I am proud, proud, proud. I am proud of our local community and our local swim community.
During the last five months the SCAT swimmers and their families have endured tough times during the long bubble construction. The kids swam outdoors in freezing water until mid-October. My daughter was even forced to get out of the pool on a few occasions, and leave practice early, because her entire body had turned blue.
Then began what will now be four months of driving to Douglasville, sometimes twice a day, for swim practice. She gets up at 4 in the morning, swims from 5-7, goes to high school, comes home, does her homework, then goes back to Douglasville and swims from 7-8:30, and returns home at 9:15. Then she gets up 6 hours later only to do it all over again.
She has shown perseverance, grit, dedication, and determination to such a degree that I, as a parent, am humbled. These are qualities and life skills that every parent should hold as possibly the most important for their kids: when things get tough to make the best of it and keep on going.
And it HAS been tough on the kids AND their driving-weary parents, but we are willing to do it for them. They want college scholarships and they want to be the best they can be; they have ambitions, goals and dreams of greatness both in and out of the pool.
I am also proud of the many other people who use our Kedron pool facility. I am proud of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts who use the pool to train in water safety and swimming, and receive badges for their knowledge and abilities.
I am proud of the adults who swim laps for fitness and the triathletes who train for their next race. I am proud of the seniors improving the quality of their lives by doing water exercises for arthritis.
I am proud of kids and adults who take swim lessons to learn the important life skill of swimming, and whom may someday use this skill to avert a tragedy.
I am proud of the parents of special needs kids who know the value of water therapy and take their kids to the pool to receive that therapy.
I am proud of the 19 McIntosh High School swimmers, most of whom are NOT year-round swimmers, who made it to the high school state swim meet even though their practices were few, and under difficult and crowded circumstances.
I am proud of the high school swimmers from all over the county who wrote on their arms the initials of a young swimmer who recently passed away. They swam in her honor at the county championship meet [recently].
All of this would have been impossible without a pool in our community.
Shame, shame, shame on you, Mayor Haddix. You fought any improvements to this pool from the very beginning of the bubble odyssey. If it were up to you I believe the pool would now be a distant memory. We would be the only county in metro-Atlanta without a pool.
I didn’t vote for you, Mr. Haddix, because I have attended several City Council meetings where your negativity was astounding, and where you heard (but did not listen to) many people from all walks of life speak passionately on the importance of having a pool in our community.
All you could see was the money; you refused to give any importance to anything else. I would support the pool whether my kids were swimmers or not, and I support the soccer, football and baseball fields even though my daughters and my family will never use them.
Thank you to Kim Learnard, Eric Imker, and Vanessa Fleisch who have continually supported recreation, the PTC family atmosphere, and our active way of life.
Mr. Haddix, you have on more than one occasion, said that you do not need the small, seemingly insignificant swim community’s support to get re-elected.
I think, Mr. Haddix, that this community, our Peachtree City community, disagrees with you on the subject of recreation and your overall negative attitude in general, and will say so in the next election in 2013.
And to the PTC Recreation Department: It’s been long enough. Don’t drag your feet now that we are so close. Let’s get that puppy of a pool open so all the people I mentioned above can go back to their normal lives.
Andrea Schmid
Peachtree City, Ga.
