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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Sally Jackson has been teaching swimming in Spokane Valley for 64 years

Sally Jackson, center, longtime swim instructor, encourages youngsters as they learn to swim in her pool on Tuesday at her home in Spokane Valley. (Tyler Tjomsland)

Sally Jackson began teaching kids how to swim when she was just 19 years old – and she hasn’t stopped.

“I just loved it so much that I’ve done it every year,” the Spokane Valley matriarch, now 83, said. “Most of those years we’d teach 500 kids how to swim. I just loved the kids and have had so much fun with them over the years.”

This year, her 64th summer in the pool, she’s cut back. A little. She’ll teach about 300 at Jackson Quality Swim Lessons.

“I was at a banquet and they were honoring me for some such thing, and Harry Amend was the master of ceremonies,” Jackson recalled. “He asked this room full of people from around the Valley, ‘How many of you learned how to swim in Sally Jackson’s swimming pool?’ “

To her amazement and delight, just about everybody raised a hand.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “It was just amazing.”

The numbers add up quickly. Strictly on lessons taught, Jackson has had more than 30,000 kids in her pool.

The Jackson family likes to start kids off in the pool at an early age.

“We like to work with the young ones and get them used to the water,” Jackson said. “We get them at 2, 3, 4 and 5 and they are so much fun to work with.”

It’s a Jackson family tradition.

Sally Jackson is one of the founders of the Spokane Valley Girls Softball Association, which teaches young girls to play fastpitch softball, and has an even longer history of coaching and teaching youngsters to play baseball while coaching in Spokane Valley Youth Baseball, as well as Babe Ruth teams, including All-Star.

She still coaches fastpitch softball. If you ask, she will confide that her favorite place to be in the world is the third-base coach’s box during a baseball or softball game.

Her late husband, Ron Jackson – Dad, as she still calls him – played professional baseball with the Spokane Indians and coached American Legion from 1960 to 1984.

Ron Jackson, who died in 2011 after a 14-year battle with Parkinson’s disease, will be inducted into the Washington State American Legion Baseball Hall of Fame later this summer. It’s an honor that sparks a catch in Sally’s throat and a tear to her eye.

Sally said she contemplated retiring from both baseball and teaching swim lessons after her husband died, but she quickly realized that Dad wouldn’t have wanted her to stop doing what she loved.

So she continues to surround herself with youngsters, both her own and from all over. The fourth generation of Jackson family swim teachers, Rikki and Heather, now help teach.

None of the Jacksons teach from the sidelines. They all, Sally included, dive in and offer hands-on lessons.

Learning how to swim in the Jackson family swimming pool is just what you did growing up in the Spokane Valley, longtime sports writer and resident Mike Vlahovich said. “My kids all learned how to swim from Sally, and they all had their mile in by the time they were 7 or 8.”

Swimming a mile is the benchmark for how Grandma Sal, as she’s affectionately known, teaches youngsters to swim.

“That’s how I’ve always taught it,” she insists. “We always figured that, if you could swim a mile without stopping you could probably get yourself out of trouble in the water. You’re going to be able to stay safe.”