Let's build a new Portland Pool

To the editor:
I read with great interest, and even great enthusiasm, Jack Ronald’s editorial from Feb. 3 with regard to a new or refurbished pool.
Having been a regular patron of our pool for more than 60 years, I was quite surprised to learn I must be among Portland’s “elite”. But I’ll be darned if I know just what makes me elite.
At a young age I went to play with all of my friends at the first “old pool” adjacent to the “Rec” and then the “new pool” we have now.
As a teenager I gathered there again with my friends to swim, and check out the boys.
When I moved back from Los Angeles, where there was a pool at every apartment complex I lived in, I again started going as often as possible for the exercise and the camaraderie of friends. I would take my nieces and nephews during that time period.
When I became a mom myself, I took my daughter and taught her to swim. She then spent her summers at the pool following the footsteps of her mom, aunt and brother.
Now in later years I have taken my great nieces and nephews, getting in the water and playing with them and watching them move from the “baby pool” to the shallow end of the big pool to ultimately going off the diving boards. In the pool water I can do so many things with them that I cannot do outside the water because of severe degenerative arthritis.
I now attend almost daily for the last few years as “therapy” for the arthritis. I can no longer dive nor swim because of the arms, but walk that pool religiously. If aging makes me elite, so be it.
As for it being a “frill” Portland doesn’t really need, phooey. Pick up the paper anyone or watch the news and you will learn about obesity. I’ve lived with it all my life, and that’s a fact I’m not particularly proud of. But the exercise that swimming offers is some of the best, working many muscles in your body and generally one of the “funnest” workouts.
Come and visit and see the “family affair” it has become. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, grandchildren — we are all there having the time of our life.
I’ve sat with my “pool friends” and heard young parents say that will be the last time they bring their young child to the baby pool because of its condition. I cannot walk the pool without stepping on broken pieces of concrete.
Jay County is known for its basketball, football, soccer, tennis and swim teams. The Stults girls, Missy Bader and Marcie Vormohr, have spent countless hours on their own time trying to make our pool fit for the swim teams. Summer swim keeps the high school swim team active year round.
The pool employed Marcie and Missy both at one time as managers. Cori Vormohr has worked there for years during her summer breaks from school, and now we have Sok Vormohr and the Bader girls coming on board also as lifeguards.
These families spend hours preparing that pool for swim meets with other counties. Just what kind of a picture do we present.
Is a new pool frivolous? Heck no. It only makes good sense for years to come.
Is a new pool for Portland’s elite? Heck no, unless I have the definition of elite all wrong.
A large group of us took the time and attended a park board meeting a couple of years ago when The Commercial Review brought to our attention the group was going to discuss the pool situation. From that meeting came an appointed group of interested parties to research the costs of both a new pool and refurbishing the old one. They too spent countless hours working on this project.
I commend Jack Ronald and The Commercial Review staff for their dedication in researching this project for Jack’s editorial.
Let’s all get on board and build a new pool. And, please, if God so sees fit, in my lifetime.
Melodi S. Haley
Portland[[In-content Ad]]