During the civil rights era, as courts ruled public facilities could no longer be segregated, Whites formed and flocked to private swimming clubs, or built backyard pools.
Essential water safety tips
Learn essential water safety tips to ensure a fun and safe summer for the whole family.
- Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death for children, especially impacting minority communities due to historical and socioeconomic factors.
- Learning to swim is crucial for water safety and offers recreational benefits.
- Supporting swim programs and becoming a lifeguard can contribute to community water safety.
A little over two years ago, in a fit of what I now see was post-retirement mania, I did something that had been kicking around my head for a while: I got my Red Cross lifeguard certification, followed by a job doing just that. I was paid $16 an hour, and embodied a verifiable trend amid a national shortage: the elderly lifeguard. (Motto: It’s not just our whistles that are silver!)
I worked at Chandler Park Aquatic Center, in a red swimsuit and a T-shirt with my job title in big letters on the back. It was an interesting summer, spent watching over the patrons of the Wayne County waterpark in Michigan. Most interesting was that no one really asked what this weirdo, old enough to be grandmother to her teenage colleagues, was doing there in the first place.
If anyone had, I had an answer ready – that I’d been waiting through a career in journalism to take the coolest job my teenage self could have ever wanted – but also one connected to both jobs: I was interested in swimming as a social justice issue.
Who learns to swim, and who doesn’t
As a reporter for many years, I’ve covered drownings. There are few assignments more wrenching than watching firefighters drag a pond for a child whose only mistake was stepping past an unseen, underwater drop-off. Another double tragedy, which I only read about, still haunts me, and prompted me to write a check to a learn-to-swim nonprofit.
And I’ve seen the data: The National Drowning Prevention Alliance reports that children of color, especially Black children, are far more likely to drown than White children. They’re more likely to never learn to swim, to never master the skills necessary to save themselves if they fall into deep water.
Not that White kids are doing much better. Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for all children under 4, and the second-leading cause for those up to age 14.
The reasons are many and varied, and not all connected to societal racism, although some are.
During the civil rights era, as courts ruled public facilities could no longer be segregated or off-limits to Black Americans, Whites formed and flocked to private swimming clubs or built backyard pools. Some cities closed their public pools rather than allow everyone to use them.
Even in cities less affected by this scourge, facts don’t favor swimmers. Even now, pools are expensive to build and maintain. And lifeguards and instructors are in short supply.
This pool shortage in urban areas has a knock-on effect: People in urban centers are less likely to learn to swim. Their children don’t learn. And so on.
Where I live, in Grosse Pointe, pools are plentiful. Our parks have splendid, well-kept pools. Our high schools have pools. Our middle schools have pools. Enough kids swim in summer to have a competitive league comprising the five Pointes and St. Clair Shores. Bottom line: Everyone swims, or has the opportunity to learn.
But in our training at Chandler, we were told to assume most of our guests couldn’t, and we saw it every day. We didn’t have any drownings that summer, but we had a lot of saves.
Take a few lessons before diving in the pool this summer
Here in Detroit, there are several worthy nonprofits trying to get more kids and adults safer in the water. Detroit Swims, a program of the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit, is one of them, offering barrier-free instruction to young people, with the goal of reducing youth drownings.
Barrier-free, in this case, means they provide not just instruction, but also transportation, swimsuits, goggles, even a towel, all free of charge for participants. For Cydney Taylor, who runs the program, it’s about extending to others what the adults in her young life offered her – a life skill that offers not just safety around water, but exercise and fun as well.
“My grandmother was adamant that I learn,” said Taylor, who went on to swim competitively for the team at the Adams Butzel Complex on the west side. Her skills led to certification to lifeguard and teach swimming, and today she’s overseeing an effort to vastly increase water skills in Detroit’s children.
She’s not alone, either. The Huron-Clinton Metroparks’ Everyone in the Pool program teaches thousands of basic swimming and water skills lessons.
It’s summer now, when water becomes tempting. If you can swim a little, take some lessons to improve your competence.
If you swim well, consider becoming a lifeguard or swim instructor, now that shortages are so pronounced some pools are offering signing bonuses.
And if you want to help but prefer to stay dry, donate to a program like Detroit Swims or another in your community. A $100 gift to Detroit Swims covers all costs for one child.
Learning to swim doesn’t have to be a hassle
I consider swimming a life skill, but I don’t want to make learning it sound like some grim duty, like CPR or changing a tire. Swimming is also a profound pleasure, and I count time spent in oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds and pools, from surfing in the Pacific to midnight skinny dips in Lake Huron, as some of the best moments of my life.
Those great memories curdle every time someone seeking the same pleasure is pulled, unconscious, from a body of water.
It is said that in Michigan, we’re all no farther than 6 miles from a natural water source. There’s enough for everyone to enjoy. Let’s enjoy it safely.
Nancy Derringer is a mostly retired journalist living in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan. This column originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press.
