Matt and Melissa Graves will release a nine-minute tribute video on June 14, the 10-year anniversary of the day their 2-year-old son, Lane Thomas Graves, died after an alligator snatched him at the shoreline of Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa. The video will appear on the Lane Thomas Foundation website and is meant to honor Lane and thank the people who have stood with the family for the past decade.
The timing is stark: the date marks 10 years since the attack that ended with Lane’s body being recovered a day later, after the alligator dragged him into a nearby lagoon as his father tried to pull him free. The family has spent the years since turning that loss into a foundation built in Lane’s memory, and the new video extends that effort on a day many in the family have been waiting for and dreading at once.
The Lane Thomas Foundation focuses on raising awareness about pediatric organ donation and helping parents who need time away from work to care for sick children. More than 2,200 children are on the national transplant waiting list, and the foundation says it has helped about 200 families. Matt Graves once said, “We promised him at his wake, we would turn this tragedy into good for many families,” a mission that has given the family’s grief a public purpose.
That purpose has also become something the family’s children can see and carry. Ella, 14, recently spoke at a fundraising gala for the foundation and said, “I can promise you, we will not stop helping these sick kids,” while Christian, 7, was born two years after Lane’s death. The tribute video, which the family shared an early look at on June 12, is expected to center on Lane’s memory and the support the family says has helped them keep going.
The anniversary is also marked by a reminder that the loss never became less difficult simply because time passed. Disney World unveiled a lighthouse sculpture in 2017 near the Seven Seas Lagoon beach in honor of Lane, and the Lane Thomas Foundation’s logo is a lighthouse. The Graves family has said the symbol stands as a beacon of hope for families in despair, and the new video appears set to carry that same message forward, one more time, in Lane’s name.
