It’s summer-time, and the other day, as I sometimes do I, was driving around south Freeport where I spent thirty years of my life. My plan was simple: To swing by Randall Park and say hello to any of my old lifeguard friends who might be working there. For those who are new to The (once-)Weekly Freeporter, I was a lifeguard for the Village for, give or take, twenty years.
It was, surprisingly for 3:30, closed, with what looked like maintenance work in-progress.
That’s got me feeling like telling some of my stories today. Nothing too crazy, just some of the experiences I had.
To begin with: I grew up two blocks away from Randall. I didn’t go there too often as a child (I did a lot of swimming at the Rec on swim teams), but I started lifeguarding primarily at Randall when I was 16 years old. It is, by and large, a wonderful thing for the community to have a local pool. Freeport has two such facilities besides the Rec Center: Randall at the mouth of the Nautical Mile, and Martin Luther King Jr. Park up on Stevens Street. I’ve worked at both, and both are fantastic resources that by-and-large have nice people that visit.
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| Randall Park, photo by the Village. I know it's not the pool area, but it's a big Randall Park sign! |
Swim Lessons At The Rec
Some of the best were my times as a Water Safety Instructor (WSI) for the Rec. I had a practice mostly oriented towards adults. I taught a few years worth of the Wednesday night Adult Swim classes, but I also did private lessons where I primarily taught adults - many of whom were terrified of the water.
You see, here’s the thing: When my mom was a kid, she was pushed into water over her head and nearly drowned. For the rest of her life, she never went into water above her knees. She never learned to swim, even when I became a swimmer.
Her story was not unique. I came across many adults who were afraid of various swimming components. Some were comfortable going into water they could stand in, but couldn’t put their faces in the water. Others were trickier, being afraid to get in the pool altogether.
It takes a lot of time to get people to trust the water. My usual method was to let the student hold on to my arm when putting their face in the water. Oftentimes, this resulted in them clamping down on my arm. This, in turn, meant that there were definitely days at which I went home to my wife with fingernail wounds.
That was always fun.
I also have to give a shout-out to my time not so much with the Village, but with the Freeport Schools (who I TA’d for) as the assistant boys swim team coach. I got to watch a whole generation of Freeport lifeguards start as swim-team kids, some of whom were hardly able to swim, and help them elevate their skills so that they could not just compete, but make a bit of cash as lifeguards. I’m still in contact with a lot of swim team folks.
As a side-note: I believe that between her work as the head for aquatics at the Rec Center and her role as the head swim team coach for many years, the Rec Center pool should be named in honor of Carole Murphy. She was an amazing boss, an excellent coach, and an all-around cool person to know.
The Scariest Day Of My Career
I won’t go into too much detail about this, but even though about 90% of lifeguarding is just sitting back in a shade-umbrella and watching a pool, maybe while twirling a whistle, there are emergencies. They can be all sorts of unnerving - sometimes bloody, sometimes heat-related, sometimes fall-related.
The scariest day of my career, one of the scariest in my life, happened when I was at Randall. I was patrolling the deck when I observed a woman floating face-down, someone who hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago. I blew three whistles - our code, at the time at least, for “I need a backboard” - and leaped into action. I rolled her over with training long-ingrained in my muscle memory, and I threw up a prayer (a successful one, I suppose) that I could observe her breathing.
I will never forget her eyes - she was unconscious, but her eyes were open, staring at the sky, absent.
We put her on the backboard while EMS was on its way. She regained consciousness as we lifted her out of the water and was clearly terrified. I can’t honestly say I know what happened to her because information doesn’t usually flow back down to us, and what we get are often just rumors. But we know she survived. We know that on that day, everyone worked to keep her alive, and we succeeded.
So the next time you see a lifeguard just chilling in a chair ‘doing nothing,’ just remember that somewhere else there’s a lifeguard saving a life.
Filter Follies And Rain Days
Of course, a pool is only as safe as the water is clean. By and large, Randall (and MLK) are clean pools, but filters are hard to operate. I received a decent amount of training on how they work. I know how the water traveled through the pipes, I know how to clean and maintain the waffles in the vat, and I know how to shovel chlorine tablets into a chlorinator, usually without accidental inhalation of anything unpleasant.
With that said, as far back as when I was a kid, there were days when the filters simply would not work. These situations often led to relatively easy days where one or both pools were closed and our job was to stand by in case of some kind of medical emergency in the park - or, at the very least, there was a lessened demand on our attention with one pool closed, and we got a little extra time away from the sun.
Of course, sometimes this led to patrons getting agitated - and I can't blame them! As much 'fun' as it might have been to be on standby, many of us like our days to be 'the usual day' for better or worse, and unusual days can be good or bad. We get it, we're lifeguards because so many of us grew up in the water and we like to swim, so we sympathize. We just can't help that sometimes old filters don't hold up.
But I’ll never forget the rainy days, the days where we knew there’d be a few hours where we were going to be closed while thunderstorms filled the sky. We hung out in the office. Back in the day - in the early 2000’s - we had someone bring in a portable TV to watch. This was a time before cell phones had touch-screens. Other times, we played board games (Risk and Monopoly were favorites), and we imagined what it would be like if we suddenly had to face a zombie invasion.
Zombies were popular at the time, you see.
All This To Say
Lifeguarding is a great ‘starter job’ for young people to learn responsibility. You can start saving lives as early as 16. But it’s a hard job, too. Sitting outside in hundred-degree heat is draining even if you’re in the shade. Training and staying in shape for the job is difficult (I resigned in large part because my neck issues became overwhelming). The easy times seem easy, but the hard times require quick decision making to save a life.
That's training that can last - and start! - a lifetime.
I picked up the Long Island Herald at my dad’s house and I saw that Freeport was talking about how it’s police department had expanded and promoted officers. I recognized a name on the list of promoted officers and I smiled to myself because I knew that man when he was a youngster. He wasn’t always the best behaved of the bunch, either, being a little sneaky-sneak with his cell phone once upon a time! But he turned out to be a good dude, and last I saw him we had a nice chat.
And he’s not the only one I’ve known who has gone into either policing, fire-departmenting, or EMS work. Many lifeguards use lifeguarding as a starter job for a career in public service, either as first-responders or in some other capacity. Many others, like myself, become teachers and lifeguard as a summer job while educating during the rest of the year. It’s like public service was a calling to most of us.
But at the end of the day, the vast majority of lifeguards at the Rec are young folks who are charged with no less a task than saving lives in an emergency. Whether they’ve been there two decades like I was, or a few weeks like the young man who was second in the water on the day that woman I talked about nearly died, they deserve to get paid well, to be taken care of, and to get respect.
I hope that happens. With that said:
It’s my understanding that contract negotiations are rapidly approaching, and I hope the Village will consider that those young people who are just getting their start in civil service could use a fair paycheck for a fair day’s work. I won't lie - it was widely known that our salary was some of the lowest in the county.
The world is only getting hotter - Last week it hit new record highs - and Freeport is not immune from the weather. Yes, we're on an island where there's some breeze and air exchange, but it still gets hot. Freeport needs as many lifeguards as it can get, and higher salaries will make sure that when the mercury is high, the pools are open and ready to cool residents and outsiders alike down.
Thanks for reading The Weekly Freeporter. Jesse Pohlman is a sci-fi/fantasy author from Freeport. You can check his novels out at his website.
