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Ian Tilmann Foundation Fundraiser At Safety Harbor Skate Park

by Floyd Egner

Publisher, Tropical Breeze

Ian Tilmann was 28 when he fell and hit his head in June 2005 while “longboarding” on a street in Clearwater. He died 10 days later. Born and raised in Safety Harbor, he was a Marine, a four-year veteran.

“He had a typical attitude of invincibility,” his mother Marcy Tilmann said. “If he’d had a helmet, he would have survived.”

The loss of her son has given Tilmann a mission in life — trying to give a helmet to every child who skateboards, rollerblades or participates in any skating sport where brain injury is a possibility. She created the Ian Tilmann Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to brain injury prevention.
She has given away more than 200 certified helmets valued at about $50 each, 95 to participants in Safety Harbor summer youth camps alone. She is a regular speaker at Pinellas County schools, telling her son’s story and promoting the skating safety message.

A fundraiser will be held 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 21 at the Safety Harbor Skate Park on Seventh Street South featuring skateboard contests, rollerblade contests, skate demonstrations and music by a disc jockey. All proceeds will go toward purchasing more helmets, Tilmann said.Helmets are provided free to anyone who pledges to wear one, she said. The foundation began in the days immediately following her son’s accident. While he was hospitalized, friends and family raised nearly $9,200 in hopes of helping in his long-term recovery. When that was not a possibility, his parents Barry and Marcy Tilmann chose to use the funds to form a charity in his memory.“Ian lived his life as a ‘pay it forward’ kind of guy,” his mother said. “It was only fitting we honor Ian’s values.”

In addition to purchasing helmets, the foundation is promoting an educational program in cooperation with Bayfront Medical Center, providing a booklet called “Brain Injury: A Family Guide” to families that have loved ones in the Neural Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.

“From the moment we reached the emergency room the night of Ian’s accident, we had a thousand questions,” Tilmann wrote in a Foundation update.
After Ian’s death, the family found a booklet prepared by the Brain Injury Association of Florida that provided much of the information they had been seeking. That is the booklet the foundation is now distributing.

Call 727-726-3435.