Michigan water that he’d already decided was too treacherous at Porter Beach. Just hours before, he’d explained why to his 9-year-old daughter — told her about the high waves and the rip currents.But on that day, June 27, 2022, he and his family heard a teen-aged girl cry for help in the surf.So Kenning, a 38-year-old Florida teacher who’d grown up in the region and who’d written books about nature and abandoned boats in the Southeast, waded in. He got close to the girl.Beautiful, but deadly:The do's and don'ts of swimming in Lake Michigan“They were just inches apart,” his mother, Sharon Kenning, of Valparaiso, recalls of her memories from shore. “They kept reaching and reaching.”Then the water dragged him in. Sharon saw her son drift further out, but then a wave washed over him. The girl would be rescued. Thomas Kenning would drown.While all of this was going on, Sharon, who was minding her young grandkids, says, “I stood on the beach...