SMALL SOUTHEASTERN SUBURB: 07/09/2003 -- A boy swimming with his fellow YMCA campers Monday drowned in 5 feet of water at the [city] public pool, authorities said. Paramedics rushed [victim], 6, to [hospital] around 2:30 p.m. He was pronounced dead at the hospital, authorities said.

Earlier in the day, the boy joined around 55 children between the ages of 6 and 8 for an afternoon of fun at the public pool on [street]. The group made up the YMCA's Discovery Camp at the organization's [YMCA] branch on [street], said [name], the chief executive officer of the YMCA [name].

"Today, they went to a park, then to the pool to swim. That's when the tragedy occurred," he said.

[Rescuer] was swimming with her son when she spotted the boy at the bottom of the pool's deep end. "I just pulled him out. It was real sad," she said as she left the pool Monday afternoon. "It was real upsetting. I just want to go home." [Rescuer] grabbed the boy from the bottom with the help of lifeguards. Someone performed CPR on him until paramedics arrived.

The YMCA staff kept the rest of the children at the pool while [county] sheriff's detectives arrived. By 4:25 p.m., staff members, who were visibly upset, loaded the children on a bus and returned to the [YMCA] branch.

Counselors from [a hospice] greeted parents as they arrived to pick up the children. "They told us that there was an accident at the pool and that a boy drowned," said [a mother] of [nearby city], who picked up her 6-year-old daughter [name]. The counselors also talked to the children about what happened. Six-year-old [participant] knew something was wrong when she saw the ambulance arrive at the pool. "They said he swallowed too much water and died," [she] said as she crawled into her mother's car. "It's sad because he's dead. . . I wish I could have gotten to him fast." [Hospice] counselors plan to be at the camp again today, [YMCA CEO] said.

For the trip, two volunteer counselors and eight paid staff counselors went with the children, he said. They are supposed to supplement the lifeguards in watching the children. "They are not lifeguards," [YMCA CEO] said.

The town of [suburb] contracts [location]-based [pool operating firm] to operate the pool. [Suburb] Mayor [name] said he could not provide the town's rules or contract with [pool operator] on Monday evening. "From what I'm told it was adequately staffed," [mayor] said, repeating what he was told: [pool operator] had lifeguards there, plus the YMCA had staff at the pool. [Pool operator] officials could not be reached for comment. It's unclear how many lifeguards were on duty at the time of the drowning.

At the beginning of the YMCA's day camps, counselors test the children's swimming ability. [YMCA CEO] did not know how the boy fared in the swimming test. The YMCA will review what went wrong so it doesn't happen again, he said.

SMALL SOUTHEASTERN SUBURB: 07/09/2003 -- [Victim] loved basketball, the Incredible Hulk and video games. But his true passion was the Lord. A self-proclaimed minister at age 6, [victim]'s favorite subject at [name] Christian School in [city] was the Bible. "He loved to talk about how much he loved the Lord," said his mother, [name].

As investigators tried to figure out how the vibrant [city] boy drowned in a public pool under the watch of a combined 21 lifeguards and camp counselors Monday, family and friends crowded into [mother]'s [street] home, offering support and sharing memories of a wide-smiling boy who made everyone laugh. "With him there was never a dull moment. He always had something humorous to say," [mother] said.

[Victim] died Monday afternoon after another swimmer noticed him submerged in the 5-foot, 3-inch-deep end of the [suburb] pool. He was rushed to [hospital], where he was pronounced dead. The [jurisdictional] Medical Examiner's Office ruled [victim]'s death an accidental drowning Tuesday, but an investigation continues as to how the boy drowned. [Victim] was at the pool with 54 other children from the YMCA's Discovery Camp. Eight camp counselors and two volunteers supervised the children.

Four lifeguards were watching over the lap pool where [victim] drowned. Seven others guarded the nearby kids' pool. "We were actually over-staffed," said [name], president of [pool manager], the [location]-based company contracted by [suburb] to run the pool. There are no state regulations administering how many lifeguards must be on duty, but [pool manager], which also manages pools in Georgia and Texas, usually staffs pools based on guards' ability to see all areas of the pool, [pool manager president] said. At [suburb], a minimum of two guards watch the lap pool with another guard stationed at the kids' pool, but those numbers reflect staffing during the pool's slowest winter months, [pool manager president] said. Seven lifeguards is [sic] normal for a busy summer day such as Monday, pool manager [name] said. The pool aims to have about one guard per 25 guests, but guards also can ask for additional staffing if they think they need help, [local pool manager] said.

Pool officials estimate 40 people were in the lap pool, which has a maximum capacity of 96, at the time of the drowning. Attendance figures show 151 people were at the pool Monday afternoon, below the site's 283-person capacity. A lifeguard was patrolling on foot near the end of the pool where [victim] was found, said [name], the pool's assistant manager. Guards are trained to look for even the smallest sign of distress, but no one noticed anything Monday, [local pool manager] said. Swimmers nearby where [victim] was found also reported no indications of trouble, he said.

Pool employees still were trying to cope with the tragedy Tuesday. "We're all pretty upset. We're all pretty shocked," [pool assistant manager] said. YMCA workers also were struggling with losing a long-time camper, said [name], chief executive officer of the YMCA [name]. YMCA staff members were having more trouble coping. "They take the safety of the children very seriously," he said. "It happened on all of our watches." YMCA has canceled all future water-related outings except for swimming at the [local] high school pool, where the youth will be supervised by the YMCA's own lifeguards, [YMCA CEO] said.

[Name], deputy town manager of suburb, said the town has no plans to break its $159,000-annual contract with [pool manager]. "At this point, we have no reason to believe they've done anything wrong." Until the official investigation is complete, "we don't want to jump to any conclusions," he said. The town has had no problems with [pool manager] since it began managing the pool at its 1999 opening, [deputy town manager] said. "We're actually above and beyond the industry standards."

[Pool manager president] said her company, which formed in 1998, has had no prior drowning at any of the three pools it manages. However, [pool manager] will conduct its own investigation into problems at pools nationwide and look for anything it can do to keep such a tragedy from occurring again, she said.

[Mother] wouldn't talk about the accident or whether her son knew how to swim Tuesday, only saying, "He liked water." Instead, she wanted to focus on the comfort she takes from knowing [name] is now with the Lord he spent his life loving.

Others remembered [victim] as they knew him in this world: a young boy who loved to learn, especially math and reading. "He was an eager student," said [name], [victim]'s teacher and principal at [school]. The boy greeted her each morning with a hug and left her with a hug at the end of the day. "He brought joy to the entire school," she said. "He was very friendly and easily made friends." When students talked about what they had planned for the summer, [victim] shared his excitement about attending the summer camp. "We are going to miss him," [teacher] said.

By ANGIE GREEN (c) St. Petersburg Times published June 30, 2003 reprinted without permission

CLEARWATER - Earlier this month a 12-year-old Clearwater boy nearly drowned in an 8-foot-deep hotel swimming pool. His sister, 17, stood helpless at the pool's edge, watching her brother's blood surface to the top of the water. Neither could swim.

Although the boy, [name], was rescued by the hotel owner, the incident highlights a troubling problem: Black children die from drowning in pools at a far higher rate than white children. According to one national study, the drowning risk for black boys ages 6 to 19 is 12 to 15 times higher than their white counterparts. While the risk for black girls is lower, they, too, are at an increased danger of drowning in pools.

But why? And what is being done to teach them how to survive in the water?

At the North Greenwood Recreation and Aquatic Complex, a new $4.8-million pool and rec center in a historically black Clearwater neighborhood, children's swimming classes are often only half-full - even with scholarships available. That is frustrating to some who work there. "Black parents don't put their children in lessons. Black parents don't spend the money," said swim instructor Ajene Snow, 20, who is African-American. Swimming and safety experts point to deeply embedded cultural and sociological reasons - from slavery to hair care maintenance - as reasons for such reluctance.

Lee Pitts, a Fort Lauderdale resident who is the first African-American to produce an instructional swim video, which is now used by the Boys and Girls Club of America, said explaining the disparity is not easy. Finances are an issue, he said. Blacks have historically made less, meaning reduced access to swim lessons, which to many are a luxury.

Jim Crow laws and fear passed down from prior generations are also factors, he said. The gruesome treatment blacks were subjected to during the slave trade and slavery are the reason for some African-Americans' cultural fear of water, he said. The threat of being thrown overboard was common on ships transporting blacks across the Atlantic Ocean. Being thrown over and left to drown was oftentimes used as a means of punishment. Pitts said once blacks got to the United States, slave masters didn't allow them to swim because it was seen as a means of escape. "Nobody has talked about the horrors of slavery in terms of swimming. If I'm a slave master, it is my best interest that my slaves didn't learn to swim."

Thus, a domino effect was created, Pitts said. "You have a generation of non-swimmers birthing non-swimmers. That generation goes on to birth a generation of non-swimmers who will give birth to another generation who will be non-swimmers," said Pitts, who has appeared on Good Morning America and the Today Show to discuss blacks and swimming. "All of a sudden, after Emancipation Proclamation, they are free, but they are not free with swimming skills."

Today, he said, black children too often see swimming as a sport rather than a survival skill. "If you can't execute the fundamentals of some sports . . . if you can't shoot a free throw or throw a pass, it won't mean the difference between life and death," Pitts said.

"Stayed in my memory'
On one recent afternoon at the North Greenwood pool, four boys bare their brown bellies before slowly making their way to the pool's edge. It's the second day of swim lessons and Tariq Smith, 3, is in the pool with his right arm around the neck of his swim instructor, Ajene Snow. "Okay, relax," says Snow as she pulls Tariq's arm down. He puts it right back around her neck. "Okay, put your head back," Snow says as she helps Tariq lie in the water in a floating position. "Push your tummy to the sky," she says. The three other boys watch from the side, wondering who's next.

Snow said it's disheartening to see so few kids in her swimming classes. Snow, who has worked in municipal pools in Pinellas since she was 15, says she sees a lack of interest among black parents in the area. When she worked at a pool in an ethnically mixed community in St. Petersburg, she said the facility had to turn kids away for lessons. "Women would line up at the door at 6 a.m., and signup wouldn't be until 8 a.m.," Snow said. "Here, we rarely have a full class."

Pitts, who founded the Lee Pitts Swim School in South Florida, said the vast majority of black parents he meets never learned how to swim, and the cycle continues. Most public pools were segregated and built in white communities until the 1960s, Pitts said. So previous generations of blacks were generally not exposed to public pools.

But not all want to continue the cycle. Tariq's mother, Terry Smith, said she never took swimming lessons growing up in Jamaica. But the near drowning of Smith's 9-year-old nephew on a family vacation prompted her to enroll Tariq in classes. Her nephew, who couldn't swim, was spotted at the bottom of the pool by another family member. "(The incident) stayed in my memory," Smith said. "That motivated me to get my kids in lessons . . . so they could help themselves. "What if she (family member) hadn't seen him, my sister would have lost her only son."

Skin and hair
On the same June afternoon, four or five teenage boys stand around in a broken circle across the street from the North Greenwood pool. It's hot. Steamy hot. Ninety-three degrees hot, and not one is in swimming shorts. When asked why they aren't at the pool, one 14-year-old boy answers, "Don't want to get blacker. You get black in the pool." Another boy agrees.

"You get blacker quicker," said 13-year-old Terrance Reckel. When asked what's wrong with being darker, he says "people pick on you. "The girls don't go out with you," said Terrance, who will attend Kennedy Middle School this fall. Standing in a group, all the boys say they know how to swim. But only a couple have taken lessons.

Pitts lists the damage the chlorine in pool water does to blacks' skin and hair. "We have different types of hair and scalp because we are descendents of Africa," Pitts said. "Chlorine breaks off black peoples' hair." And if a woman's hair is chemically straightened, a short dip in the pool can lead to hours of restraightening. "They say, "We don't want our hair all nappy.' I've heard it so many times. If I had a penny every time I heard that, I would be a millionaire," Pitts said.

Pitts said such issues "shouldn't keep you from learning one of the basic, necessary skills of life." Pitts' instructional video, Waters, has a section on hair care tips for the water. He said he made it specifically to soothe their concerns.

"Can't eat it'
At the North Greenwood pool, swimming lessons are from $25 to $37.50 for two weeks worth of lessons. Most kids, according to Snow, take at least a month or more of lessons before they become confident swimmers. The pool offers scholarships for children on free or reduced school lunch. Parents only pay 25 percent of the regular fee. Ann Hogan, 53, a godparent to one of Snow's students, said the cost of lessons is too steep for some. "You can't eat it (lessons), it's not a roof over your head," Hogan said. "Especially with more than one child, especially if you're a single parent, that makes it double hard."

Pitts agreed. If he had had to pay for his lessons, Pitts said, "I would have never learned how to swim," Pitts said. "Swim lessons should be free to low-income kids. Period." Pitts grew up in the projects of Birmingham, Ala., and learned to swim for free when he was 6.

But if cost is a barrier, he said, a paycheck can be an inducement for taking swim lessons. Police officer, firefighter, EMS worker, member of the military - all of those jobs require some level of swimming skill, he said. He gets adult students regularly who want to apply for these fields.

He talks about the effects of lower self-esteem black kids may endure if they have to sit on the pool's deck instead of splashing and diving in like other kids. But he's hopeful. He sees the enthusiasm of the black children he encounters when he conducts swim camps. "I have very seldom met children who don't want to learn to swim," he said.

Snow, who will continue to teach swim lessons throughout the summer at Greenwood, said the majority of black parents she meets want to change the cycle of fear and lack of opportunity that have kept them from swim lessons. And Pitts' video, which features some African-American boys and girls, has sold more than 500,000 copies since 1999. The tape, he says, "demystifies swimming" by taking a Sesame Street approach to swimming. Pitts said he envisions the day when he sees a group of black and white 8-year-old boys and girls at the pool.

"If the 8-year-old little white boy and white girl can jump in 10 feet of water and swim across, say 30 yards, then I don't see why the 8-year-old black boy and black girl shouldn't be able to jump and swim across and get out on the other side, too. "That should be normal."