I love to swim and even at 87 I try to swim 3 times a week. I learned to swim at an early age. Grandpa Randall, Joe's Dad, was the manager of the school swimming pool and it was just across the street from our house. We swam every day in the summer. I still savor the thrill of wimnning my first race, for my age group. I swam over and back. before anyone else even swam across the first time. Grandpa Randall who had been teaching me, just glowed. He put his hands on my shoulders and told me I had the style of an olympic swimmer.
Max was an excellent swimmer. At one of the grade school awards assembly, Max and I were awarded all three first place ribbons in our age group. The three awards were for racing, diving and diving for objects.
One day Grandpa Randall had Max and I race the lenght of the pool I knew Max was stronger than I was. I also knew I would be tired and slow down at the end of the pool. I decided to swim underwater as far as I could. Then I wouldn't slow down at the end of the race. After diving in, Max realized I hadn't surfaced, he kept looking for me. When I did surface, I swam as fast as I could and won. I gloated over winning that race for a long time. I never did challenge Max again to a race in the wateer.
Just think Grandma could have won an Olympic Medal for swimming, but instead moved back to Idaho where the only place to swim was the ice cold canal. How many of you learned how to swim from Grandma Gwen?
Some of my greatest memories of Grandma are are green canyon. Not only did she teach us how to swim, but how to dive gracefully.
ReplyDeleteThis blog is great Jill! We are going to have so much fun reading Grandma Gwen's stories. Thanks for all your hard work!
ReplyDeleteI can remember Grandma tutoring me often on my stroke and diving gracefully (as Suzy said.) I love these pictures and hope you continue to get more pictures of her daily life!
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