Pools vote ‘nurtures downward’

The formal opening of Spokane’s first public bath, the Sinto triangle swimming pool, will be tomorrow evening. W.J. Sullivan of the park commission will formally present the pool to the city. The Olympic Swimming Club will give exhibitions of diving and swimming. – Spokane Daily Chronicle, July 23, 1914.

My personal Spokane pool crusade began in August 2004 when I took my great-nephew Max to Shadle Pool to introduce him to one of the greatest joys of my childhood. The pools – one indoor and outdoor – were dumps. The dressing room smelled of urine; its windows were dirty and cracked.

In my youth here in the early 1960s, the Shadle pools – built with part of a $797,000 pool bond approved in 1958 – were brand new beauties. That day with Max, a shame kicked in when I saw what had become of them. The shame adults should always feel when they destroy a legacy that was gifted to them.

The summer after my Shadle experience, I swam in the city’s five other pools – Witter, Hillyard, Liberty, Comstock and Cannon – and my despair deepened. The changing rooms – trashed. The pools’ pipes and heating units – unreliable. During my swims at the failing pools, I counted the other failures my generation will leave behind. The war in Iraq. The deficit. An environment baking itself to death. I wondered: Where are the adults, like those from yesteryear, who will build legacy pools for the next generations?

Mrs. Josie C. Shadle made a gift to the park board of a swimming pool with the necessary appurtenances. The gift is made by Mrs. Shadle as a memorial to her parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. J.M. Comstock and will be known as Comstock. – The Spokesman-Review, Feb. 15, 1936.

Soon enough, I started running into adults passionate about pools and working to save Spokane’s pool legacy. They volunteered for aquatics advisory committees. They signed petitions. They called and wrote their elected leaders. They attended the city’s public hearings and told parks officials, city leaders and pool consultants what they wanted in the next generation of pools. They didn’t want fancy water parks. They wanted pools where children and adults can actually swim, with some modern appurtenances thrown in. They said keep swimming free here for kids. Continue the legacy.

Still, I doubted Spokane people would really vote to replace the city’s aging pools. Not in this anti-taxes, you-jerk-you climate.

Voters are giving the go-ahead to a $43 million bond that the city will use to rebuild its five outdoor pools and build another one in the northwest part of the city. The measure was enjoying … well over the 60 percent needed for approval. – The Spokesman-Review, Nov. 7, 2007.

The morning after the election, I couldn’t believe that Spokane citizens voted to “nurture downward” once again. Let me explain. My sister Janice, mother of five, grandmother of five, believes that all nurturing should go downward. The adults in a family nurture the young, and the adults shouldn’t expect much upward nurturing in return. If eventually their children care for them in their older age, terrific. But you shouldn’t nurture with a payoff in mind.

Pools are the way we citizens nurture downward. Outdoor municipal pools, open only in the summer, are an energy and money pit. Most of the kids who swim in the new pools won’t ever thank the adults who will pay for pool bonds. It doesn’t matter.

When the first new pool is completed, I’ll take Max and his cousins for an inaugural swim. I’ll tell them: “Here’s one of the greatest joys of my childhood. Now, let it be yours.”