Swimming is more than just staying afloat. Swimming is the self-control of buoyancy, and once learned, it’s never completely forgotten. The basic muscle memories, assembled over time, stay with us for life. Most of us remember how we first learned to swim, but some kids are introduced to the water long before their memories can retain that first experience. These are the natural swimmers, and in the 1970s, it was the new way of teaching swimming. Some in Ponte Vedra Beach were the method’s pioneers.
Learning to swim in the 1960s was, for many kids, a bareknuckle baptism. At popular community pools in Jacksonville, it was not uncommon for instructors to simply toss crying children into the deep end of a pool while other instructors waited for them in the water. The goal of these water workers was to help keep the kids’ heads above the surface and their lungs full of air. Young legs would be kicking wildly, arms would be slapping the surface, parents would be terrified, and the entire ordeal became a generational exercise in trauma.
The idea was simple. “Everyone into the pool.” Each child had to individually discover for themselves their own unique method of flotation before proper instruction on the American crawl could begin. The instructors were there to ensure the young guppies survived the ordeal, but more importantly, that they learned the commands of the piercing sound of a coach’s whistle. Nothing more.
By the 1970s, the art of learning to swim was becoming a specialized field. At the Surf Club, this was thanks in large part to Alison Bowers. Her swimming tutorials helped kids understand the water, and she taught her minnows one child at a time, and in small groups. Nearly every child whose family lived full-time in Ponte Vedra Beach in the ’70s learned to swim trauma-free in the Olympic pool at the Surf Club. The journey always began on the steps at either corner of the shallow end. The “kiddie pool” next to the big pool was for splashing and playing. Swimming happened in the big pool.
Alison’s father was Dr. Al Bowers, a talented pediatrician who joined with Drs. Richard Skinner and James Walker to establish Skinner, Walker, Bowers / Children’s Medical Group on Jacksonville’s Southside, with an office at Jax Beach. The Group pioneered solutions to childhood development issues of the day that weren’t being addressed by other pediatricians. Nutrition, reading and exercise were core attributes of the practice, and their work in this field became, in part, the inspiration for the Bright Star program at Nemours. Dr. Bowers was chief of staff for Beaches Hospital after it was built, and attended newborns and children at Baptist, St. Vincent’s, Memorial, Beaches and Hope Haven Hospitals.
With the Bowers living in Ponte Vedra Beach, only a few houses over from the Tigers’ baseball field, the family’s presence made an impact in the community greater than anyone at the time could have possibly imagined. Mrs. Bowers was a “community mom,” and their kids, John, Alison, Suzanne and David, greatly enriched PV through that decade. Alison’s impact on PV youth swimming resonates to this day.
Learning to swim was a necessity for kids living at the Beach. The skill mattered along this mile and a half stretch of Florida coast. Surf can be challenging at times, and the challenges are real. Visitors and guests from other places didn’t always see the hazards, but year-round residents did and could offer advice and help when necessary. Swimming at the Ponte Vedra Club was one of the four foundations of health, wellness, leisure and athletics. It developed strength and endurance, and swimming could save a life when nature unexpectedly put the skill to test.
Runouts happen regularly on any beach. Rising tides over broad sandbars trap water in sloughs that are continually fed by the incoming waves. An undertow forms in the troughs between the bars, as pressure builds up and the riptide seeks deeper water. For local swimmers, this was the sign for us to leave the ocean and continue our aquatics in the pool. Visitors and guests, however, might not always notice the subtle changes happening in a growing high tide.
To be caught in a trough and pulled out beyond the swells is a frightening experience the first time it happens. Alison would teach us to teach others, “When it happens, don’t panic.” She would teach us to teach others, “Don’t fight the current. Just float and tread water. Work yourself slowly to one side or the other, parallel to the beach, and you’ll be able to swim back in with the waves.” The tone of her instruction and the encouragement in her voice reflected her father’s dedication to youth, and this gave us confidence to follow her lead.
Waving our arms in the air as high as we possibly could while treading water was a swimming exercise practiced regularly in the pool. This was a practical skill and had an application beyond water aerobics. It was what every lifeguard on the Beach was trained to look out for it, and if you needed to get their attention, it was the signal to use.
Robert Nelson of Atlantic Beach was named aquatics director for the Surf Club in 1974, and just after Easter that year, he inaugurated junior and senior lifesaving classes at the Club. Robert swam for Fletcher and was coached by Wimpy Sutton. He began working that year with Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Hoffman, who co-chaired the Polar Bears, the PV Swim Team.
But it was Alison Bowers who first developed the muscle memory in young Ponte Vedrans in the 1970s. Robert Nelson and others would later fold these skills into the competition team, creating youth ambassadors with life-saving skills. Alison’s methods calmed erratic movements, softened heart rates, kept cool heads above water, legs treading and arms drifting front to back and back to front just beneath the surface, palms down, eyes on what was ahead, following the newly defined norms of the day in this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach.
