'Rescuer becomes victim': 65-year-old dies after rescuing man from drowning

1:30 p.m. Oct. 17 update:

Services for Delbert Blare: A celebration of life service will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18, at Cornerstone Church of God, 311 E. Hibiscus Blvd., Melbourne. In lieu of flowers, donations will be accepted via a GoFundMe page set up by the family to help Delbert's wife, Deb, with funeral expenses and finances to finish the repairs on their home caused by Hurricane Irma.

Original story posted Oct. 16:

As Delbert Blare sat on the shore of Spessard Holland Park in Melbourne Beach with his wife and two children, he heard a man calling for help from the water.

The 65-year-old ran into the ocean to save the drowning man on Saturday night, but died after suffering cardiac arrest, according to county officials. The man whom Blare helped rescue survived.

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"It was a rescuer becoming the victim," said Eisen Witcher, chief of Brevard County Ocean Rescue.

Blare was taken to Health First's Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne for treatment after beachgoers pulled him from the ocean. Officials said Blare was fighting rip currents in the water.

When a sheriff's deputy pulled Blare to shore, his family said his heart wasn't beating. 

Blare and his family were deliberately staying out of the water because of the rough surf, but when he heard the man calling for help, he "just took off," said Wilma Krank, a close friend.

Two men were already trying to rescue the drowning man, but Blare saw they were heading back to shore. 

"He was looking over the situation to determine if he could get out there, and all I can say is he must have seen a way," Deb Blare, Delbert's wife, said.

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Deb is legally blind, and before her husband swam out, he asked her if he should go help. 

"She told him, 'If you think you can help, you should,'" Krank said.

Deb said her husband had lifeguard training in his younger years, and while they were at the beach, he was keeping updated on the rip currents because his grandchildren were visiting from West Virginia. 

"He knew how to react in a rip tide, but for whatever reason he just couldn't overcome the waves," Deb said. "All I could see was a little black dot going up and down."

The two men who were initially trying to help went back in the water and pulled out the drowning man Blare had gone in to save, but Blare himself was swept out further

"Oh my God, he's still out there. I got to go," Deb recalled the man saying.

She sat him down.

"No you can't go back out there, you almost drowned," she told him.

Officials said the man refused hospital transport.

"It turned out the other man gets to live and my husband gets to go home and be with God," Deb said. 

Blare and his wife lived in Melbourne; he worked in the grocery department at the Walmart in Melbourne. The couple attended Cornerstone Church of God in Melbourne together. 

Deb can't live alone because of her vision impairment. She can't drive. She and Delbert moved to Florida just over two years ago, away from family in Ohio.

Now, Deb says she will have to move back up north, but she doesn't have the finances to relocate from her home in the senior living community of Lamplighter Village.

A GoFundMe page has been set up with a goal of raising $5,000 to aid in moving and funeral expenses as well as fixing remaining damages the family's home sustained from Hurricane Irma.

Who was Delbert Blare?

Deb married her husband when she was 16. He was 19, and not the Christian and pastor he would become later in life.

"He was an alcoholic when I married him but I didn't know that at the time," Deb said. 

But even though Delbert would drink the night before, he would always go to church with her on Sunday mornings. 

He continued his drinking habits until one day in 1974 when Deb said a church service in a small town in West Virginia changed their life. 

"The song 'Plenty of Time' played, and we were both crying," Deb said. "My spiritual mom said, 'Oh, won't you come?' And we came and we were saved. It's not real if it don't change your life."

The Blares graduated from ministry school in 2005 and worked at Dyer Times Ministries Bible Training Center in West Virginia. Deb was the Associate Dean and Delbert was an instructor at the college. 

The couple moved to Florida after Delbert was injured in a tractor accident in Ohio. Doctors told Deb her husband would never walk again.

"But he was back to work in four months," she said. 

Dale Broom, pastor of Cornerstone Church of God, said Blare was always very involved in the church. He taught occasionally and helped board up the church for Hurricane Irma. 

"He was always available," Broom said. "Speak, teach, whatever you needed him to do."

Deb said her husband would pray with people in Walmart or on the street. 

"He was the type of man that people felt comfortable talking with, and any job that he went, people knew they could just go to him and speak to him," said Dana Blare, Delbert's son. "He was a man of his word."

For the Blares, their frequent beach walks were spiritual. On Delbert's days off and before work, he and Deb would pick a direction and just keep walking.

Then turn around, walk back, rest, and head in the opposite direction.

"It was so beautiful and peaceful and always different," Deb said. "And we always enjoyed seeing God's majesty and seeing how awesome his power is in the waves of the ocean."

The couple was married for 45 years and had three children. Still, Deb said Delbert would sign every letter he wrote her, "We are one forever."

"It's like being split in half if you can imagine it," Deb said. 

Sheets is a breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY.

Contact Sheets at 317-444-3208

or tsheets@floridatoday.com

Twitter: @sheets_tess