Lasting Impression and Almost Last One- Sam

My dear wife, Jeanie, did not remember this true happening, but she enjoyed it this morning and highly recommends it:





Lasting Impression and Almost last One


Sam Kegley


I am 76 and the incident I am writing about is probably two years old. Jeanie and I are grandparents to three granddaughters and two step-grandsons (now nine to fourteen years of age). That we grandparents love them all is a fact of which we proudly enjoy and even boast.

We wish to quietly appreciate their enjoyments and accomplishments. We find many such occurrences in observing their young lives.

We joined daughter-in-law, Terri, and our granddaughters’s Tobey and Ida Scout (son Jay’s) at their pool on that day. It was a lovely summer day and the girls were running, sliding, splashing, and having an over all wonderful time in the water, on the diving boards, and on the giant slide.

Both girls have had many swimming and diving lessons in local pools, at Ohio
State University, and at Upper Arlington High School.

While observing, Grandpa Sam harkens back to my younger days. My good friend in Dayton, Ronnie Walters, reminded me recently that he and I had swum across the Terrace Club pool there 159 times without stopping. The pool was approximately sixty feet across, as I remember. I was then thirteen and he was twelve. We each believed that we could swim across any ocean then.

We spent countless hours at the Terrace Club and swam and dived many of those hours in the tremendously appreciated Portsmouth pool. At any rate I believed that I was moderately good at swimming and diving, although my diving repertoire included only a jack-knife and a swan dive.

I would often remind the girls to keep their legs together and their toes pointed for smooth, splash-free entry into the water.

Both girls were already experienced in going off the spring boards and the ten foot high diving board. Maybe they were nearing, but not yet achieving the perfectly together limbs with pointed toes and splash-free entry. Tobey since has done so. Certainly I remembered that I had often done that.

So, it becomes break time at the Hastings pool. Only adults are allowed into the water for the youngsters’ ten minute safety break.. The girls have gathered under an umbrella with mommy and grandma far across the pool, and I am up on the board, ready to enjoy another perfect dive, which I hadn’t done for a long while. I honestly tried to be inconspicuous, but wanted to get Tobey’s and Ida Scout’s attention. I yelled without being heard by them, but it probably drew the attention of many other than the two girls.

After a slight pause, in which many pool gatherers were wondering what that old fool was going to do up there, I wasn’t sure at all that my girls were watching, but here I go.

After one’s first dive from the high board, there is little to strike fear into the rookie diver. I was no rookie. I stood back on the board took a little run and jumped up for the spring to make myself soar up into the air, I would then tuck and touch my toes for a jack-knife, and finish by straightening out for the perfect entry.

It didn’t go quite that way for this demonstration.

I ran, jumped, and sprang upwards, but I neither soared, nor did I reach a grand apex, nor open out of the tuck for the smooth entry. My body opened quickly, the legs did not find each other and I don’t know how the toes pointed, but I entered more like the proverbial belly-smacker with a non-glorious splash. I thought that I would soon expire.

Ten foot times 250 pounds is 2500 foot- pounds of force.

I was only saved by the bell which permitted all younger swimmers to re-enter and enjoy the water. I slinked away and off into the crowd at the pool. Fortunately, my granddaughters didn’t see it, and I can still tell them toes pointed, legs together and smooth entry. I will never again attempt to demonstrate.

Grandpa’s words must be more illustrative than my actions anyway.