The waves looked manageable when Ryan Jennings stepped into the sea in Florida last week. He always went in first to make sure it was safe before calling his children over from the beach.
But a short time later, the water turned dangerous and Jennings found himself battling a strong rip current. He was able to save the lives of his 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, but the current was too powerful for him to escape the water.
He died on the family trip to visit his parents for the Easter holiday.
“He lived a hero,” his wife, Emily Jennings, said Monday. “That’s how he went out, too.”
Jennings, 46, of North Yarmouth, Maine, drowned Wednesday off Juno Beach in Florida’s Palm Beach County while his family was vacationing. He leaves the couple’s three children, with a fourth on the way. Their oldest son is Emily’s from a previous relationship, and she said Ryan cared for him like he was his own.
At about 3:25 p.m., lifeguards with Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Ocean Rescue responded to an open-water rescue near Juno Beach, officials said. The fire department said the group had been swimming outside a guarded area and conditions with low tide and an onshore wind were consistent with rip current activity.
Emily Jennings was on shore sitting with the couple’s youngest child and a niece, building sandcastles, she said. She glanced up toward the water and saw three heads in the distance, those of her husband and two of their children, and then looked back down.
Moments later, her son emerged from the water and reached other beachgoers first.
“He told them his dad and his sister were drowning,” she said.
In the water, Ryan Jennings had been pushing his children toward the shore. During a break in the waves, he threw his son forward and told him to swim, Emily Jennings said.
“He was yelling at him to swim for his life,” she said.
He then turned to his daughter, holding her above his head as the current pulled them farther out, she said. He told his daughter that if he went under the water, she needed to float on her back.
Another swimmer reached the girl and helped bring her in. Meanwhile, lifeguards who were alerted to the emergency rushed into the water looking for Ryan, Emily Jennings said.
When he was brought to shore, rescuers began performing CPR, but he didn’t recover, she said.
Jennings grew up in Longmeadow in Western Massachusetts. He later settled in Maine, where he built a life centered on family and community, his wife said.
He was a senior vice president for a locally based marketing company, but Emily Jennings said his greatest passion was coaching youth sports, including football, wrestling, lacrosse, and basketball.
“He inspired kids not just in what they did, but who they were,” she said. “He had the ability to see something special in every kid.”
Geraldine Ollila, a family friend, said Ryan Jennings “was an aboslute role model” to the kids he coached, as well as his own children.
“He was the man everyone looked up to and could count on,” she said in an email Monday.
Friends have flooded the family with messages in the days since Ryan’s death, many sharing stories of how he helped them through difficult moments, including in the sober community, where he had been deeply involved, Emily Jennings said.
“The amount of people who have reached out and said, ‘Ryan saved my life,’ it’s been unbelievable,” she said.
At home, Jennings was a devoted father whose children were “his greatest joy,” she said.
Ryan Jennings’ mother, Gail McLaughlin Toti, said her son’s final moments reflected a life defined by selflessness and devotion to his family.
“My son was bigger than life,” she said. “He lit up every room he came into. He just grew up into a good guy, a great family man.”
The couple met more than a decade ago when Emily Jennings was living in Portland, Maine, and quickly formed a family. She was a single mother taking care of her 1-year-old son when she first met Ryan.
About seven months after they started dating, Emily and her baby son lost their home and all of their possessions in a fire. She got a room for them at a nearby hotel, but Ryan “was like, ‘absolutely not,’” she said.
“He brought us to his family’s house on the ocean and in the course of like three months, we became a family,” she said.
She said Ryan loved her son like he was his own, and they never used the word “stepfather” to describe their relationship.
“The love was always the same,” she said.
The family had traveled to Florida to visit Jennings’ parents and spend Easter together. Emily Jennings said there were no warning flags posted on the beach that day.
A rip current is a fast-moving channel of water that flows away from shore and is often difficult to detect from the surface, according to the National Weather Service. Forecasters in South Florida had been warning of dangerous conditions for days.
“Over at least the last week, we’ve had strong easterly winds, and we’ve had multiple fatalities and a lot of people getting rescued,” said Sammy Hadi, a forecaster in the weather service’s Miami office.
“It can be beautiful weather at the beach and above the water, but in the water” it is dangerous, he said.
The Jennings family had arrived in Florida just hours before they went to the beach that day, a routine trip they made once or twice each.
Toti said her son was an experienced swimmer who had been in those waters many times before, but there were no flags warning of rip tide that day, she said.
“It was a freak accident, a tragedy,” she said, adding that she hopes greater awareness of rip currents can prevent similar deaths.
The date of Ryan Jennings’ death, April 1, also carries a deeper meaning for the family. Twenty-six years ago, on April 1, Jennings survived a serious medical emergency when his pancreas ruptured and he was resuscitated multiple times, Emily Jennings said.
“I always felt like we got extra time with him,” she said.
Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com.