Although Andrew Young and his brother Walter grew up near a New Orleans-area YMCA, because it didn’t have a pool, they often had to improvise.
When an uncle — who could not swim — wasn’t throwing them into Lake Pontchartrain, they taught themselves how to swim in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Right with the sharks,” said Walter Young, now an Atlanta dentist.
The waters are much calmer these days for Walter and Andrew, the famous civil rights leader.
In fact, Walter Young, along with the Rev. Gerald Durley, took a nice cool dip Wednesday in the newly reopened and renovated pool at the Andrew & Walter Young Family YMCA.
The pool reopening closes out the first phase of a massive $9.6 million renovation project for the southwest Atlanta facility, the second-oldest YMCA building in the metro area.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Monteil Weeks, the group vice president of the YMCA of Metropolitan Atlanta, said the renovations are long overdue.
The Young branch has always been one of the most popular ones in the system. But Weeks said while members praise the services and the family atmosphere, they often get dinged on the facility.
“That is why I love to see the pool area go from what it was to what it is now,” she said. “We have the best community resources and our members and this community deserve the best facilities.”
Weeks anticipates that all of the renovations will be done by January 2024 at the facility, which was renamed for the Young brothers in 2007.
She said more than 3,000 people regularly use the pool, which had been closed since November, for laps, water aerobics and most importantly, swimming lessons.
A majority of the population served by the branch are Black and according to the USA Swimming Foundation, Black children and adults drown at a higher rate than other groups and trail most other groups in water proficiency.
An estimated 64% of Black children in the U.S. have little to no swimming ability, compared with 45% for Hispanic kids and 40% for white youths.
Because of that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young Black people between the ages of 5 and 19 drowned in swimming pools at rates 5.5 times higher than their white counterparts between 1990 and 2010, the latest statistics available.
“So this facility is needed,” said Andre Greenwood, chairman of the branch’s board. “This is a safe place to learn.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
To mark the reopening of the pool, the Young brothers ceremoniously threw a life preserver into the water, before Walter and Durley dove in.
“Swimming is one thing that everybody needs to know how to do,” Andrew Young told the children assembled for the ceremony. “And it is one of the few things that you can do all of your life.”
As a high school student, Andrew Young swam competitively and worked as a lifeguard at the local pool. In college, he was a member of the Howard University swim team.
That was before he became a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr., the mayor of Atlanta and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
For his 75th birthday, Andrew Young swam 75 laps to raise money for the branch. He’s now 91, and said he hasn’t gotten in the pool much over the last three years.
“I gotta get back in shape,” he added.
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