YOUNGSTOWN — For Kevin Tarpley, pool manager for Youngstown’s only public pool — which is on Belmont Avenue on the North Side — this time of year carries with it some sadness because he loves the summer and the good times the pool brings to the people who use it.

And as the pool manager and director of the Youngstown Lifeguard Academy, he won’t be in constant contact soon with the 18 young people who have served as lifeguards this summer.

“I love this job and I love the commitment of the young people who work here, serving the public,” he said. Monday is the last day for the pool to be open this year.

But this year has been a good one for attendance and safety, he said. He called this summer a “very busy season,” with 300 or more people attending on many summer days throughout June and July, the busiest months.

RESCUES

Tarpley said lifeguards carried out 22 water rescues so far this summer at the pool. That means a lifeguard went into the water, pulled a person to safety and no one drowned.

“Because they got there so quickly, it didn’t have a chance to happen, and that is the significance of having enough lifeguards on hand to provide that public safety assist,” Tarpley said.

He said there also have been 44 water “assists.” He said that is when a lifeguard had to “reach the rescue tube out (to a person) or they jumped in the water to assist an individual that might have been in distress,” he said. A rescue tube is a long, thin device that a person in trouble grabs ahold of.

“In those 22 water rescues, as part of our in-service (training), we made sure if a lifeguard went in, he had another lifeguard in there backing him or her up. That is to ensure that that individual who was in distress got back to the beach or out of the pool safely, he said

He said it’s similar to the reason police officers have “back-up” when they go on a call: “They are sending backup just in case they have a real situation going on,” he said.

To make sure they have enough people to ensure safety, Tarpley has minimum staffing levels. It generally requires four lifeguards in chairs, four walking around and others watching the pool and supervising. He had 18 lifeguards this summer to handle days off.

Tarpley calls it the city’s “only pool” because when he started out as a lifeguard in Youngstown in 1977, the city had 11 pools, and they were on every side of town, Tarpley said.

He not only served as a lifeguard at age 15, he became a pool manager at age 16 and continued in pool management until age 28 until 1990. The number of pools began to decline after that, he said.

JUNE, JULY

Tarpley said June and July is “the time when folks are excited about being able to access the pool. We have people who come from all over Mahoning and Trumbull counties. That’s the beautiful thing about this last pool in the city. You see people who are black, white, Latino … because it is a public pool.”

Tarpley returned to Youngstown in 2019 after 40 years of living in Boston because the city was having trouble keeping enough lifeguards and ended up founding the Youngstown Lifeguard Academy, which has created relationships with other communities to help them also address the shortage of lifeguards across the country.

“I said let’s figure out how we can train these young people to be lifeguards and then first responders and potentially employees of local, state and the national park system,” he said.

The way it works is that if another community needs lifeguards, the Youngstown Lifeguard Academy will provide them, he said. The academy had a meeting recently with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources regarding the pools at some state park resorts.

That relationship could involve Youngstown-area youths working over the summer at a state park and then participating in an internship to teach them about the jobs within the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The ultimate goal is to help them get hired to work for the state.

Tarpley said the city can thank Mayor Jamael Tito Brown for Youngstown still having a public pool in the face of other communities having eliminated them.

“I remember in 2019, (the mayor) said as long as I am mayor, this pool will reopen for the public, and that was so huge for me. He is committed to it. He is a former lifeguard, so he understands,” Tarpley said.

Tarpley said he thinks the public loves the pool — for recreational and exercise purposes. He said a lot of people also like to picnic at the facility, frequently called the North Side Pool.

“They bring a meal, and it’s good, wholesome family fun. It creates some very positive memories here at this pool,” Tarpley said.

He acknowledged that there were some challenges in recent days getting enough lifeguards to staff the pool, so it tried to open at 3 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday but had to cancel.

It is something that sometimes happens late in the season because lots of lifeguards have gone to college or back to college or are back at school — high school or junior high. Some are as young as 15.

POOL MAINTENANCE

In addition to the benefits young people gain from being a lifeguard, Tarpley said he also views it his role to train young people how to properly manage and maintain the pool, such as keeping the water chemistry correct.

He says he is not satisfied unless the pool water is “the best. I’m training young people to take over for me, and they need to be in a position to have this attitude about their pool — that it is going to have the best water.”

Tarpley learned about pool maintenance from Frank McNally, who was his supervisor when Tarpley was a pool manager in Tarpley’s youth.

“Frank McNally told me when I was a young man: ‘Kev, you have some of the best water in the city,’ and that stuck with me,” Tarpley said.

The stakes are high where water quality is concerned, Tarpley said. “Somebody can get sick from your water,” Tarpley said. “You could die from it. We test our water every day, turn that into the park department,” he said.

The big pool at the facility holds 175,000 gallons of water, and the baby pool is 78,000 gallons.

Staff photo / Ed Runyan
Kevin Tarpley, Youngstown pool manager, shows what a rescue tube looks like. A lifeguard can extend it into the water to help someone having difficulty in the water.