Editor’s note: This commentary is by John C. Mahoney, a retired schoolteacher who grew up in Burlington on College Street.
When my father was growing up in Poultney a century ago, his parents gifted him and his many siblings with summers on Lake St. Catherine. My parents followed that example and gifted myself and my many siblings with summers on Lake Champlain in Colchester. I got comfortable being in and around the water.
In about eighth grade I walked down College Street where I lived and got a membership to the YMCA. There was a four-lane, 20-yard pool with a deep end and diving board. I started taking swim lessons. When I started as a tadpole, I was swimming with 7-year-olds. I advanced rapidly, if not meteorically, through Minnow, Fish, Flying Fish and Porpoise. I was encouraged by my YMCA instructor, who was a skilled mentor. He suggested I might be good enough for competitive swimming. I didn’t get around to it until my sophomore year in high school.
In those days, Norm Cranford was coaching the Lake Champlain Swim Club in that 20-yard, four-lane pool. To get 100-yard swims in, we all lined up at one end of the pool and started at the coach’s whistle, one after the other. Snaking our way back and forth until the line had completed five lengths and finished at the other end. We got back in line to do it all over again. It is amazing that we didn’t bump into each other more than we did, but somehow we made it work.
When I first started, I wore a bright orange plaid bathing suit that looked like it was made for Sonny Liston. Walking home from practice on winter nights, the hair sticking out from my cap would freeze and the streetlights had rainbows from my chlorinated, bloodshot eyes. Eventually I got a Speedo and swim goggles, and my eyes did not sting nearly as much. But my skin was dry and itchy.
After one swim season, I took the YMCA/Red Cross lifesaving course and that led to summers of lifeguarding that helped pay college tuition. In more recent decades, I have been swimming again and have often used the “newer” pool at the Y for fitness.
In the Y of my youth there was a small snack bar with a friendly cook downstairs from the front entrance. There were very competitive schoolboy basketball programs in the gym on winter weekends. I think somewhere in the bowels there were even hidden a racquetball court or two. The upper floors of the main building accommodated boarders.
I wouldn’t have described the old Y’s facilities as a medieval dungeon, but then something happened last Sunday. My wife and I toured the new YMCA building on College Street. The old place is a dungeon.
The new building is full — and I mean full — of glorious, natural light. I grew up in the neighborhood and remember the original and subsequent buildings known as the Ethan Allen Club. As the new Y building was going up over the past year, I was put off by its footprint and found it imposing. Having been inside, I am now a believer. Two bright pools and a huge second floor exercise space face south with tons of exposure. Interior group exercise rooms also access natural light because of windows and a hallway that doubles as an indoor running track. There is a good-sized gym and great locker facilities. Offices and childcare space complete the first and second floors on the back side of the building.
In a true testament to the organization’s commitment to the community, the new facility will create many more childcare slots than the old facility offered. Will there be stress and hiccups in the opening days and weeks? You betcha. Parking, traffic flow and scheduling the beautiful new spaces in an egalitarian manner will be a challenge. Hats off to all those folks that had the vision to propose this project and to all who contributed in any way to see it to completion. It can only be seen as a great asset to the entire community of Vermont’s largest city.
