Red Cross lessons wrap up
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Sometimes lost in the hundreds of children who learn to swim every summer thanks to free lessons offered by the Red Cross are the dozens of adults who also learn the skill.
Red Cross swim lessons come to an end tonight at Gilley Pool after two successful two-week sessions. Around 600 people, adults and children, have learned to swim this summer.
?People forget about the adult classes,? said Kyle Phillips, who oversees the free lessons with his wife, Becky, and Jean Gilley. ?This summer we had a lady who wouldn?t jump in the pool, even with a life jacket. We were all around her telling her it would be OK, but she just wouldn?t do it. She finally climbed in down the ladder and now she?s jumping off the low diving board without a life jacket at all.?
Kyle is a product of the free Red Cross swimming lessons, having started himself as a 6-year-old. He?s been involved with the program as an instructor since 1980. It?s been almost that long for Becky who says, ?I would have started with him but I had to learn to swim first.?
Gilley began working with the program in 1974, one year after her husband, Bill, became active with it. Bill passed away two days after Gilley Pool was named in the couple?s honor.
?It?s rewarding knowing these kids are getting free lessons,? said Jean. ?If they weren?t free, a lot of these kids would never get lessons.?
Asked about her 32 years with the swim program, Jean said, ?You?d be surprised what a Band-Aid can do. They come up here crying with a stubbed toe or whatever and that Band-Aid makes it all better.?
Olivia Youngblood is in her third year as a swim aide. She?s discovered working with 6- and 7-year-olds can be amusing.
?They say the funniest things,? said Youngblood. ?I was trying to get one to float and I kept telling him I would hold him up and he said, ?I?m pretty heavy you know.? I was trying to get another one to flex his back a certain way and he told me, ?I?m just a regular person, not a pumped-up person you know.??
Working with an all-volunteer staff of between 30 and 40 swim instructors and aides has its challenges.
?Every night is different,? said Becky. ?When an instructor calls at the last minute and says I?m sick or I?m stuck at work, you have to adjust.?
Sometimes that adjustment means Becky has to put on her bathing suit and jump in the water herself.
?I still fill in,? she said. ?I love it. This has become a part of our lives.?