Farrell man’s splendid dive helps to keep Youngstown swimming season alive

For 78 years now, Youngstown’s Northside Pool has been making a splash for the city. It’s provided cool relief from sweltering summer heat, healthy physical activity for developing bodies and a fun-filled social setting for youth and adults alike.

Over those years, the city-operated public swimming pool has witnessed many ripples of change – from its shameful earliest days as a segregated “whites-only” facility to its packed-to-the-gills growth in the 1950s and ’60s to its total reconstruction and modernization one decade ago.

Over those same eight decades, the community value of the pool has risen as well. Its mission of offering affordable and healthy summer recreation has broadened considerably as it today is the sole survivor of a veritable tsunami of municipal pool closings. At its zenith, Youngstown maintained and operated seven public pools on all sides of town.

With so much riding on its successful operation, we, like many in the community, greeted with dismay and distress the news earlier this month the landmark summer hot spot on Belmont Avenue might not open this season.

The reason: Youngstown’s inability to recruit and employ a minimal number of lifeguards.

For years now, a nationwide shortage of lifeguards has hampered public pools’ ability to open and operate efficiently and safely. This year, that shortage sank to an all-time low in Youngstown, according to Robert Burke, the city’s park and recreation director.

Fortunately, however, just when it looked like Northside would remain dry and shuttered throughout the summer, a lifesaver about 25 miles to our east came to the rescue.

Vernon Scott Jr., an aquatics instructor and fourth-grade teacher in Farrell, Pa., read about the problem and dived head-first into action. He has arranged to bring at least eight certified lifeguards and as many as 15 to ensure the pool won’t be forced to close. With the hiring, the pool is expected to open within two weeks.

LIFEGUARDS’ CRITICAL ROLE

Had Scott not come forward, the city would have had no other choice but to keep Northside closed. After all, drowning ranks as the No. 2 cause of death for children 1 to 14 years old, according to the National Safety Council.

And no one can deny the paramount role lifeguards play in ensuring safe swimming, protecting lives and providing needed first response in any water emergency.

In fact, certified lifeguards rescue more than 1 million people each year from potential peril and death at beaches and pools, according to the International Lifesaving Federation.

Now that adequate lifeguard staffing has been reached for this season, we would suggest that officials begin as early as possible to ensure a similar predicament does not recur next year, forcing a delayed opening of the swim season. Perhaps recruitment campaigns could begin early in the upcoming 2017-18 school year and lifeguards who prove themselves as responsible and talented workers could be offered rehiring before this season even ends.

For now, though, we’re pleased Burke and Scott have worked out a viable plan to keep Youngstown-area residents in the swim in what likely will again be a long, hot summer.

Scott deserves special commendation. His thoughtful gesture serves as a model for intercommunity cooperation toward problem-solving that can stretch far beyond the confines of a public swimming pool.