A Tennessee teen lifeguard saved a man. How the rescue led to a new start for them both

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5 days ago

The door between the men's locker room and the indoor pool flew open.
'HELP!' a man screamed. 'I need help! I think this guy is unresponsive!'
Katelyn Williams, 18, grabbed her walkie-talkie, told YMCA front-desk staffers to call 911, jumped off the lifeguard stand and ran into the locker room.
"My heart dropped," she said. "And I felt an adrenaline rush."
Billy Austin, 64, lay crumpled in a bathroom stall.
Williams started CPR compressions while a nurse who happened to be at the YMCA at the time hurried in and placed a defibrillator pad on his chest.
Thirty compressions, two breaths, a heart shock.
Thirty compressions, two breaths, a heart shock.
His ribs cracked. His eyes fluttered. He took a few ragged breaths and then — nothing.
Thirty compressions, two breaths, again and again, for about 10 minutes. Firefighters and paramedics arrived, put an oxygen mask on Austin and lifted him onto a gurney.
Williams stood, shaking and gasping. The nurse hugged her.
"You did great," she told Williams. "You did a good job."
About 48 hours later, Williams gingerly walked into Austin's hospital room and hugged him. She cried harder than she ever had.
The embrace unleashed a flood of emotions she had suppressed for eight years.
The lifeguard: Dancing with her dad
Williams' two favorite pictures in her bedroom are of her and her dad. In one, she is 9 and they're performing at one of her dance recitals to the "Twilight" movie soundtrack song "A Thousand Years." In another, she's 7 and posing in a floral-patterned dress during a daddy-daughter outing to a restaurant.
"No special occasion," she said, "but I was really excited that Dad carved out time just for me."
Williams sighed and paused.
"Looking at those two pictures," she said, "it's more sad than anything. Every time I talk about my dad, I end up crying or something."
Months before Williams was born, her father joined the Virginia State Police. Within a year, he responded to the deadliest school shooting in modern U.S. history, trying to save some of the 30 people killed in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007.
It was the first of several violent crime scenes Trooper Thomas Andrew "Andy" Williams faced in his 11-year career. He suffered post traumatic stress, but never sought or received mental health treatment, Williams and her mother said.
The survivor: Why the Y felt like home
Billy Austin boasts, 45 years later, that he once was the youngest waterfront director ever to work at Camp Minikani. He was 19 then, a year older than Williams is now.
Sure, he loved canoeing, swimming and building fires there as a kid just outside his hometown of Milwaukee. But that YMCA camp was more than a summer hang, especially after his parents divorced when he was 13.
"I came from a home that was not a very functional home," he said.
"I didn't really have a feeling of family growing up, but I had that feeling at the Y camps. I lived for summers for that reason. The YMCA felt like family and I always felt at home at the Y."
In his teen years there, counselors taught Austin how to play guitar, and he wrote his first songs. Austin, strumming a guitar, sang one of them, "Thinking of You," in front of a bonfire for 250 campers and staffers.
"When I got done with the song," he said, "the kids screamed so loud, I turned around because I thought the fire was falling on top of me. But they were screaming for the song."
The lifeguard: 'She told me my dad was in heaven'
A decade after the Virginia Tech shooting, Williams, on an overnight visit at her grandparents' house, was tossing and turning in bed. She finally drifted off to sleep but woke an hour later. Her mom was sitting at the foot of her bed.
"She told me my dad was in heaven," Williams said.
"I started crying. Then I heard other family members screaming and crying."
Her father died by suicide on April 16, 2017. It was Easter morning, 10 years to the day after the Virginia Tech shootings.
Williams and her brother and sister, both younger, stayed home from school that next week, partly to grieve, partly to avoid the barrage of questions that surely would come from classmates in their hometown of Abingdon, Virginia, population 8,000.
"The kids and I moved after that," Williams' mom, Maggie Panter, said. "They were uncomfortable that everyone knew what happened."
The survivor: A bluegrass band champ
Austin eventually learned how to play mandolin and fiddle, and he formed a bluegrass band with fellow Wisconsin musicians, a band they called Northern Hospitality. The fellas toured the U.S. and started scoring invitations to international folk festivals, eventually performing in 17 countries.
The game changer for Austin: the 1987 Telluride Band Contest in Colorado.
One of more than 200 bands to enter, Northern Hospitality made it to the final 12 that battled it out on stage. The band, the only one to play original songs, hoisted the trophy that night. Afterward, the judges asked who wrote those amazing songs.
The guys all pointed to Austin.
"Well," one of the judges said, "you need to go to Nashville."
When he got to Music City in 1990, Austin looked for a gym. Although other places were far less expensive, he chose the YMCA.
"I was here as a starving songwriter," he said, "and I could barely afford a Y membership, but I kept loyal because of my summer camp experiences in Wisconsin."
Austin also felt safer there because he knew firsthand of the rigorous first aid training lifeguards and other staffers received.
"If anything ever happened to me," he thought, "I'd rather be at a YMCA."
The lifeguard: Anger, then understanding
At first, Williams was angry at her father for killing himself.
"I was 10, and I didn't understand why he would choose to leave us," she said.
"Now I have a better understanding of mental health. Him not getting the help he needed put him into a hole he couldn't get out of," she said. "It really wasn't his fault; it was the chemicals in his brain."
Some of her friends' dads tried to fill the void, as did her stepdad when her mother remarried a few years later.
"I didn't want anyone but my father," Williams said. "I didn't see anyone the same as him."
The family moved three times in her teen years, ending up in Hendersonville, Tennessee, in the summer of 2022 because of her stepfather's work. He and Williams' mom split since then.
A few weeks later, Williams started at the brand-new Liberty Creek High School in neighboring Gallatin, Tennessee. She made new friends. She really got into her health care classes.
Last year, she was sitting at lunch at Jose's Mexican Restaurant with her family one Sunday after church when Williams decided she needed a part-time job.
She Googled "jobs for teens" and, right there on her phone, applied for an opening at an ice cream shop. Her mom, who worked for the Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce, suggested Williams reach out to her friend at the YMCA.
Within days, Williams had offers to interview for both jobs. The ice cream shop paid $2 more an hour, plus tips.
"But I kind of thought lifeguarding would be exciting. I'd already been CPR certified in my health classes," she said, "and I like helping people."
In her first nine months on the job, Williams had only one encounter with first aid.
"Someone came up to me: 'Hey, ma'am, do you have a Band-Aid?' That's literally the only thing."
Until 8:10 p.m. Feb. 10.
The survivor: 'I had pneumonia, but I didn't know'
In Nashville, Austin found some success as a songwriter, scoring a No. 1 country hit, "Leave the Pieces," with duo the Wreckers in 2006. He started investing in Nashville properties and eventually became a successful real estate developer.
A lifelong exerciser, Austin resolved at the beginning of this year to get into better shape. He decided to crank up his cardio workouts to five days a week at the Sumner County YMCA in Hendersonville. Each visit to the gym included at least 20 minutes each on the treadmill, rower, stair-climber and stationary bike.
After that regimen Feb. 10, Austin went into the locker room to check text messages and emails.
"I felt no pain; it was just a little harder to breathe," he said. "I had pneumonia, but I didn't know."
Austin remembers nothing after that — until he woke up two days later in the cardiac intensive care unit at TriStar Hendersonville Medical Center with a tube down his throat.
Compressions and cracked ribs
Williams remembers every moment with clarity.
She ran into the locker room and told the men crowded around to move. Austin lay on his back, motionless. He face was white. His lips were blue.
"I just knew that he had no pulse," Williams said. "And I knew that he had been there for a while."
Williams counted loudly as she started the first round of chest compressions. One, two, three, four. ... Paula Carney, the nurse who happened to be at the Y that day, came in and gave the man two breaths when Williams reached 30.
Williams voice started shaking. "You're doing an amazing job," Carney reassured her.
During the second round of compressions, they heard Austin's ribs crack.
Carney and another nurse in the building rolled up Austin's shirt, engaged the defibrillator and shocked his heart twice.
His eyes opened, but only for a second. He took a few ragged breaths, but only a few.
Each flicker of life spurred Williams to keep going. She fought back tears.
"I was looking at him ... and I knew that his family cared about him deeply, and I wanted to be that person that gave him another chance at life," she said. "So I gave it my 100%. I wanted to do everything in my power to save him."
By the time first responders arrived, Austin had a faint pulse. Some color had returned to his face.
As firefighters wheeled him out on the gurney, Williams and Carney stood, embraced and cried. The nurse prayed aloud that the man would survive.
Carney and another nurse who'd helped, McKay Muhlenstein, both told Williams what a great job she did. When they left, Williams called her boss, YMCA aquatic director Carson Perry.
"Hey, um, so, um, like, I just had to give CPR," she said.
"Are you serious?" Perry said.
Williams started crying again, and Perry told her he was coming to the Y. Williams looked around, started scrubbing the pool deck and came to a decision.
After graduation, she would start training to be an emergency room nurse.
What if he has brain damage?
That night, Williams couldn't stop replaying the incident in her head, couldn't stop wondering if Billy Austin was going to be OK. The next day at volleyball team practice, Williams broke down in tears.
Williams went back to the YMCA and looked up Austin's emergency contact in the computer system. She called the name listed, Austin's longtime friend and his business partner's wife, Tiffany Friedmann. Friedmann said Austin was on a ventilator at TriStar Hendersonville Medical Center.
The next morning, Friedmann called back with good news: Austin was conscious, off the ventilator and talking.
Williams had to see for herself. In her health care class scrubs, Williams grabbed two of her teachers and headed to the hospital, her stomach roiling.
What if he has brain damage? He was unresponsive for at least four minutes. What if he can't speak to me?
"Oh, my God, I can't thank you enough!" Friedmann told Williams in the hall outside.
Already teary, Williams entered the room and bent down to hug the man she saved.
"She just kind of collapsed on my hospital bed and threw her arms around me, started raining tears down," Austin said, "She was sobbing uncontrollably, which was so sweet."
Williams said she felt in that moment that she and Austin would always be connected.
"'God knew I needed you," she told him. "That's why he let me save you."
A lifelong bond
Williams and Austin stayed in touch. She told him about her dad.
"It was just an instant bond that you can't describe," Austin said.
Williams asked Austin to come by her house and see her off on prom night. Then she invited him to her high school graduation.
Yes, and yes, he said with no hesitation.
"All my friends, ... we knew at that moment that she was a daughter to me, that she was family, that this is a lifelong bond."
Williams and Austin have talked or texted with each other every day since the Feb. 12 hospital visit. He took Williams, her boyfriend, and her mom to dinner the night of her prom. And he cheered her on in May when she got her high school diploma.
When Williams got accepted to Galen College of Nursing in Nashville, Austin pledged to help with tuition and her other education expenses. And Austin hopes his biological daughter, Katie Austin, a physician's assistant in Wisconsin, can mentor Williams as she goes through nursing classes.
At a one-on-one dinner in June, Williams asked Austin to legally adopt her. Austin, deeply moved, said he's considering it.
Williams' mother, Maggie Panter, celebrates her daughter's relationship with Austin.
'He's another family member to us," Panter said. "I think it's a beautiful thing, and I think her dad would support that.'
Austin and Williams talk often with each other about how blessed they feel that they were connected so deeply, albeit by such a traumatic event.
Austin summed it up in words that are now tattooed on Williams' left forearm.
"Too good to not be God."
Reach Brad Schmitt at [e-mail] or 615-259-8384.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: A TN Teen YMCA lifeguard finds father figure in man who she saved
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