text: A 19-year-old from Michigan who was vacationing in the Bahamas was killed when a gigantic wave swept him away as he was hiking. The tragedy came shortly after he asked his girlfriend’s family for permission to marry her. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow met his girlfriend, Athena Williams, at a summer party just after they finished the eighth grade. The two bonded the next year as they sat next to each other on the school bus after Brussow moved down the street from Williams. It was during those rides that their relationship blossomed. 
   
   “The minute he walked down to the bus, I just knew. I was so excited that Jonathan Brussow was on my bus,” Williams, 20, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, tells PEOPLE. “He later told me that he saw me, and he had butterflies in his stomach and didn’t know how he could talk to me without throwing up!” 
   
   As the couple readied to start their lives as young adults, Brussow felt the time was right to ask for his longtime girlfriend’s hand in marriage. But first, the young man wanted to ask Williams’ family for permission. While the couple was on vacation on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas with Williams’ family, Brussow did just that, as he secretly sat them down for a talk when Williams wasn’t around. Saying yes to him, Williams says, was always a given. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow and Athena Williams Athena Williams 
   
   “Me and Jonathan, we knew we were going to get married. We knew we were still young, but—it sounds so cheesy—but we’ve just been so much in love. We didn’t spend a minute apart from each other unless we had to,” she says of Brussow, who was an adventurous “country boy” who loved dirt biking and hunting. “We were creating such a beautiful life together. I knew he wanted to propose to me but I didn’t know he was asking my parents.” 
   
   Just before dawn on March 5, Brussow woke Williams up and told her he was “going to be right back,” and left with Williams’ brother, Eric, for a hike up a nearby cliff to talk with him about the upcoming proposal. But as the hours passed with no sign of Brussow and her brother, Williams began to worry. 
   
   “The sun was coming up and I was looking out my window trying to look for him, waiting for him to come back and come lay down or something,” she recalls. “He didn’t come back.” 
   
   As the two men sat at the highest point of the cliff—which Williams says was at least 70 feet high—a freak wave came up and swept the two of them into the water below, leaving them to fight for their survival. Though Eric was badly injured, he managed to pull himself from the water by grabbing on to a rock. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow GoFundMe 
   
   With Brussow unable to return to shore, Eric ran for help. After borrowing a phone from a local woman, he messaged his sister and told her he was at a hospital. It wouldn’t be until a short time later that Williams found out Brussow wasn’t with him. 
   
   “After finding out that Eric was up on the cliffs, I couldn’t help but to scream and I instantly thought the worst,” she says. “That’s when we started calling everybody, we called every number possible.” 
   
   In the coming hours, Brussow’s father flew to the island as Williams and her family called the U.S. Embassy, Coast Guard, Ministry of Tourism and anyone else that could assist in the search. With time ticking and a storm adding difficulties to their efforts, local Bahamians rallied together, bringing the family water and food and never wanting money in return. They spent many hours searching with them, something which Williams says she will be forever grateful. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow and Athena Williams Athena Williams 
   
   “We never stopped searching, we had so much hope,” she says. “If there was one person who could get out of this situation, it’s Jonathan Brussow, and anyone would tell you that.” 
   
   On March 9—four days after the incident—a search party recovered Brussow’s body, hundreds of yards from where the giant wave hit. 
   
   “It’s been a very tragic experience, but I’ve come to the conclusion that since this had to happen to us, I’m glad that it happened on this island,” Williams, who is still on the island but is returning to the states on Wednesday, says. “We wouldn’t have been able to come to peace with this situation to understand it, to get through it, without the people here. I couldn’t be more thankful.” 
   
   Athena Williams 
   
   Though the family initially set up a GoFundMe to raise award money for anyone who found Brussow alive, they have now shifted the donation page’s mission. Now they hope to help cover the expenses for Brussow’s family to transport him back to Michigan and reimburse those who spent money to help in the search. 
   
   They’d also like to use the donations to purchase warning signs and safety gear that will be available near the island’s Glass Window Bridge—where the wave hit. This part of the initiative is being spearheaded by Eric in the hopes if someone is in need of help, equipment will be readily available. The island’s hospital is also in need of a mammogram machine, and this, too, is something they hope to provide. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow and Athena Williams Athena Williams 
   
   Helping out the locals in a meaningful and lasting way will be a great way to honor the love of her life, Williams says. 
   
   “I would give anything to be able to have him here and be able to marry him and spend the rest of my life with him. It would have been beautiful, it would have been a beautiful life we would have made together,” she says. “We have been such great friends over the last six years together. I wish we had more time.” ||||| 
   
   
   
   ROCKFORD, MI -- The family of a missing 19-year-old man washed into the sea Monday says his body has been recovered in the Bahamas. 
   
   Family members were holding out hope as late as Friday morning that Jonathan Brussow, a 2016 Rockford High School graduate, would somehow be found alive. 
   
   But on Saturday, March 10, Brussow's father confirmed that his son's remains had been recovered from atop a cliff where surging waves created an eight-foot deep pond during a storm earlier this week. 
   
   Brad Brussow said that local authorities and his own search party had been through that same area several times since his son went missing Monday, March 5 near the Glass Window Bridge. They did not find anything. 
   
   The pond began to dry up later in the week and the body was discovered Friday, March 9 in the depression area, Brad Brussow said. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow was on vacation in the Bahamas, on the island of Eleuthera, when he and a friend were both knocked off their feet by a rogue wave while near the bridge. 
   
   Father of Rockford man missing in Bahamas still hopeful, funding effort started 
   
   Brussow was swept into the sea and the other person managed to cling to a rock and pull himself to safety. 
   
   Brad Brussow, who flew to the Bahamas to help search, said it's believed his son was washed ashore not long after he went into the sea. The sea surge crashing into the cliff may have been nearly 100 feet tall, he said. 
   
   Jonathan Brussow's family released a statement on Saturday. 
   
   In the statement, they made an analogy between a straight-line wind storm that happened on the day of Jonathan Brussow's birth on May 31, 1998 and the March 5 storm in Eleuthera that swept him into the sea. 
   
   "God brought Jonathan in with a storm and took him back in a storm," according to the statement. 
   
   When he was born, he was dubbed "storm trooper" in an article in the Rockford Squire about the straight-line wind storm and the family's adventure getting to the hospital through debris. 
   
   "As a family, he was known as Jonathan "Stormy" Brussow," the family's statement said. "He named his dog Stormy. For those that knew him, they knew he lived his life with a storm of passion and a smile that would light up a room." 
   
   Family members also offered thanks to everyone who gave prayers and support since Monday. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Please enable Javascript to watch this video 
   
   HARBOUR ISLAND, Bahamas-- After a young Rockford man's body was found in the Bahamas, his girlfriend is encouraging the community to celebrate his life and sharing his last words with FOX 17. 
   
   Athena Williams, 20, met Jonathan Brussow, 19, at a bonfire during the summer after the two finished eighth grade. When ninth grade started, they rode the same school bus. Williams says one morning, Brussow sat in the seat next to her and from there, it was young love. 
   
   Brussow had been with Williams and her family on vacation to the Bahamas. Williams says the night before Brussow went missing, he sat down with her family after she went to bed to ask them a question that would change their lives. 
   
   He wanted their permission to marry her. 
   
   “When we started dating he always told me, he said, ‘Since the first time I saw you, I knew I was gonna marry you,'" Williams tells FOX 17. “We had everything planned out already. He had our whole wedding planned out, too and we weren’t even engaged or anything.” 
   
   Before the sun rose that next morning, Brussow went with Williams' brother, Erik on a hike up a tall cliff nearby. 
   
   “When they were there, Jonathan also asked Erik if it was okay if he could marry me," Williams says. "I know that and the one thing Erik did tell me that Jonathan said was, ‘Come have a seat with me, buddy,' and then it just kind of happened, I guess.” 
   
   A huge wave swept the two young men into the water. Erik was able to grab onto a rock and get himself to shore. He had broken ribs and was cut badly but still, he ran a mile to get help for Jonathan before being taken to the hospital. 
   
   At 11 a.m., Williams got a message that Brussow wasn't with Erik. 
   
   “That’s pretty much when we knew that Jonathan was gone but we did not give up hope," Williams says. "We called every number possible. We called the embassy, the Nassau Coast Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, the local police enforcement. We did not stop making calls.” 
   
   Brussow's parents immediately flew to the island. Williams tells FOX 17 that with help from locals, they searched for Brussow for days. She credits the Bahamians for their ability to continue the search. 
   
   There was a tropical storm that hit the island, making their search difficult. Still, she persisted. 
   
   “It’s Jonathan. Jonathan Brussow. If there’s anybody who could get out of a situation like this, it’s Jonathan," Williams says. “But the odds were absolutely against him. There was just no way he could have made it.” 
   
   Days later, Brussow's body was found. Though her boyfriend is gone, Williams says his memory will live on. 
   
   “He absolutely loved his life. He had no regrets. He had no complaints," Williams says. “I’ve never, ever experienced or seen anybody love somebody so genuinely like he actually loved me. It just blows me away, the person he was. The person he still is.” 
   
   She says her family is now focusing on returning the help that was given to them by local Bahamians. The Williams and Brussow families are raising money to install a safety device on the Glass Window Bridge, near where Brussow entered the water. Williams says this effort is especially important to Erik. 
   
   Williams says they also hope to help the local hospital get new equipment, like a much needed mammogram machine. 
   
   If you'd like to contribute to the families' GoFundMe page, click here.
target: – "God brought Jonathan in with a storm and took him back in a storm." That's how the family of 19-year-old Jonathan Brussow describe his death earlier this month in the Bahamas, just after he'd asked the family of his girlfriend for permission to marry her. Athena Williams tells People and FOX 17 that the Michigan man she met at a party in middle school was vacationing on the island of Eleuthera with her and her family when, on March 4, he secretly asked her family if he could marry her. Early the next day, Brussow and Williams' brother went for a hike, and as they were resting on a cliff, a wave came out of nowhere and swept the two men into the water below. Williams' brother was badly hurt but managed to get to shore, where he ran for help. Brussow, however, was nowhere to be found, and his family flew out from the US to help Williams, her family, and the locals search for him. On March 9, an 8-foot-deep depression filled with water near where the men were swept away dried up, and Brussow's body was found, MLive.com reports. The $21,000 raised on GoFundMe to help in the search for Brussow—described as the "most beloved kid" on his high school swim team before he graduated in 2016, per WZZM—will now be put toward bringing his body home, offering funds to those who helped look for him, and putting warning signs and safety gear near where the wave took his life. In a statement, his family notes how Brussow had been born in a wild storm on May 31, 1998, and that "those that knew him well knew he lived his life with a storm of passion." As for Williams, she tells People: "I would give anything to be able to have him here and be able to marry him and spend the rest of my life with him. … I wish we had more time." (A rogue wave killed twin sisters in Cabo.)