When D’Arcy Byrne of Scottsville and his 7-year-old son D’Arcy III received the first place award for the “Most Natural Design” in the Blue Ridge Homebuilders Association’s second annual tree house competition this summer, the father-son’s enjoyment of success was short-lived. Just a few weeks after the winners were announced; the young father of three suffered an aortic aneurysm that nearly took his life.

“We went to Canada for a couple weeks and when we got back,” says Byrne, who regularly swims for exercise at a nearby gym. “I got back in the pool and the fourth day in the pool—that was it.”

Byrne recalls the moment he knew something was extremely wrong. “I was swimming that morning. I made it about a little over a kilometer, coming down to the turn at 1,175 meters, and all of a sudden going into the wall there was this big ‘pop’ inside my head and I didn’t know what had happened. I felt really, really bad … like impending doom kind of bad … like ‘you’re going to die soon’ kind of bad.”
Used to swimming a minimum of 13 or 14 miles a week, he lifted himself out of the pool. “I sat there for about 10 minutes. The lifeguard walked by and asked if I was OK; I said ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I swim there weekly, never had any kind of problems. My (blood pressure) is always 110 over 70 or 65. My resting pulse is always around 55 ... I started thinking it was a random thing and swam back down the pool.”

But Byrne continued to feel awful. “My legs were totally weak,” he says. “I had to collect myself and see a doctor.” Looking back, he remembers having had mild shortness of breath the two prior mornings.

A visit to his primary care physician confirmed the warnings that his body had given him. “My (blood pressure) was 90 over 50 and my pulse was between 28 and 30 (beats per minute). My (electrocardiogram) was erratic.”

A thoracic surgeon at Martha Jefferson Hospital diagnosed a dissecting aortic aneurysm without pain, “which is ridiculously rare; it’s like a John Ritter kind of thing, so normally these conditions are ridiculously painful, one of the number one causes of chest pain in an emergency situation.” Byrne was rushed to University of Virginia Medical Center where he endured a heart-stopping five-and-three-quarter hours operation to repair his aorta.

Then, during his recovery, Byrne suffered a stroke.

An educational support specialist for Region Ten in Charlottesville, he was used to motivating others to succeed. “In the past 10 years or so I realized ... I’d gone far enough a long, I thought my life was pretty together: I have a nice wife, nice kids, a good job, then the rug gets pulled out from underneath you and you’re in a situation you’ve never considered before.”

“It’s been the most difficult thing, the most difficult challenge of my entire life,” he says. “But I’ve come out of it with confidence. I’m more apt to look at a challenge and not think ‘Geez, I can’t do that.’”
Now that he’s on the mend (what his wife calls a truly amazing recovery) at home in Scottsville, Byrne has time to reflect on the award he and the younger D’Arcy have received for their homemade tree house—the second big construction project the two of them paired up to create.

“[D’Arcy III] is a pretty impressive kid. There’s not a day that goes by that I take him for granted,” Byrne says. “He definitely has an understanding of engineering and that’s been improved upon through his participation of these projects.”

The 7-year-old helped with ideas for structural engineering and even had his turn with the compound miter saw with a fixed blade. “And I spotted him. He was not in any danger ’cause I was right on him. It’s a really exciting thing to do,” this dad says. “It’s one of the things that I know he’s going to remember for a long time. We have a great relationship and that’s how we’re able to do these projects. They are fun things to do.”

When the pair got word of the contest hosted by Blue Ridge Homebuilders Association (BRHBA), they just had to enter.

Jim Kuznar, the Executive Vice President of the association, says the goal of the contest is to encourage area parents to work with their children to build their own tree house or playhouse. He says, “I think there’s a great deal of people out there that are extremely passionate about building. Kids of all ages are interested in getting out there and swinging a hammer, building something, and being outdoors with your parents is not something every child gets the chance to do.”

Kuznar notes that the kids inspired a number of entries this year versus the parents. The combination of building something from scratch with someone in your family is “a memory that lasts forever.”
D’Arcy III is really excited about his win.

“It was pretty cool,” his dad says. “We entered the contest as kind of an afterthought. The judges came out and they were pretty impressed.”

Byrne says winning the tree house contest was “pretty cool, but being alive is even more fun.”