Before air conditioning, the only way to cool off in the steamy, sweltering summers in Orange was to get in cool water. Generations of kids and adults jumped into the river, bayou, ponds or even rice canals. When Orange got a public swimming pool, the opening was such a big event that the 250-pound mayor pushed the chair of the pool committee off the diving board and jumped in after him.
The date was August 7, 1949, and ended more than four years of a community push to get a public pool for recreation, particularly for children, at least white children. Those were the days of segregation and life wasn’t equal. The black children didn’t get a public pool for another six years, according to research through local daily newspapers.
Orange had two or three private pools owned by the wealthy, including one in H.J. Lutcher Stark’s Shangri-La and lucky youth would be invited for a swim. Members of the renowned high school Bengal Guards girls drum and bugle corps, sponsored by Stark, were among those.
Orange’s population grew nearly 10 times larger during World War II because of shipbuilding and as the war grew to an end, citizens pushed to get a public swimming pool.
The Junior Chamber of Commerce took on the project to get a swimming pool. The group, called “Jaycees” for short, started with a plan to raise $15,000 as a down payment for the $85,000 pool. The federal inflation calculator shows the $15,000 would be the equivalent of $200,000 today and the $85,000 would be $1.35 million.
World War II was still being bitterly fought in the spring of 1945 when the paper reported that an application for a swimming pool to the War Production Board was considered a “critical matter.
The proposal at the time was to build the pool on a half block adjacent to the United Service Organization (USO) building between 14th and 15th streets. Some 30 years later, the building originally constructed for the USO was demolished to make room for an indoor swimming pool, the Orange Natatorium.
The September 25, 1945, edition of the Leader reported the Jaycees had collected $8,000 for the “Orange Swimming Pool Fund.”
“Nothing has been proposed in years in Orange that appeals so strongly to the pride of the citizenship of Orange,” the paper wrote.
Newspapers through the years in the summer months often had stories of children drowning while playing in the river, the bayou or other waterways. Protecting the children was one of the reasons civic leaders were promoting a public pool.
During a public meeting about a pool in the spring of 1946, a man from the Boy Scouts talked about the rescues of 35 boys “from dangerous incidents” in the river and bayou.
Cleanliness was another reason. “Swimming Pool To Have Many Safety And Health Devices,” read a headline on March 13, 1945. The article promised the pool would “be chemically purer than the water you drink.”
“Everyone entering the pool will be required to use the dressing rooms, take and shower” before entering the pool, the article said. Those rules were in effect when the pool opened in 1949 and remained as long as the pool was in use. Girls and women were also required to wear a bathing cap, even if their hair was shorter than that of a boy.
During the 1946 “Town Hall Meeting,” Dr. T.O. Wooley, an Orange physician who had served as health director for the Houston city schools, said swimming pools were not a source of spreading disease “and could not be if properly constructed, equipped and operated.”
Wealthy citizens Stark and E.W. Brown Jr. attended the meeting and asked questions. They then gave their approval for a pool.
Citizens kept pushing. In April 1947, Dorothy Simpson, the student editor of the Tiger Scratches newspaper at Lutcher Stark High School reported the paper asked students and they all wanted a pool.
The city had a bond election with a pool as part of the proposal, but it failed. People still didn’t give up. The Jaycees and others collected money. The Lions Club donated land. Finally, the city allocated the money for the pool. But the Orange Recreation Commission under chair Fred Hanscom stressed the pool would have to get enough admission fees to pay for the operations.
The pool was built on 15th Street between Main and Green Avenues. The admission was set at 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children.
The grand opening celebration was on Sunday, August 7, 1949, with an estimated 1,500 people attending. Miss Texas 1948, Bonnie Blanda, from Orange appeared. Expert swimmers from Orange, Beaumont and Port Arthur, put on a demonstration.
But the most entertaining part of the ceremony had to have been Mayor Raymond Sanders pushing Hanscom off the diving board and jumping in with him. Hanscom, who weighed 150 pounds, had to help “rescue” the mayor from the pool.
“No Negroes Allowed” was the typical sign at pools in those days; so not every child in Orange had a safe, clean place to cool off. The city council was all white men and ignored pleas for a separate pool. In April 1954, the city received “oil royalties” and earmarked $25,000 for another pool from the royalties. The pool was built at Second and Turret streets and opened in June 1955.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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