DAYTON–One of my best friends I met for the first time at the swimming pool. I was five and so was he. We sized each other up, decided we’d be friends, and we are to this day some sixty years later.

We would swim until the chlorine turned our eyeballs pink, walk through the alley and along Main Street to the grocery store where we’d get a Slurpee or sometimes we’d head to the house for a coupla bowls of Cap’n Crunch.

Those were different days but they were important to our lives and our personal safety, though we didn’t know it at the time.

On sojourns to the Snake River, our parents—though vigilant–weren’t as overly concerned about losing us to drowning because we had been through swimming lessons at our town pool, up through Lifesaving and Advanced Lifesaving. At the river on Sundays, we splashed and played, out in the water over our heads, without a problem.

Today, Dayton is without a pool now for several years and, perish the thought, this could haunt the populace in future years if we don’t do something.

Of the numerous reasons for a community to support and sustain its swimming pool (pools always cost more than the revenue they generate), public safety is one of the best reasons.

Everyone should know how to swim, and being taught by certificated Water Safety Instructors in a local swimming pool is the way to go.

In a town without a pool, kids may turn to the river for their summer aquatic antics, which so far hasn’t been a problem.

In nearby Waitsburg, Dr. S. R. Hevel, and his late wife Laura Jean, endowed the City of Waitsburg with funds to make swimming lessons for children in Waitsburg free FOREVER. The Hevels supported the community’s health with their perpetual gift.

In Dayton, the Friends of the Pool and other community boosters have formulated a reasonable way to make a swimming pool possible through the formation of a recreation district.

We have the opportunity to do more than simply replace the pool at its existing location.

With proper and reasonable foresight, a facility could be built to not only provide a pool, but several other services to our community.

The publishers visited family in Colorado, where the Chilson Center in Fort Collins is located. The area has several hundred thousand people and a university but its ideas are worth considering.

The facility is open to anyone, for a one-time fee or through membership. It has a lap pool, a splash pad, lazy river, long water slide and play pool. In the locker rooms, you change into swim trunks, stuff your clothes in a locker, and key in a four-digit code. No key or padlock needed. (Just don’t forget it!)

There’s a full exercise gym and weight room. The Senior Center is located there, along with meeting rooms.

For Dayton, something like this would be nice but an adequate facility scaled for our size of community could go a long way.

We urge everyone to support formation of the Joint Metropolitan Park and Recreation District.