Mark Maynard
The Independent
ASHLAND —
Good vibrations?
You betcha.
Friends of Southside Pool, an iconic staple in Ashland for nearly eight decades, gathered the day after Thanksgiving to feast on memories.
The Southside Pool Reunion took place on Friday night with nearly 250 coming to the Elks Lodge to swap stories about the old days. The pool was built in the 1920s and closed in the late 1980s after a fantastic run in South Ashland.
It was like an all-class Ashland reunion with multiple age groups gathering together and telling stories. Some of them were lifeguards, others recalled the delicious corndogs and French fries, some learned to swim at the pool and others went there because it was the “social” place to be in Ashland.
“I have memories of jumping into that pool and how many of us learned how to swim there?” said Gary Kesling. “One of the first kisses I ever had was there and all those kind of things. The history of it is just amazing.”
David “Dirk” Payne, the pool manager for more than 25 years, helped organize the reunion and was pleased with the turnout. It compared the Southside Pool Reunion to the Central Park CP-1 Reunion that has called out to so many the past four years in the summer.
Payne, Terry Alexander and Mark Ison helped put the pool party in motion.
“I’ve talked about it for a couple of years,” Alexander said. “It carries so many good memories for so many people. That’s why I wanted this so bad. So many people you remember but don’t know what happened to them.”
Alexander and Ison worked the greeting table at the front door. When Herb Conley walked in, Payne said, “There may not have been anybody any more feared (as a lifeguard) than that guy.”
Conley, 70, worked as a lifeguard when he was in high school. It also happens to be where he met Janice Terry, the love of his life and future wife. Janice died this past year from cancer.
“When met at the pool,” Conley said. “She was wearing a white bathing suit. It was the first time I ever saw her.
“I asked the guy I was with ‘Who is that girl?’ He was a good friend of Janice and he told me. I said ‘Is she dating anybody?’ He told me no and that was it. The next day I saw her and said ‘Hey, come over here a minute.’ Then we started dating.”
Other lifeguards from the 1950s, including “Buffalo” Bill Hopkins and Ralph Clere also came to the reunion. They were joined by Southside Pool veterans from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and everybody came together for a giant pool party.
Ralph Clere said Ed Mathis, who used to be the principal at Coles Jr. High, was the pool manager during part of the time he was there. Bob Sang managed the pool one season, he said.
“They taught us how to work,” said Clere, who was a lifeguard in 1955-56. “We dug ditches, painted, did whatever they asked us to do.”
Many have come back later and told Payne that being a lifeguard at Southside was “the best job they ever had.”
“I guess it’s true judging by how many came out here tonight and how many of them have pictures,” Payne said.
Several Southside Pool “veterans” came armed with black-and-white photographs of lifeguard teams, including Hopkins. He read the names of those pictured and it read like a who’s who of Ashland athletics of that era.
Ison and Payne talked about the pool reunion in August and quickly put it together. Ison started a Facebook page that had 100 people joining in the first hour. It’s up to about 1,000 members.
“When it hit the paper, that’s when it really took off,” he said. “Some of the older guys don’t get on the Internet but they read the paper. I was getting calls saying ‘Put me down, I’m coming.’’’
The Return, which included members of one of the first teen bands to play a Friday night concert at the pool, provided the entertainment — at no charge — for Friday’s event. Kesling, Mike Fitzpatrick and Dave Copley played songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s as a backdrop for the reunion. The party room was decorated with a pool theme, including umbrellas, and baskets on every table. The name tags came from a template of a Family Season Ticket.
“I want this thing to build,” Alexander said. “It can be bigger and better next year.”
Dicky Martin remembered the bands at the pool and he also remembered hanging out with Payne on Thursday nights when the pool was drained every week.
“It took forever to empty that bad boy out,” he said. “They’d get the big fire hoses out and wash it down and clean it. Then they’d fill ‘er up again.”
Martin said he can remember literally hundreds of children walking to and from the pool every day. “It was just one of those things everybody did,” he said.
MARKâMAYNARD can be reached at mmaynard@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2648.
