THE EVERGLADES
The swamp swallows a man without hope
A dying man with a secret plan pointed his truck toward the Everglades and vanished. His heartbroken father pieced together clues and found a measure of comfort.
Posted on Sun, Feb. 03, 2008Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email
BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@MiamiHerald.com
Brian Renton, a 46-year-old carpenter from Tampa, slung his canoe atop his weathered pickup, waved goodbye to his parents and left -- headed, he said, back home to Connecticut.
Instead, he drove to Everglades National Park, intending to kill himself over a secret he'd kept from family and friends. He had cancer. He camped for a night in Flamingo, then paddled toward Whitewater Bay and vanished into the wild.
Rangers found his truck on Jan. 4 and, two days later, his concealed canoe. But after a week of intensive searching, not even tracking dogs picked up so much as a scent of him.
A scaled-back hunt continues, but Renton's family in Tampa doesn't expect the great swamp to yield remains or answers. Still, Ian Renton believes he understands why his son, an avid hunter and fisherman, would decide to spend his final moments in the Everglades -- a place Brian had never visited.
''He went to the quietest place he understood to exist,'' Ian Renton said.
The solitude and scenery that attract visitors to national parks also sometimes draw the despondent. Their stories usually remain confined to loved ones and rangers investigating the results.
Renton's became public when rangers, seeking help in the search, posted a missing person report on an Internet site popular with thousands of anglers. His father later went on the Florida Sportsman Forum site to explain why Renton disappeared, a revelation that resonated deeply with park regulars.
UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE
The Everglades may strike some as forbidding, but for others, a day in isolated backcountry is as uplifting as Sunday in a pew. Adam Gelber, a marine ecologist and expert Everglades angler, captured the sentiment in an Internet message to Ian Renton:
''Some have a higher power, whether that be Jah, Jesus, Moses, a family member,'' Gelber wrote, ``but mine is Joe River. Even on the roughest of days, Joe River is always calm and serene.''
For Ian Renton, still grappling with grief and shock, the reaction from the park -- the ''heroic effort'' by rangers to find a son he believed already dead and the unexpected empathy of outdoorsmen -- has brought some comfort.
''It's amazing to hear these people,'' said Renton, a retired mechanical engineer who has lived in Tampa for more than 20 years. ``It really shows humanity.''
On Dec. 14, his birthday, Brian Renton left the home he shared with his parents.
He had moved to Tampa, where his brother and sister also lived, a few years earlier for a ''fresh start'' after breaking up with a girlfriend, his father said.
Renton, who specialized in cabinetry and finish carpentry, set up shop just down from Vic Grechniw's Florida Ammo Traders. ''He was just absolutely a craftsman,'' Grechniw said.
He described his friend as a down-to-earth, quiet man who never lost his smile or let on that he had troubles.
''This was a man that probably for the past three months was planning to kill himself and you could not detect it at all,'' he said. ``He must have found some sort of peace.''
Renton, who did not have a wife or children, was a bow hunter, angler and shooter who spent his happiest hours outdoors, his father said. He didn't get out as much as he had back home but loved fishing at a favorite spot, unspoiled Caladesi Island near Clearwater, Ian Renton said. ``He really liked to canoe.''
In the last months, Renton had told everyone he was returning to northwestern Connecticut, where he had spent most of his life. He sold most of his things. He kept some handguns and his canoe.
As his son departed, a ''funny feeling'' prompted Ian Renton to get his camera. The last picture seems shaded by what was to come -- working man and working truck, both looking tired and worn.
AN EXPLANATION
Five days later, Dec. 19, Renton's suicide note arrived at his brother's home.
Renton wrote that he had been diagnosed with stomach and intestinal cancer, his father said, and he did not want to endure treatment or burden the family with his care.
''He figured it was better to shock us,'' Ian Renton said. ``We're still not over that.''
Husky and a heavy smoker, Renton had chronic health issues, including high blood pressure and shortness of breath, but his apparently dire condition was ''a total, absolute surprise,'' his father said.
Renton also cited heart and lung problems in notes found in his truck. But his family has not been able to determine how serious his condition was. Ian Renton said his self-employed son couldn't afford insurance or a regular doctor. Instead, he visited walk-in clinics.
UNKNOWN DESTINATION
Brian Renton didn't reveal where he was bound, just that his truck eventually would turn up and that whoever found it could keep it, his father said. ``That was basically his estate.''
There was only one clue to his destination: a postmark, partially obscured, from South Florida.
The family called Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies, who impounded the letter. Deputies called Miami-Dade County police but reached full voice mails, spokeswoman Debbie Carter said. They then ran criminal checks and, finding a clean record, faxed a report to Miami-Dade and filed his information in a national database.
That was all they could do, Carter said. ``Unfortunately, it's not a crime to go missing.''
It was Brian Renton's father who would ultimately track him down.
After two wrenching weeks without a word, Ian Renton asked deputies for a copy of the letter. A ''Happy Holidays'' stamp covered the last two ZIP Code numbers on the envelope. Ian Renton did an Internet search on the first three: 330. He quickly ruled out Miami, Hialeah and the Keys. Too crowded.
When he saw Homestead, he knew: The Everglades.
The National Park Service doesn't keep statistics, but spokesman Jeffrey Olson said suicides happen often enough that ''it's not surprising anymore.'' He estimated that there were perhaps 10 a year nationwide.
They are rare at Everglades National Park. Tony Terry, the district ranger at Flamingo who directed the search for Renton, has handled four suicides in 16 years.
''You never forget one of them,'' he said. ``They do mess with you emotionally.''
To Terry, who must deal with the aftermath, it's tough to call such endings good. But many anglers who followed the search, online and in the park, saw Renton as a kindred spirit, an ordinary man who sought an extraordinary exit in a place that is a long, blessed way from the wearying workaday world.
The park's initial missing person post included a cryptic caution: ''Do not attempt to make contact'' -- raising fears that Renton might be dangerous. After the search ratcheted down, Ian Renton went online to clear up much of the mystery -- a post that drew 4,000 views and more than a dozen replies of respect.
`SLICE OF HEAVEN'
''As sad as this may seem, I couldn't have picked a better spot to spend the last days of my life,'' wrote Miami angler Marshall Morton. ``The park is my little slice of heaven.''
Jack Friedrich, a Fort Lauderdale estate trust lawyer who often deals with grieving families, said his own friends often talk about having ashes scattered in the Everglades.
''I could see myself doing it if I was incurable,'' said Friedrich, who fishes in the Ten Thousand Islands on the southwest coast. He disliked the time and expense of the search, ``but for the guy to be able to do this on his own terms, I appreciate that.''
Ian Renton, whose own father was a Presbyterian minister, knows the suicide debate. He absolves his son.
''I have a great admiration for Brian,'' he said. ``His purpose was to spare us.''
Within hours of a call from Ian Renton, rangers found the maroon Chevrolet parked at the Whitewater Bay boat ramp. Inside, along with more notes, was an empty handgun case.
Renton had set out two weeks earlier, but Terry ordered a full-out search intended to find someone presumed alive -- helicopters, a plane, and trackers in boats, canoes and on foot.
''If he was out there and he had decided not to commit suicide,'' Terry said, ``we'd have been able to get to him.''
Two days later, a searcher walking west of the Buttonwood Canal spotted Renton's green canoe, dragged 30 yards off a lightly used trail leading to Bear Lake. It had been turned upside down to blend with the landscape.
''If we weren't looking for it, you wouldn't have seen it,'' Terry said.
Brian Renton hadn't paddled far, only a few miles from the boat ramp. He had hauled his canoe out at the first opportunity to exit the man-made canal and enter the wild Everglades -- a small dock fronting a narrow trail shrouded by tangled limbs.
From that dense tropical hammock, a man could get very lost, depending on how hard and deep he wanted to push.
Overall, 60 people hunted for more than a week. Rangers and park firefighters walked grid searches, struggling through ankle-breaking roots, spiny cactuses and poisonous plants. Dogs from state prisons and from Miami-Dade police, trained to track humans dead or alive, sniffed for signs.
Rangers have lots of experience finding lost boaters. They found no gun, no blood, no trace of Renton.
Without body or bones, there may always be some sliver of doubt or hope about what Brian Renton did or where he went. Unless something identifiable turns up unexpectedly, the park and police will consider him, at least officially, still missing.
But behind the beauty of the Everglades is brutal reality. Things disappear quickly.
''There is way too much stuff here to eat a person or a thing sitting around too long,'' Terry said.
Once the letter arrived, Ian Renton said, he knew it was too late to stop his son. But he and his wife drove down to Homestead when the search started, anguished at the thought of a son lost forever to an unmarked grave in a daunting wilderness.
COMFORTING MESSAGES
After a week, they went home with nothing to bury. That has been difficult for the family, Ian Renton said.
But in the days since, he read the messages from people who share his son's passions and he came to see the Everglades as a good resting spot for his son.
''Brian was a nice person, an outdoors kind of guy who loved the quiet of nature. He now rests in that peace,'' Ian Renton wrote in a final post thanking Glades anglers for the condolences.
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