This archive report was first published on 22 August 2019.
Family Reunited with Son's Last Footage ¶
Robin McCrear, 51, had been searching for two years for the last video footage her son, Richard Lee Ragland III, recorded before he died in June 2017.
Richard, 22, drowned near a waterfall in Foster Falls State Park in Tennessee, leaving behind a family who described him as charismatic, popular, and driven.
Ms. McCrear knew that her son had been recording his travels with a GoPro camera, which he had carried with him into the water. But the little machine had never been found.
That was until this month, when a stranger, Rich Abernathy, 27, a diver and YouTuber from Florida, contacted Ms. McCrear with the news that he had found the GoPro camera in Tennessee and was bringing it to her in Georgia.
Mr. Abernathy, who goes by Rich Aloha on YouTube, had been diving in the area and had discovered the GoPro on July 27. He soon realized that the footage it had captured belonged to the young man whose death had made local headlines two years earlier.
When Mr. Abernathy checked old news reports and looked at the video time stamps, everything matched up. 'That's when I said, 'Oh my God, this is the guy,'
Mr. Abernathy said.
The GoPro had captured several different clips of Mr. Ragland smiling at the camera as he documented his trip. In one scene, he is riding on a zip line in a forest. In another, he is dancing to Michael Jackson's 'P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)' in a parking lot. In one of the last, he is laughing with his friends near a waterfall.
Mr. Ragland's family was overjoyed to receive the footage, which showed their son acting like the leader he always was. 'It was emotional,' Ms. McCrear said. 'And it was like, oh my God, look at my baby. It's like he's right here, like I can touch him and hold him.'
Mr. Abernathy said he thanked God for the chance to deliver Mr. Ragland's footage to Mr. and Ms. McCrear. 'It means so much that I could bring something totally invaluable and priceless to them,' he said.
Ms. McCrear and her husband, Gary McCrear, 53, met Mr. Abernathy at a Panera Bread in Atlanta and were struck by the similarities between Mr. Abernathy and their son. 'You don't want to punch a time clock, and Rich didn't want to do that either,' Ms. McCrear said. 'You want to be able to travel and live life to the fullest.'
Ms. McCrear said she wanted to take the footage in slowly and never wants to watch the part where the video ends. But what she has seen so far shows her son acting like the leader he always was.
