ST. PAUL, Minnesota (8 Mar 2005) -- All winter, at least once a week, Brian and Sandy Harter have been walking the banks of the Mississippi River near St. Paul's Hidden Falls Park to try to understand how their son could be lost in its depths. They came to an important milepost in their grieving on Monday. Ramsey County Sheriff's deputies walked them to the rocky shore near a former power plant where the body of their son, Nic, was found Sunday, more than three months after he apparently drowned while scuba diving with friends. "For both of us, it was a chance to follow him down the river to where he finally came out," said Brian Harter. "We wanted to have a mental picture of where he was. There's something about knowing there's a spot in the river where he was that's important." The discovery of the body of their son, a popular St. Olaf College junior who wrote poetry and is featured in a 2005 campus fundraising calendar, caused the Harters to run through the full and familiar gamut of grief and loss again, Brian Harter said. But it also ended a winter of dark uncertainties. They can now stop searching and bury their son, he said. "I felt more happiness than I had felt at any time since just before he died," Brian Harter said of the moments after he learned that Nic's body had been found. "We're at peace with that end. We know he's safer than he was in the world we brought him into." Exactly what caused his death is still unknown; the Ramsey County medical examiner did not release autopsy results Monday. Also something of a mystery is why his body, weighted with scuba gear, drifted 3 miles downstream from where he and the others had dived and where officials had concentrated their search for several weeks after the Nov. 21 incident. Sheriff's Sgt. Ron Petrusson said an investigation is continuing. The Harters are convinced that Nic either got tangled in a rope the divers were holding as they probed for a submerged car they wanted to explore or that he injured himself on the car. He was last seen in the murky water by another diver who found him without his breathing device and apparently unconscious. Harter and the other diver were separated by the current. "There's no question this was nothing more than an accident," Brian Harter said. The Harters have placed flowers at both locations on the riverbank. During their walks over the winter they also put up a small cross that Nic's grandfather had made and inscribed with the words "Rest in Peace" in Latin, which Nic had been studying. "We can't say it's the river's fault," Brian Harter said. "It's where the Lord intended to take him. And the more we looked at it, the more we realized it's just a nice quiet spot in the middle of nowhere, but in the middle of everywhere. And it was the last place he was alive, doing something he wanted to do. | | Nic Harter "We've definitely had our sadness and despair, but the life we had with him was a special thing. To other parents I'd say go out and love your children and respect your children in their growing and becoming adults. They'll become what they become, but you have to treasure the time you have with them." At St. Olaf, Nic Harter has been memorialized in a chime that is part of the school's Wind Chime Memorial Tower, which commemorates 114 students who have died while attending St. Olaf. And his picture appears on the September page of a calendar he and some co-workers in the school cafeteria had originated as a spoof of "beefcake" calendars. Now proceeds from the "Men of the Caf" calendar are going toward a scholarship fund the school has established in his name. Contributions can be sent to Nicolas Harter Memorial Fund, Attn: Donna Moen, 1520 St. Olaf Av., Northfield, MN 55057. RELATED STORIES MINNESOTA - Body of missing scuba diver foundMINNESOTA - Search for missing scuba diver scaled backMINNESOTA - Young scuba diver still missing near St. Paul ParkMINNESOTA - Scuba missing in Mississippi River |
