The Georgia legal community is mourning the death of Page Pate, an attorney who drowned Sunday while trying to save one of his sons from a strong rip current in the Atlantic Ocean off St. Simons Island.

Pate, 55, was a senior trial attorney with his firm, Pate, Johnson & Church, which has offices in Atlanta and Brunswick in Georgia, Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., according to its website. According to media reports, he was swept offshore in powerful outgoing tides at Gould’s Inlet.