Lifeguard Academy founder praises ‘Chief’ for accomplishments
YOUNGSTOWN — Kevin Tarpley attended the Mahoning County Commissioners meeting last week to thank them for the $100,000 in federal American Rescue Plan money to support the Youngstown Lifeguard Academy, which Tarpley founded, and to tell them some of its accomplishments.
Tarpley, who is executive director, introduced Anthony Jones, 21, one of the young people who came through the Lifeguard Academy and has continued on to become a certified professional lifeguard, a certified scuba diver, a candidate for dive master and a member of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Dive Team.
Tarpley told the commissioners that Jones was one of the two members of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Dive Team who went into a large Jackson Township pond Oct. 31, 2023, and recovered the body of a Lodi man who drowned while working for a company doing maintenance in it.
The Lifeguard Academy is for youths and adults 15 to 24 years old.
Tarpley said Jones called him after the rescue and told him that it was a different kind of experience compared to rescuing people from drowning in a pool. Among the things members of the Youngstown Lifeguard Academy do is work as lifeguards at Youngstown North Side Pool.
Tarpley said he told Jones what a valuable service Jones provided that day to the family of the man who died.
“That mother, that father, that family would have been up all night pacing the floor, wanting to go to that pond and get that loved one out. You put them at ease,” he said. “It made a difference.”
Tarpley said Jones also is the Youngstown Lifeguard Academy Dive Team leader and a certified medical technician.
Tarpley said he calls Jones “Chief” because Tarpley said he wants Jones to “have a goal in mind of becoming a chief of somebody’s fire department.”
Jones spoke briefly to the commissioners, saying it’s “almost unreal” to be “delivering babies on the side of the road” and thanked the commissioners “for believing in us.”
Chanelle Taylor, Jones’ mother, thanked the commissioners for the funding “that was necessary so that he and other people in the Lifeguard Academy are able to be successful in their endeavors, all these new scuba divers.
“As a parent, these are wonderful things. When we send our kids to school, everybody has that anxiety of ‘What are they going to do?’ As a parent, I work, my mother was a probation officer, and she worked for Youngstown City Schools for years.”
When her son began with the Lifeguard Academy at age 16, “I did not have the vision that he would graduate from high school and in a few short years later become a three-level certified scuba diver, an (emergency medical technician). He is also a (state-tested nursing assistant). He is going to paramedic school. He is doing a lot.”
Taylor, a licensed school counselor, said she finds her son’s achievements “profound because this started in the school. Mr. Tarpley came to the school and said ‘I want to talk to your young people. I would like to see who wants to join the Lifeguard Academy.'”
She said she got the kids together, and some signed up, including her son. “Everyone didn’t make it. That’s life, right? They promote resiliency, grit and perseverance. He is not just allowed to come to the festivities and all the fun things.” She said a person in the lifeguard academy must behave in school, do their work and volunteer in the community.
“These are character traits that I know we all can agree that it is imperative that the citizens in Youngstown should have,” she said.
Tarpley said as part of the “five-year-process” of developing the Lifeguard Academy, an officer handbook was written with the participants in the academy. “This is part of their training. If they are going to buy into rules, they are going to help make them. And then they have to be challenged. ‘Hey, you made that rule. I didn’t make it.’ We’re not just handing things out. They have got to earn, and they have got to be part of the process,” Tarpley said.
The handbook rules will be reviewed in a year, and the young people will understand, the same as any government agency, “This is how rules are developed,” he said.
The county commissioners allocated $50,000 of ARP funds to the Lifeguard Academy in April 2023 and another $50,000 in September of 2024, said Audrey Tillis, county administrator.