Dennise Johnson spent her childhood in the ‘60s playing at the now-demolished Kronk Recreation Center on McGraw near Livernois. Though the center had a pool, she didn’t learn to swim there.
“One time – I was about six or seven years old – I was in the pool, and this girl pulled me under the water,” Johnson recalled. “You know, she thought it was funny. But after that, I didn’t like the water for a long time.”
About 70% of Black children in Detroit can’t swim, according to data collected by the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit, and, per a 2021 report from aquatics planning and design firm Counsilman-Hunsaker, Detroiters are more afraid of the water than residents from other southeast Michigan communities.
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Detroit Parks and Recreation’s Deputy Director Keith Flournoy said the fear of water tale is one he hears often. He said it’s partially the result of a generational cycle where parents pass down their fears to their children.
“The mentality parents have is, ‘I’m not going to let you near the water because I can’t save you,’” Flournoy said. “That’s why we need to not only teach the children how to swim, but we also need to do outreach to the parents and teach them as well.”
Detroit partnered with Huron-Clinton Metroparks in 2021 to provide free swimming lessons to children and adults in the city via the Metroparks’ “Everyone in the Pool” program.
Now, efforts are underway to offer more classes in the city. Metroparks in December announced a five-year plan to raise $1.5 million to expand the program, with the aim of offering swim lessons to 6,000 residents annually in Livingston, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties by 2028.
Metroparks Director Amy McMillan told BridgeDetroit it’s too early to know how many spots will be designated to Detroiters each year but the city is a priority; she anticipates a large number of classes will roll out at community centers, such as the Adams Butzel Complex in northwest Detroit.
Metroparks is working with strategic communication firm Moment Strategies and the Remington Group to recruit donors and philanthropists to raise the $1.5 million needed to execute the expansion. Alexis Wiley, founder and CEO of Moment Strategies, said fundraising efforts are just getting underway, and “There are a lot of people in Detroit who want to help and support kids.”
So far, through the “Everyone in the Pool” program, Metroparks has provided more than 2,000 free swimming lessons in the city, which makes up about 44% percent of all lessons held across the five southeast Michigan counties it serves.
The program offers free indoor classes from January through May. Classes are being held at the Adams Butzel Complex, Heilmann Community Center, Northwest Activities Center, and the Patton Community Center. Families can register on the Metroparks website.
Johnson, who overcame her fear of the water in college and learned how to swim, made sure her two children were trained to swim at an early age, signing them up for lessons at the Coleman A. Young Recreation Center. She’s now repeating the process with her 11-year-old grandson, London, who is in the Metroparks program and takes classes at Butzel.
“I had to learn how to swim, my children needed to learn how to swim, and now my grandson is learning,” Johnson said. “He begs me to drive him to Butzel every weekend so he can swim.”
More than just fear
The Huron-Clinton Metroparks hired Counsilman-Hunsaker to investigate swim barriers for those living in the counties Metroparks serves.
Miklos Valdez, studio director of the firm’s Aquatic Management Program, surveyed more than 1,000 residents and found that although Black Detroiters fear water more than neighboring residents, 44% of those surveyed expressed an interest in adult swimming lessons.
“Compare that to the only 7% of whites who reported an interest in adult swimming lessons and you’ll see there’s a very big interest from Black people in Detroit,” Valdez said.
However, barriers exist. One is folks’ difficulty with finding affordable classes, according to Valdez’s survey. But Flournoy said it’s a misconception that swimming lessons in Detroit are unaffordable.
In 2022, Rocket Companies then-CEO Jay Farner donated $1 million to the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit to expand its free swim lessons to include more than 7,500 children and train lifeguards and swim instructors. Flournoy also pointed to the Detroit Parks and Recreation Department’s “Swim in the D” program, a free class offered at city-operated pools in partnership with Huron-Clinton Metroparks. The program even pays for the students’ swim gear, Flournoy added.
Then, there’s the city’s “Learn to Swim” program, which costs $35 for eight weeks of swimming lessons. The recreation department primarily uses fliers, word-of-mouth, and social media to promote the program but is exploring additional outreach strategies. Flournoy said it’s just a matter of the parks department building its brand so more people know about the programs.
The Counsilman-Hunsaker survey also revealed that Detroiters have difficulty finding pools near their homes. Today, the city operates seven pools: six indoor, and one outdoor at River Rouge Park. Flournoy said when he joined the department 22 years ago, the city operated about 30 recreation centers with more than a dozen pools, but the economic downturn during the 2000s led to the closures of about half of Detroit’s pools and recreation centers.
Flournoy said the city plans to add four new recreation centers by the end of 2024 but none will have pools because the city can’t afford them.
“Because if you build it, now you got to maintain it,” Flournoy said. “And pools are so expensive to operate and maintain.”
The lifeguard shortage
Before Flournoy can entertain the idea of building more pools, he said he has a more immediate problem to solve: securing lifeguards at the pools that already exist.
He said the city’s lifeguard workforce depleted during the start of the pandemic. Nearly three years later, the Detroit Parks and Recreation Department has struggled to regain its former staff. Last spring, just before summer, the office organized a series of on-site hiring job fairs with an “urgent need” to fill a wide range of seasonal positions, including lifeguards.
Today, the city has 22 lifeguards on staff and is actively recruiting between 13 and 15 more. The division will need 25 more in the summer. The starting pay is $15 an hour.
“We’re looking to train anybody who wants to be a lifeguard. We’ll train you and give you a job,” Flournoy said. “Because right now, in metropolitan Detroit, we’re all competing for the same lifeguards.”
Flournoy said the dearth of lifeguards has forced the city to scale back hours of operation, which, in turn, has affected the availability of its swimming classes.
One reason for the lifeguard shortage is that training programs are expensive, explained McMillan. Included in the $1.5 million “Everyone in the Pool” expansion campaign is the creation of a program to recruit and train lifeguards. McMillan said Metroparks is leaning on local entities such as Detroit’s recreation department to recruit prospects because they have stronger relationships with the community.
“They are the foundation of the program,” McMillan said of local partners. “They’re operating and maintaining those pools every single year – that is expensive. They are putting a ton of resources and effort into making the facilities open and available. Without that kind of investment at the local level, we wouldn’t be able to have this program, and sometimes that gets lost in the conversation.”
McMillan and Flournoy are also turning their attention to the youth. The end goal for the cities’ swimming programs is to run children through the pipeline to become future certified lifeguards. At 15, children from the program can become junior lifeguards, and, at 16, they can become full-fledged lifeguards.
“In Detroit – for kids and people of color – the more you can see yourself as a swimmer, the more you can see yourself as a lifeguard,” McMillan said. “That’s a whole virtuous cycle.”
To show Black children in Detroit that it’s possible is one of the reasons Kaylin Mapp became a lifeguard. Mapp works five days a week at Butzel where Johnson takes her grandson. Like Johnson, Mapp had her own near-drowning experience in a pool as a child, which happened during a family vacation in Florida.
After that, Mapp’s godmother signed her up for swimming lessons with the Boy Scouts. Mapp became a proficient swimmer and later joined the Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School’s swim team. At 16 years old, she became a certified lifeguard.
“Almost drowning when I was a kid stayed with me for a long time. Now I enjoy watching kids who look like me, who don’t know how to swim, develop a new skill,” Mapp said. “I enjoy watching kids who are uncomfortable jump in and learn to enjoy themselves in the water.”
But the lifeguard shortage isn’t lost on Mapp who earns $15 an hour, which she said is not enough. She said she could make up to $5 more per hour working in other cities but is loyal to her hometown.
Some lifeguards, she said, have turned the job into a part-time career and have chosen to remain with Detroit’s department for more than 25 years to give back to the city that taught them how to swim.
“We want people to feel ownership, responsibility and to show and express their love for the city,” Flournoy said.