Teaching 10,000 Swimmers

Teaching 10,000 Swimmers

Despite the hardships that came with growing up in the Great Depression, Leone Gurr loved swimming so much that she found money to pay for years of lessons. When she was 16, she began teaching swimming, which she is still doing today. She figures that in the last 60 years, she’s taught 10,000 people to swim.

Gurr, of Kaysville, Utah, (pop. 20,351) is convinced that every child should learn to swim—so convinced, in fact, that she introduced her four daughters and three sons to water as soon as she brought them home from the hospital. During their first baths, she let a little water trickle over their faces, and the babies naturally held their breath. Then she increased the water, little by little, until they held their breath whenever their faces were immersed. This procedure is similar to how she gently coaches her students—most of them children—to slip their faces into her backyard pool and hold their breath. When they’re comfortable with that, they’re on their way to swimming, and ready to learn emergency recovery skills.

“In a recovery, you put your arms down, bring your knees up to your chest, and raise your head,” says Gurr, 78. The difference between drowning and being able to keep your head above water is as simple as that. In addition to this personal water safety essential, she teaches all her students basic lifesaving skills.

“I tell them to look around and see what’s available to extend to the person in the water who’s in trouble so that they can pull them in—a pole, clothing, a stick, a towel. We want to be sure that children keep something between them and the victim, so we don’t have a double drowning.”

Gurr says that the most challenging thing about her 60 years as a swimming instructor is that the demand for her classes grew and grew. In order to keep them small enough so children could learn swimming properly and safely, she began charging a small fee, but donated the money to a charity of the students’ choice.

Gurr has difficulty walking now and doesn’t have the stamina to teach as many classes as she used to, but she rests easier knowing that some of her students are teaching swimming.

Matthew Cullimore is one who has put the water skills he learned from her to professional use. He started giving swimming lessons when he was 12. During high school, he worked as a lifeguard at a local camping resort, which allowed him to save enough money to go on a two-year mission to Portugal for his church. And then, by working as a pool manager, he put himself through college. He graduated from the University of Utah last year, thanks in part to the confidence he gained from Gurr’s instruction.

“I remember, the way she taught,” he says. “She never really made me feel like she was critiquing what I was doing. She has such a sweet way about her. She really lets you know she cares about you.”

Another of Gurr’s students, Nancy Lessmann, says she had some frightening experiences in the water as a child and was terrified even of getting near it, but when she was 52, Gurr welcomed her into a children’s beginner class and taught her how to swim.

“She helped me to not be afraid of the water,” Lessmann says, “and I finally jumped off the diving board into eight feet of water. I did it because I trusted that if I didn’t come back up, she’d come get me.”

Lessmann says she’s a confident swimmer now because Leone Gurr worked so hard to help her through her fears. To celebrate her newfound ability to swim, and the conquering of her fear, Lessmann has had a pool installed in her own back yard.

Laurel Holliday is a freelance writer in Seattle.

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