Grieving mom offers swim lessons to kids

Associated Press

TOLEDO

A mother is turning her worst moment into a new meaning for her life and her son’s memory.

Wanda Butts, of Toledo, lost her 16-year-old son four years ago when he drowned in a Michigan lake. She blamed herself for months because she never taught him to swim.

In the months after his death, she started a program in Toledo that gives low-cost swim lessons to children who are mainly minorities and from the inner city.

She wants to break a generational cycle of blacks who don’t know how to swim.

More than 800 kids have taken the lessons.

Butts says the drownings of six black teens in a Louisiana river nearly three weeks ago increased interest in swim lessons.

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